Her poems “drinking from boredom, a toast to the dead” and “Nothing here today that doesn’t exist yesterday” appear in the thirty-second issue of Touch the Donkey.
Q: Tell me about the poems “drinking from boredom, a toast to the dead” and “Nothing here today that doesn’t exist yesterday.”
A: These two poems are part of a 30 poem series written daily during a month of meditation on Stein’s essay: “Composition As Explanation.” So each poem is, in part, a quotidian reflection on whatever I was doing that day. And in part, a reflection of an embodied process of integrating Stein’s ideas – which to me feel both impenetrable and wildly intuitive.
The first poem of that series (a series which retains the present tense) is “Nothing here today that doesn’t exist yesterday” – a pretty direct correlative to Stein’s essay. On that day, I had a conversation with a young person who told me that I taught him what it means to be a man. This was interesting and sweet to hear, and something I can’t actually take any credit for. But it did reinforce for me a sense both of connection (in the present to this young person, and across time back to Stein) and of ambiguity/simultaneity – a lack of connection to any set interpretation. So in part, what this kid said might be true (we’d had some cool and deep conversations), and in part, it’s not – only he can be credited with his own learning, as we are all offered a constant stream of infinite stimuli and only attend to so many minutiae.
On the day I wrote “drinking from boredom, a toast to the dead” I was, well, drinking from boredom - and fell down a rabbit hole of wondering what happened to cocktail glasses, which used to be commonly seen. So the poem’s a nod to how there is not difference in how life is across time, but in “the way life is conducted.” Here I am, drinking the same drink as ten or twenty years prior, from a different shaped glass. As if shape matters. And it doesn’t.
Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?
A: Well, the last few months I haven’t been making poems. I’ve been focused on creating a video about people’s sleep and waking rituals, with support from the video art collective Temp Files.
Q: What prompted this shift from poems to video production?
A: I love making photographs, and though I have less experience with video, I find it really exciting. So I’m thrilled to be back for my second year with the collective. I wouldn't exactly call it a shift from poetry to video art. It’s more pragmatic – we’re on a tight production schedule with Temp Files, and my video goes live in early March. So everything else got put on pause. During Covid, it’s been particularly supportive to work with a true collective – since there has been so much less in-person engagement with poetry communities, this video collective has been a real gift. I think ultimately I approach making a video the same way I approach making poems. But with a lot more equipment.
Q: What do you mean when you say you approach both forms in the same way?
A: I tend to start from an intuitive, meditative space and collect a lot. Then I look for patterns and attend to language to find an intentional and intelligent shape for the piece.
Q: Are these poems part of any larger grouping or thinking? Have you done much writing since the poems included in your full-length collection, FALSEHOOD, for example?
A: Yes! This series is one of three sections in a new manuscript, one which reckons with the ghosts of place. That’s been the bulk of my writing since FALSEHOOD – though I’ve also written some random things and have been dipping in and out of a sonnet series I’ve been working on for a decade now. I’m looking forward to taking some time this spring to write without a particular project in mind and see where that takes me.
Q: With a full-length collection and a handful of chapbooks, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?
A: That’s maybe a better question for my readers! I can say that for a long while, I felt like I was vacillating between very formal hyper-revised constructions and very intuitive/associative constructions that I was reluctant to revise at all. Now, in my work I feel confident in balancing intuition and precise intention. I’ve done a lot of poem revision and visual art-making in the last two years, and have only drafted five, maybe seven, new poems since the pandemic began. I’m ready to dive back in to writing this late-winter/early-spring, so more on this soon.
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
A: I recently loved and felt energized by Jennifer Nelson’s Harm Eden, Ted Dodson’s An Orange, and Jordan Abel’s Nishga. I return often to Muriel Rukeyser and William Butler Yeats, because I can’t not, and I read the Tao Te Ching over and over again endlessly.
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