Her poems “Again I wade,” “Epicentre,” “Arising & dissolving” and “Back” appear in the forty-sixth issue of Touch the Donkey.
Q: Tell me about the poems “Again I wade,” “Epicentre,” “Arising & dissolving” and “Back.”
A: The poems in this chapbook The Deaf Forest of Cosmic Scaffolding are all dedicated to the poet Larry Sawyer, my love and longtime partner after his recent passing. I'll address two of the poems first:
“Again I wade”
I was beginning to work through several stacks of Larry’s poems (all printed and placed into piles on the apartment floor). I was in awe of his prolific-ness—many poems I hadn’t even seen before, so I was rediscovering him and his work all over again. It was a moving meditation, each night, weaving between boxes (I had to move in the midst of everything) and stacks of papers, carefully placing things in specific piles to categorize them for a future collection. The tortes and clouds represent the stacks and the nature / surreality of his work.
“Epicentre” is a dedication to a poetic exercise Larry often used—using same lines, juxtaposing different ones to yield different / new results. Kintsugi was on my mind, the Japanese act of taking something broken and using gold to fuse it back together, a metaphor for how I’d been feeling after his death, needing a centre to hold onto, realizing it was going to have to be me, that no one was going to collect the broken pieces to make me whole. It was just me and the cruel March snow / sleet, reading about nebulas, and being present in every bit of sorrow.
Q: How do these pieces compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?
A: These poems obviously differ from previous work as they are about a very specific thing, the death of the closest person in the world to you, best friend, love, and confidant. My previous work also danced around specific events or things, but in an elusive way. I mostly see this chapbook as an elegy.
Q: Beyond the immediate elements of grief, I’m curious about the engagement these poems might have had with Larry’s work, especially given there was work you hadn’t seen before. Did you feel an influence seep into these poems, or was it a more direct sense of response?
A: It was truly an amalgamation. Reading his undiscovered work certainly had an influence on me. So it was in homage to his style of writing—an intent to poetically communicate with him. Additionally, there is no “beyond grief”. Grief rides alongside us always, it is never something to evade or set aside but something to engage in each moment—emotionally, of course, poetically. So the very act of engagement with his poetry is/was an act of grief, a way to connect.
Q: When approaching writing on and around grief, had you any models for this kind of work? As well, I’m struck by the immediacy of the poems. I know of writers that might take years to compose such vulnerable work, or even allow it to be seen. What was it that allowed you to be so open, and what have you learned or discovered through the process?
A: You learn quickly after the death of your beloved, someone who has been a part of your life for a quarter of century, that there is no timetable by which any forms of expression should come to be. There is no process. Every person expresses loss, every person grieves uniquely—whether it is for their deepest love, their mother, their son. The way death comes to us is a mystery, therefore the way we deal with it in the moment—and/or years after—is just as much an unknown, especially to oneself. You act completely from instinct.
I was drawn into the underworld with him, like Persephone. When we are most vulnerable, we can see through the facade of “reality”. The earthly constraints of time no longer exist. There are no magic moments to say or do _XYZ_. The bare truth of existence, the finiteness, the cruelty of life, is all there is. Our mundane experiences hurl at us the confusion of human emotion, we naively try to control life with inane, inconsequential rules around how to act, what to do when death arrives.
Being poets our whole lives, Larry and I being so intertwined, my writing to—and through—him seemed a natural continuation of our dialogue, the way we should commune. My ache for him to still be alive, his ache, I believe, to be here still, is the thruline, our connection. As Patti Smith sings in “Beneath the Southern Cross”: Oh to be not anyone, gone, the maze of being, skin / oh to cry, not any cry, so mournful that the dove just laughs, the steadfast gasps / ...who grieves not anyone gone...
Q: I’m curious about the relationship between your video poetry and your work on the page. Do you consider these two elements of a single, ongoing poetic, or are they separate? How difficult or easy might a piece adapt from one format to another?
A: I think they are separate though the thruline is imagery. Written poetry still plays a large part in the creation of a video poem, typically it features as a foundation. It’s easier for me to take a poem already written and deconstruct it for a visual medium (video) but always the video poem becomes a second incarnation, calling up and portraying a different look and feel entirely. It becomes its own entity, and I’m usually content with where the medium / inspo takes me. I also collaborate with sound artists / musicians as well as other visual artists, so their perspectives and interpretations are often a pleasant surprise, offering new meaning to the poem.
Q: With your array of video and published work, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?
A: Over time, my written poetry and video work has obviously evolved as I have as a person. Yet I still feel I have so much more to learn and express via video. I’ve been collaborating a lot more lately (as I mentioned) with sound artists. I find a lot of comfort and flexibility in grounding myself in the musicality of language.
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
A: Things I read / hear / see to name a few:
Mina Loy
John Ashbery
Wallace Stevens
Vsevolod Nekrasov
Japanese Death Poems
Roberto Bolaño (The Unknown University)
Lorca
Sergio Medeiros
Akhmatova
Watching Tarkovsky
Listening to David Lynch or Werner Herzog interviews
Audre Lorde
Fred Wah
Breton
Listening to James Baldwin
Listening to Nina Simone
Listening to Marina Abramovic
Listening to Brian Eno
Jeongrye Choi
Lila Zemborian
Jonas Mekas
Aase Berg
Huidobro
Daumal
Brenda Hillman (practical water)
Simone Muench
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