TtD supplement #200 : seven questions for Jessi MacEachern

Jessi MacEachern lives in Montréal, QC. She is the author of the above/ground chapbook Television Poems. Her first full-length poetry collection is A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible, 2021).

Her poems “The Violence of the Hammer is Thrilling” and “It Meant That Much” appear in the thirty-first issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “The Violence of the Hammer is Thrilling” and “It Meant That Much.”

A: “The Violence of the Hammer is Thrilling” and “It Meant That Much” were originally much longer poems that appeared as two separate sequences in A Number of Stunning Attacks. Like the other six long poems in my book, these are works I’ve been reshaping for years.

The original title for “The Violence of the Hammer is Thrilling” had been ‘Rules for Detachment,’ but landing on the new title helped clarify the role of the material object in the detached consciousness of the poem’s subjects. There’s a sort of alchemy between these images (lightbulb, the train platform, the pocket cameras) and the dissatisfied tourists of the poem, though the result is not gold but something far less substantial, far more ephemeral.

“It Meant That Much” is part of my current experimentations in prose poetry. The form is partly inspired by the staccato rhythms of Gail Scott, whose My Paris always accompanies my prose-thinking. In writing these short sentences and ridding the stanzas of enjambment, the unstopped line came to match and strengthen the intensity of feeling. While the images mostly play into the abject, in rhythm there is also a deep yearning.

Q: How do these poems relate to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?

A: These poems represent an ongoing progression in my writing. “The Violence of the Hammer is Thrilling” carries the violence, abstraction, and even the white space (though, for the sake of the single poem, it has been much condensed) of A Number of Stunning Attacks. In the movement toward prose in “It Meant That Much,” you’re getting a small glimpse at a transformation happening in my current notebooks. I think of it, after Lyn Hejinian’s Positions of the Sun, as an experiment in everyday description.

My poems often work like shadows of the stories caught in their words, but lately I’m trying my hand at drawing the shape of those story-objects. I still like shadow play, but in my daily writing practice I’m trying not to veer away from the actual: whether that’s autobiographical fiction, narrative poetry, or visual experiment. The transformation is obviously not complete in these poems, but I think of these as a bit of a turning point.

Q: What is it about the “experiment in everyday description” that appeals? What do you feel is possible through this type of exploration that might not be possible otherwise?

A: As a teacher and a general advocate of reading poetry, I frequently speak of language’s capacity to change the way we see the world. This “experiment in everyday description” challenges my own ability to manifest that change in what is closest at hand: the wall at which I stare, the closed front door, my own skin. In these experiments, I’ve had to grow intimately familiar with what may be my “voice” amidst the unchanging, rather mundane (though, of course, sometimes spectacular) occurrences of the everyday. I think it’s possible to change this voiced quality from project to project, but I also like the idea of honing something that, for the present moment, may be less prone to total dissolution — at least less so than the collaged and fragile speakers and subjects of many of my earlier poems.

Q: There is something relatively straightforward about the idea of an “experiment in everyday description,” although it is rife with not only possibility but a variety of approaches, from poets such as Frank O’Hara and David W. McFadden to Bernadette Meyer and, as you suggest, Lyn Hejinian. Is your approach, then, one of utilizing the description as a counterbalance against falling too deep into your own head?

A: Yes, I may be chasing after the whole New York School (O’Hara, Ashbery, Koch, Notley, Mayer), as well as someone like Eileen Myles, with this attempt to snag a straightforward voice. Like the writing of the aforementioned poets, however, my approach also couples a sort of speculative philosophy with the everyday description. Rather than whittling away at an abstract idea until it becomes a glinting poem-object, I am building description upon description until it becomes a squat language-block dense with, as you say, possibility. The density has led to some interesting experiments in first-person (autobiographical) fiction, while maintaining an anchor that, yes, counterbalances my tendency to fall too deep. That has been, so far, the fascinating function of pure description.

Q: With a full-length debut and follow-up chapbook, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: I feel like the floodgates have opened — so, watch out! For years, while editing the manuscript for my first book, I couldn’t shut up about my writer’s block. I was so precious about those poems that I began to believe my own lie: that it would and should take 10–15 years to complete any one poem. There’s an undeniable beauty to such a finely-honed poem-object (or, so I hope!), but there’s a variety of other methods available and many of them include a great deal more ease. That, in a way, brings us back to the poems in this issue of Touch the Donkey, for in their final revised form they undo some of the tightly-bound latches I had been repeatedly refining while labouring over my first book. Television Poems, my recent chapbook with your above/ground press, is yet another experiment in ease. Hell, the poems were first composed while in a pose of leisure: sitting back and watching a tv show.

Q: Your suggestion of ease reminds me of Fred Wah’s notion of “drunken tai chi,” of allowing the subconscious and the honed skill to compose and play more freely, and setting the conscious mind aside for a while. Are there particular authors or works in your head as you attempt new work?

A: I’ve become very deliberate about the authors who accompany this new ease. Wah is actually one of them; I was recently writing alongside the wonder to be found in Music at the Heart of Thinking. I’m drawn to that book’s lovely marriage of fierce thought and spirited (or drunken!) play, a partnership I find a way of inserting myself into while reading the poetry of certain others, as well — Fred Moten, Erín Moure, Aisha Sasha John.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: I am constantly rereading and rethinking my reading of H. D. (especially Trilogy and Helen in Egypt) and, in contemporary conversation with those modernist aesthetics, Lisa Robertson (R’s Boat, Cinema of the Present, 3 Summers). Despite all I’ve just said about ease, I am, in fact, very drawn to and even energized by difficult texts. It’s not an either/or (i.e., difficulty/ease) dichotomy for any of the writers I’ve mentioned, so I, too, like to maintain my jellyfish-vision (a theoretical mode of thought à la H. D.) even while courting something more spontaneous.

Touch the Donkey : thirty-first issue,

The thirty-first issue is now available, with new poems by Brandon Brown, Rusty Morrison, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Melissa Eleftherion, Sue Bracken, Valerie Witte and Jessi MacEachern.

Eight dollars (includes shipping). Who knows what adventures they'll have between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?

TtD supplement #199 : six questions for Dana Teen Lomax

Dana Teen Lomax is a poet, filmmaker, educator, and mom. She’s written several books and along with Jennifer Firestone co-edited Letters to Poets which Cornel West calls a “courageous and visionary book.” Her editorial project, Kindergarde, won the John Hopkins Prize for Poetry and a Creative Work Fund grant. Dana’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won awards from Intersection for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the California Arts Council, and others. She lives in Sea Ranch with her family.

A sequence of poems from “the-in-between” appear in the thirtieth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about “the-in-between.”
 
A: I began writing the-in-between shortly after Marthe Reed’s sudden death in 2018. Marthe’s passing was part of an avalanche of loss for my family, one that began a few years earlier and continued through 2020. Both of my parents, my mother-in-law, a favorite cousin, my best friend, a nephew, my brother-in-law, and even our family dog all died. There was a lot to grieve—not just personal losses but also the collective trauma that is taking place all over the country.
 
In the weeks after Marthe died, I read a lot of her work. In her collaboration with Linda Russo, Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene, Marthe writes, “To reencounter the inbetween, we must learn not only to resee but also to rearticulate that which is seen, more complexly, anew.” Here Marthe advocates for dissolving hierarchies and “...reimagining our relationship to the living world….” Marthe’s work continually upholds a fearless care of the planet and every living being. By example, she reminds us to act.
 
Emotionally fragmented and looking for a way to be, I felt the urgency in Marthe’s writing; the invitation to rearticulate experience, see things “more complexly, anew” was what I needed on so many levels. The result is “the-in-between” poems (the collection is titled -unnamed-relation-). Usually drawn to more explicitly conceptual projects, I found that the pain and rigid flatness of my emotions needed simple, direct diction in these discrete, interconnected pieces. After all the death, writing these poems helped me look through slats of memory and experience to re-evaluate how best to keep on living.
 
-unnamed-relation- is dedicated to Marthe Reed for her unrelenting political action and her fierce love of language. Marthe’s writing proves imagination’s nonnegotiable role in creating equitable communities and preserving our future as a species. And it celebrates noticing the complexities in experience and taking political action to protect every living thing.
 
Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other writing you’ve been doing lately?
 
A: I have a number of projects that I’m juggling just now.

A few months ago, I finished the Editor’s Note to THE BEAUTIFUL, an anthology that discusses beauty as a radical way to heal our nation. This was tough to write because making a case for beauty amidst so much violence and hate in this country required a lot of thought and investigation. I had to call in writers I admire, the ones whose wisdom and love are palpable—Cornel West, Rachel Carson, Juan Felipe Hererra, Joy Harjo, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Angela Davis, Valarie Kaur, Erica Hunt, and so many others. The anthology has been a long time in the making and will be published later this year. THE BEAUTIFUL includes some of the United States’s foremost poets, and I have been honored to work on this project in collaboration with them.
 
In another genre, I am collaborating with Peyton Alexander on a graphic novel about our experiences working together in the classroom. Even though I served as the Human Rights and Equity Coordinator for our teacher’s union for years, I made a lot of mistakes as Peyton’s seventh-grade teacher. Peyton is a person with achondroplasia (he prefers the term dwarf because it sounds “cooler than little person…”). The first day of class last year, I inadvertently gave Peyton a top locker, and so our story began. I am often reminded of how blind both my own ignorance and privilege can be. My guess is that I probably learned more from Peyton in his 7th grade year than he learned from me.
 
I am also in the process of conducting research for two projects that are collaborations with my identical twin sister, Danna Lomax. Danna is an amazing writer, activist, and educator, and we keep trying to find the time to complete Sister Schools, a documentary about educational inequality in California. We both teach in public middle schools, supplement our income as lecturers at CSUs and are married to men named Steven. And yet, the resources available to our students and our own incomes vary drastically. Our film is a call for government action to rectify this unjust systemic issue. Our other project is an experimental musical about ecofeminisms.
 
The “the-in-between” poems (from the collection titled unnamed-relation) are part of a solo project, and the poems feel very different from my other work, which is generally more conceptual. I am trying not to judge the process and just make what is mine to make in the moment, no matter how dissimilar to my other projects. These poems are happening now, so here they are.
 
Q: You mention that your solo work, other than this current project, is “generally more conceptual.” What is it about the conceptual that appeals, and what do you feel possible through such structures that might not be possible otherwise? And further, for this shift, temporary or otherwise, away from the conceptual?
 
A: The first fight that I had with my husband was about conceptual art. We were dating, and Steve said he did not like conceptualism, that if the piece was dependent on some explanation on a wall placard, he wasn’t into it. I immediately got defensive because I love seeing the thought behind art like Francis Alÿs’s Prohibited Steps, work that reveals something human, some idea that the viewer or listener or reader has to wonder about, has to question. The final moments of Prohibited Steps read outward; everyone is implicated. I considered my poetry back then to be more conceptual, so I felt like Steve wouldn’t appreciate my writing. Fortunately, the relationship survived this row.
 
I am not an art historian or critic, so I feel uneasy speaking about the virtues and possibilities of conceptual work writ large. The Tate Museum’s definition, “Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object,” makes sense to me. (But then I wonder: to some extent, isn’t that true of all art? On some level, isn’t everything onomatopoetic?) To give just one example: Yoko Ono’s work Cut Piece is still so relevant. The audience is implicated in the piece’s violence, its voyeurism, their own activity or inactivity, and in this way, the audience has not just agency but responsibility in the artwork. Any number of acts could have taken place during Cut Piece. Ono’s piece is performance art, participatory art, and at some point the categories break down. I’m not so interested in genre per se, but I do think that in my own work, a book like Disclosure works very differently than the new poems in -unnamed-relation-.
 
Here’s the difference:
 
from Disclosure
 

 
and an excerpt from -unnamed-relation-
 

Q: I’m curious about how your interest in conceptual work translated into your explorations with writing, specifically poetry. What led you specifically to utilize poetry over, say, visual art?
 
A: It was the other way around, actually; my interest in poetry led me to conceptual work. I grew up (as a poet) on writers like Harryette Mullen, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Susan Howe, Claudia Rankine, Leslie Scalapino, Myung Mi Kim, and Norma Cole. Their work completely changed the way I understood writing. I had always written—even as a little kid—but my parents were not college-educated, and going to a museum as a child just didn’t happen. But once I was in a MFA program with all of these amazing women poets and innovators—Nicole Brodsky, Sarah Anne Cox, Jennifer Firestone, Yedda Morrison, Rose Najia, Sarah Rosenthal, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Lauren Schiffman, Nicole Stefanko, Elizabeth Treadwell, Erin Wilson—I was introduced to an array of artistic experiments and poetics that opened my ideas still further about what poetry could be. I began to frequent SF MoMA, learn more about visual art, and explore the history of art and the different schools of artistic practice and production.
 
Later, I started experimenting with visual work (as in my second book, Disclosure) as a new way to read. I considered and still consider each image in that collection a discrete poem. The dental records above show the fillings in nearly every tooth. This is as telling as a “traditional poem” about class: Here is the record. Make of it what you will. In a recent project, THE BEAUTIFUL, I asked poets to send “poems” in the form of documents, images, paintings, photos, etc. I also consider all of these poems in a very real sense, poems to be read as one would read any poet’s work.
 
The -unnamed-relation- pieces are trying to get at different ways of seeing, or reseeing, as Marthe suggested, by also inviting a slowed down, stilted, enjambed reading. The poems require an unrushed approach to the work—a slight but palpable change in pace. And right now, I think many of us are looking for ways to slow down and better understand the subtleties in current social issues, to get at the deeper roots and realities, “the-in-between,” and hopefully, find collective solutions. When we are trying to better understand history, our place in it, and each other, we have to bring in all of the subtleties as well as the stark realities. We have to dial in to our integrity and proceed with deep honesty. In the process, we have to stop, look, and listen before we keep on moving through this entangled life.
 
I’ve thought about conceptual work in ways that my father might have; he was a builder, and he designed whole subdivisions. I used to trip out on the fact that the way he drew homes or even whole neighborhoods directed people’s attention to their surroundings, to the world, formed the path of their footfall every day. He paid a lot of attention to light and open spaces, a sense of freedom. Whatever a person could or couldn’t see from their dining room table was dependent on my dad’s design. (I wish he were still alive, so we could talk about this. He wrote poetry as well.) So I appreciate the way conceptual work offers a space but doesn’t explain it. Readers wind around the halls, walk around in the experience for a while, traipse on the roof gingerly. Whether offering my third-grade report card or a hyphenated poem about class warfare, I am thinking about the page as an encounter, a look in the eye, a tender stroke on the cheek. -unnamed-relation- is asking questions through the act of reading/decoding words, the earlier work through the act of reading images and documents (as in Disclosure), and THE BEAUTIFUL through the process of reading a mixture of both. I wouldn’t say I use the poetic over the visual or vice versa. I work with both image and language—all of it is poetry to me.
 
Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? What writers or works are in the back of your head as you work?
 
A: Recently, I heard Camille Roy and Eileen Myles in a virtual conversation presented by City Lights. Their discussion made me think again of the ways that the artists I admire challenge narrative, compliance, codes of behavior. The writers I’ve been involved with personally or in various writing communities for decades (Small Press Traffic, St. Mark’s, Dusie, Black Radish, Intersection for the Arts, &Now Conference, the William James Association, and so many others) serve as models for my work. The accretion of exposure to such amazing poets and innovators has deeply affected my own art practice, and I am forever grateful to have found these people in this lifetime. They take risk after risk to work toward more equitable societies and use poetry to understand and reinvent their communities.
 
Richard Ingram’s artistic mantra “Resist bourgeois scum in their murderous search for authenticity” haunts me. Richard’s work invites me to constantly question how a piece of art supports or works against current political and economic structures.

Claire Braz-Valentine was my first mentor; at a crucial time, she affirmed my role as a poet. Claire’s own work in various genres, her generosity, her mentorship as a poet and teacher within the prison system, and her recognition of my practice have had and continue to have a profound impact on me.
 
So many other artists and writers influence my practice, show me what’s possible. Most recently, I’ve had the work of Katherine McKittrick, Félix González Torres, Jordan Abel, Wangechi Mutu, Ruth Asawa, Sherry Shine, Agnes Martin, Yayoi Kusama, and Agnes Varda in mind. These artists all work from deeply personal experiences and create in a number of media. Their relentless intensity, searing commitment to their ideas and research, palpable joy in making, and dedication to their artistic paths teach me a lot. These artists maintain a fidelity to their vision and completely honor it. And they promote peaceful understandings about love and life. I admire this, and each serves as a model for making anything.
 
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
 
A: When I was hospitalized over twenty years ago and on a bolus of steroids, I read “Song of Myself” to everyone who came into the room.

To the nursing staff:
“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
        And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

To the physical therapist:
“The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
        The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.”

To my rheumatologist:
“I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
        I am mad for it to be in contact with me.”

Dr. Jaffer looked over at my bed and dryly replied, “I knew you’d be high; I didn’t know you’d be this high.”

I felt obligated to share Walt’s lines, his communal vision, the love of life beneath every word. I had tears in my eyes and they were not just drug-induced.

Since then, I’ve appreciated Divya Victor’s critique of Whitman as “one of the more beloved apologists for colonialism” and continue to revisit the complexities of my feet on this Kashia, South Pomo soil, “my” “home” “ownership,” my sense of home at all. The poetry I return to keeps me open, honest, learning and working to abandon any single understanding. For me, Walt is still a part of this conversation, as is Victor. I think about liberation in my work—mine, others’, the planets’; there is something of this in Walt’s writing, misguided, colonial, and privileged as it is. The practice of its undoing is my work as well.

And often first loves roll back around—cummings, Hughes, Sexton, O’Hara, Oppen—the poets I met in high school. The ones who taught me that I am a writer. The ones I am still grateful to.

I continue to engage poets who embrace complications and fold them into the writing to critique assumptions and conventions, to develop a wider understanding of poetry’s possibilities—Susan Howe, Myung Mi Kim, Norma Cole, Claudia Rankine, Harryette Mullen, Leslie Scalapino, Camille Roy, the women in the Moving Borders, I’ll Drown My Book, and Women in Conceptual Poetry anthologies. These poets grant permission when I am in doubt and keep me focused on the work there is yet to do.

Finally, I am fortunate to have amazing contemporary women poets as close friends, women who are serious artists and remind me that it’s love that fuels connection and liberation.

TtD supplement #198 : seven questions for Cat Tyc

Cat Tyc is a writer/artist who has three chapbooks, An Architectural Seance (dancing girl press & studio), CONSUMES ME (Belladonna* Collaborative) and I AM BECAUSE MY LITTLE DOG KNOWS ME (Blush Lit).  Her most recent work has published in Maggot Brain and The St. Marks's Poetry Project magazine The Recluse.

Her video work has screened at the Microscope Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Museum, Hauser & Wirth, Kassel Fest and the synthesis gallery. She has directed music videos that have been added to the rotation on LOGO’s NewNowNext and MTVu.

She has been granted residencies and fellowships at Signal Culture and The Flaherty Seminar and has received support from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.

Her collaborative project Poet Transmit (with artist Victoria Keddie) engages in the connections between poetry, transmission, and performance and has been presented at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Knockdown Center and MOMA Ps1.

She is the Director of The Home School in Hudson, NY which is a summer intensive / online program with a mission to infuse poetry education with an interdisciplinary approach grounded in the fine arts and multimedia. She has taught writing for several CUNY/SUNY branches, Rutgers University and Northeastern University. She is based in Brooklyn and Hudson, NY.

Her poems “ART OF PRETEND,” “THIS PARTICULAR GOAT,” “THE BEES” and “WHISPER NETWORK” appear in the thirtieth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “ART OF PRETEND,” “THIS PARTICULAR GOAT,” “THE BEES” and “WHISPER NETWORK.”

A: All of these poems are part of a collection entitled XO which is about excavating a path towards love after experiencing various heartbreaks perpetually for several years. Or what I mean to say is that it is a book about love without an explicit love poem in it.

The poem THIS PARTICULAR GOAT is specifically about an astrological reading I had right when I moved upstate in 2019 to escape a situation that felt untenable.

It is also a little bit about the frustration of being a white Latina because sometimes the eruption of witchcraft into the mainstream makes me feel like I have found community in other witches but then I also feel patronized to by people who weren’t raised in it and speak to me as if I wasn’t raised in certain traditions.

The WHISPER NETWORK was a vent after being sexually harassed a few years ago and how desensitized I felt after the fact. In that piece, I am observing my survival mode in action and acknowledging the fact that I got through that moment unharmed but also acknowledging because I had learned how to. It is really different from other things I have written.

THE BEES is about moving to upstate NY. It is partially about hitting dead ends and also relating to nature in a way that felt so much more immediate. In taking in all this knowledge about the natural world. or to be more specific, learning about the interesting politics of bees, I am thinking about the support networks in place in their society and how solidarity doesn’t always come from where you expect it to in ours.

ART OF PRETEND is an unabashedly 2020 ‘welcome to lockdown’ poem. It is about rethinking intimacy in digital spaces and observing how it shifted at that moment in time.

Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other writing you’ve been doing lately?

A: This work is different from my other work mostly in that I identify mostly as a prose writer.

Writing these poems was a way to process what was happening for me emotionally during a really intense few years and the accumulation ramped up around when I moved. I was commuting to the city for teaching that first fall so I spent an inordinate amount of time on the train for several months and decided to use that time to write poems to deal with the isolation and just use that time well.  The work manifested in a way that is very different from the rest of my practice but also speaks to the constraint of time within how they were produced.

Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? What writers or works are in the back of your head as you work?

A: There are always so many because I ingest a lot of media. When I am at home I usually have a podcast or something streaming. And when I am in motion, I play music.

Since I wrote most of these on the train, I would say that there is some influence from what I am listening to.  I love and listen to so many artists but Mos Def (Yasin Bey), Kendrick Lamar, Princess Nokia and Nas are people that I feel like I was listening to a lot that fall and whose lyrical cadence really resonate with me and kind of stick in my brain long after the music stops playing.

Q: I’m aware that you work in multiple disciplines—not just composing prose or poetry—and I’m curious as to how these various streams of your work interact. Do you see your work as a large, singular project, or are you working a sequence of different threads that occasionally overlap or interact? Do the multiple sides of your work influence each other at all?

A: It is still project by project and they do overlap and have a conversation with each other. Dare I say, occasionally a debate. I mean, how could they not ? - it is all coming from me.

In regards to mixing media, I do feel like I am entering into a place of more intentional integration. Mostly in regards to how the intersection of media and poetics are at the center of my practice which I am excited about.

Writing is always at the core of my work, though. Sometimes the project starts as a poem and turns into a three person collaboration and sometimes a project starts as a sort of an investigation for a type of documentary poetics and sometimes a poem is just a poem.

Most of the time this all evolves out of my desire to work with people. And sometimes a project evolves because I really need to be alone.

Q: I find it interesting that you suggest you work in poetry to process certain experiences. How is this different from the work you’ve been doing with your prose?

A: It is funny to me that you ask me this today because I just got off a call with a friend who just had a traumatic loss and who is struggling with how to talk about it in her work. And I was talking about how art is what I do to save myself so I guess I was encouraging her to try if she wanted to and when I said that I was thinking in particular of this collection of poems but the fact of the matter is that I am always processing something in my work. .

In prose, I do this more as a way of  letting my overthinking self take over and let her freak flag work off some energy.

I am not really interested in work that is clever just to be clever.

When I am being conceptual in a project, I am thinking of it more like a science experiment to test out an idea or just to see what will happen so I have material to work with.

Q: With three published chapbooks, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: Well, I have a full poetry manuscript that could be broken down into chapbooks but I am really committed to the process of sculpting it into a full book. So that’s one that I am in the process of reorganizing.

I have spent a lot of time organizing the papers, notebooks and files in quarantine and have come to realize that outside of the one book of essays I was working on, I really have three and that essays are really where my heart lies near these days.  

The other two projects are in much earlier stages of development and I am developing short podcast series as part of the research and development of writing through those.

I am writing this as the world is “opening” back up so it is a weird time of meeting and conversation but there is some interest in a book of essays I have been working on for over a decade for  an online series and that is all I want to say about that for now so as not to jinx it.

And I wrote this script that I sent to an actor friend who thinks it could be a pilot so that is another interesting thing. I really miss directing and the whole running away with the circus feeling of making a film but it is also really daunting because it means working with a lot of people and I am still in the phase where I am trying to not be stressed out about having multiple dinner plans in one week so you know, we’re just taking it day by day right now.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: I feel like I am always thinking about Eileen Myles’ work. Their book, evolution, has been on my mind quite a bit for the past few years because the poems reflect this position of really looking at the past to try to make sense of NOW in a way that just paralleled my head space so much.

And sometimes when I need to start my engine, I read a little bit of their book about Iceland or Inferno to get back into that head space of finding my ‘voice-ness’.  

I also get a lot of energy from seeing art and just taking in whole day of galleries and I just scribble the whole time. I went down to the city about a month ago to see a new show by one of my most favorite painters, Kathe Bradford.

Laurie Anderson is another artist that I return to consistently as well which some might think strange as I don’t work in sound but think I think she is such an interesting writer in how she kind of writes these layered meta narratives and there is something about the way she bends that opens me up when I am thinking about my work.

The art and writing I feel connected to is the kind that moves you beyond the art because it transcends the form to be something far more impactful than the form itself.

It grabs you and says ‘hey I see you’ and it holds you because the artist has learned how to do that for themselves. Or is at least is trying to and there is something in that trying is what I find most meaningful and inspiring.

I have also read a ton this year but the highlights have been Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Harry Dodge’s My Meteorite, and Matilda Bernstein Sycamore’s The Freezer Door.

In poetry, I have loved Stephanie Young’s Pet Sounds, Kate Durbin’s Hoarders, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge’s (another all time favorite poet) A Treastise of Stars and Bhanu Khapil’s How to Wash A Heart.

I have been nibbling on all these books like really expensive chocolate.

TtD supplement #197 : seven questions for Emma Tilley

Emma Tilley’s writing has been published in Popshot Magazine, The Anti-Languorous Project, EVENT, and Poetry is Dead. Her debut chapbook Carp Dime was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in 2019.

Her poems “SNOW GLOBES” and “HOMEBOUND” appear in the thirtieth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “SNOW GLOBES” and “HOMEBOUND.”

A: “SNOW GLOBES” is about living in the bubble of a small town and not wanting or knowing how to grow up. “HOMEBOUND” explores the idea of being in an unhealthy relationship and trying to control that which does not belong to us, or anyone really.

Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other writing you’ve been doing lately?

A: At the time the poems were written I was doing a lot more persona poems by making up a character or a situation and exploring it. The same can be said now too, but I am learning to write more from my own experiences and be direct. The subjects overlap in some ways, but it comes with a whole different set of emotions for me when writing and revisiting them. I am also finding myself working on sets of poems with a shared theme that connect with one another more so than individual poems.

Q: Are you finding your poems are interacting with each other more than they had previously? Might this have been since you published your chapbook, possibly? Has the way you see your poems evolved at all since you published Carp Dime?

A: I think my poems are interacting with each other more than they had previously. The poems in Carp Dime came about after discovering how much I loved the prose poem. I was having a lot of fun coming up with a line or a pun and then seeing where it would take me. The process was very lighthearted and organic, and it wasn't until I reread the poems during the editing stages that I began to see more themes in them. These days I find myself wanting to be more structured so that I can put together a longer collection of poems that follow a cohesive theme. I think it helps keep me focused on the work at hand. It also helps me see more clearly the different phases of my life and where I was at when I was writing the work. Since publishing Carp Dime, I have become more critical of the work (or lack of) that I have been producing so the way I have seen my poems has changed. I am trying to rediscover what it means to write for myself and how exciting exploring on the page can be.

Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? What writers or works are in the back of your head as you work?

A: Nancy Lee’s What Hurts Going Down, Lorna Crozier’s God of Shadows and Dina Del Bucchia & Daniel Zomparelli’s Rom Com have all been in the back of my head recently. I would say the imagery, story, humour, form, and characterization within their works as a collective have served as great models for the work that I have been attempting and trying to branch out with the kinds of poems I am writing.

Q: With a chapbook published and your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: I think it’s becoming more authentic to who I am, and I am also taking more risks as I go. The more I learn about poetic form, the more I am trying to see what I can push myself to do. How I can grow and develop with each phase of writing. I see my work growing and exploring more topics that I would have shied away from before. I can only hope that the work evolves in ways I never even would have imagined which is both motivating and exciting.

Q: How do you see those risks revealing themselves? Are you leaning more in a structural direction, with the language or the line, or are you seeking out different areas of subject matter?

A: I see the risks revealing themselves in the kinds of projects I undertake and the ideas I come up with. I’m interested in looking at poetry beyond the page at some point and I think what I’m learning now paves the way for that. It’s also about giving myself permission to try and fail which is something I’ve always been very critical about.

I’ve noticed myself in a bit of a rut lately when it comes to line and structure. There are times when I feel like all the writing sounds the same and looks the same. 2020 was a crash course in grief for me and it’s pushed me to write about subjects that I normally would have been too scared or unsure of how to talk about. It’s also taken up a lot of brain space that would usually be used to explore new ideas and concepts. I’m trying to find the balance again.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: If I need a reminder to bring humour back into my work, I would look to Fredrik Backman or Louise Rennison. Humour is important to me in both my life and my writing – it’s nice to find the right balance for it. Some works that I return to would be Lorna Crozier’s The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things and Diane Schoemperlen’s Forms of Devotion. They always draw me back in and every time I read them I discover something new.

TtD supplement #196 : seven questions for Paige Carabello

Paige Carabello is a writer who currently lives in Denver, Co. Previously her life was in Los Angeles, CA, where she worked as a professional singer/songwriter, voice/acting teacher, and in the music industry. Besides being a lyricist, she has written scripts for musical theatre and theatre.  She is currently working on her first poetry manuscript. She loves poetics and diving into scholarly concepts. Her poems “Site” and “Weeds Worn” appear in the thirtieth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “Site” and “Weeds Worn.”

A: I had been involved in the final stages of my manuscript when Covid hit… literally. Hit me. It was March and we knew little to nothing about Covid, except that it killed “or just lasted two weeks”.  One of the things I have found very grounding during this time of isolation has been taking classes that require my full attention; that have deadlines and expectations. In a recent class with the poet Elizabeth Robinson we   were investigating the lyric poem’s ability to deepen an experience. It was the week of the Great American Nightmare (the election) and this timely assignment allowed me to pay attention specifically to ‘focus’ and intensity— how can the writer hone in, capture that core glimpse of real time experience? One of my foremost intentions with my poetry is to offer the reader an opportunity to really step inside another’s reality, to inhabit the voice. Paring away extraneous stimuli, what do you see?

Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other writing you’ve been doing lately?

A: The poems I am writing now are different from my manuscript. I’ve been writing a lot of experimental pieces, and just finished studying with Gregory Pardlo, which was extremely liberating! However, I am still working on my writing projects and just finished a chapbook. I’m struggling with the age old dilemma: so much to write, not enough time. (pause for heavy dramatic sigh). I am cleaning up my manuscript of persona poems—which sounds very mature and  disciplined? But I struggle with staying with one project. I pick up a poetry book and even though I’m only a few pages in, suddenly I MUST stop to write! I get triggered easily, so I find it difficult to finish reading anything unless it is assigned.

I love taking classes: there is a pressure to produce built right in and an opportunity to focus on concepts. Learning excites me, and class allows me to glean insight from poet-teachers who usually teach to their own strengths or feared weaknesses, so I benefit from their eye. I thrive on exposure to new ideas, new writers, new and different interpretations.

Most of my writing is people-centered. I admire good writing about place and natural environments, but to me, humans are the ultimate mystery and magnet. Inevitably, I find my writing is mining the layers of humanity—so writing my green leaf descriptive piece morphs to bug commentary which leads me to infestations... and suddenly I’m in a violent crowd at a clearance sale!

Q: You say you’re working on a manuscript of persona poems: what originally prompted the manuscript and how are these poems presenting themselves? From where do these personas emerge?

A: My concept for this manuscript was fleshed out before I submitted some of my work for an intensive year long poetry manuscript course (at Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop) billed as having “all the details you don’t learn in an MFA program”.  At the time the course was led by Elizabeth Robinson, and she understood what I was shooting for—a book of female persona and identity poems. I know, I know—been done to death and I about fell asleep just writing the description. But as with anything worth much? I think, hopefully, the proof will be in the pieces.

I engage with them as acting monologues—as real glimpses into an other’s reality, with the “other “being some representations of female human existence. Hopefully, recognizable to all humans, regardless of sexual or gender identity— just like good theatre.  Some of my “characters” are pathetic, frustrating, stupid, humorous, lost…they are messy.

Where do my characters come from? Amalgams of concepts, personalities. Imagination. Experience. Curiosity. Passion. Living.

Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? What writers or works are in the back of your head as you work?

A: No, I don’t. I have an understanding of what I need each piece to say or cover, but beyond that? It’s a risk, a leap in the dark. The closest art form would be my experience as an actor, the nearest representational or visual form would be Cindy Sherman.

Q: What is it about Sherman’s work that appeals? And how does that present itself in your writing?

A: I actually created my concept a year prior to seeing Sherman’s work. However, the draw for me is in the opportunity to see differently through inhabiting. Often, when I read persona poetry or poetry “about” someone, there is a distance afforded the reader. The poet has written a “voice”, and this becomes an “other”... sometimes you've got 3 or 4 voices in with you, plus your own narration. In contrast, when I read a play (script), I automatically climb into the characters. They are immediately present, and they become real right now. It is this unique experience I am trying to capture. There are characters and characteristics of human behavior that I am interested in allowing the reader to inhabit more closely.

So, I was introduced to Cindy Sherman by Elizabeth Robinson. In Sherman’s work you can observe from a distance, simply register: here is a a photo of a beautiful woman. An Ugly woman. A Disgusting woman. Or you can ask ‘ who is she, what does she see, what does she say about how we have been socialized?’  What is revealed about the woman in the photograph? And what does my reaction reveal? What makes one woman ugly? Significant questions, all—but. “The Woman” is still being held at arm’s length, within a frame. Observed. Most viewers would agree that knowing about the individual women, or even the women’s back story, would effect our perception or judgement of her. I would like to go in further: what happens to our perceptions when we become the woman?

Q: How was it working with Elizabeth Robinson? Where there any shifts that her workshop prompted in your work, or was it more of a fine-tuning?

A: Elizabeth is a natural instructor and very open to new ideas and challenging boundaries. I often find it tricky, taking class from poets—just because one can publish doesn’t automatically mean one can teach. Elizabeth is an amazing teacher. And yes, she was very instructive in the technicalities of manuscript creation—composition, variation, selection, proximity—and criticism.  However, I think the most vital thing she gave me is her encouragement. I discount most pats on the head, just don’t trust them. Because I know Elizabeth has a discerning eye, and because I had taken several of her “academic” classes, I knew she was highly intelligent and had a deep sense of curiosity. I trust her.

If I had to single out the most helpful experience I had building this manuscript it would be the discoveries I made during my first public reading of the material. Up until that moment, I wasn’t certain my idea had any lift. It was exciting to experience a positive response.

In general, I find reading my work out loud to an audience is immensely helpful. When I read I am able to hear and feel and see what needs to change. Poetry is such a fluid art, and I think reading aloud allows me to experience more fully all the passages in the piece that I didn’t take. It helps me make better choices.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: I’m so grateful for the phrasing of your question, rob! Whenever someone asks “who is your favorite poet” I break out in mental hives—I visualize a top hat full of hundreds of little white paper strips and my hand plunging in, snuffling around, trying to pull out THE one name! So, my consistent go to’s  are C.D. Wright, Lucille Clifton, and forever Emily Dickinson. I recently took classes by Layli Long Soldier and heard readings by Hanif Abdurraquib; both very musical writers. I’ve recently rediscovered Marilyn Nelson and Natalie Diaz, and I’m currently reading Kevin Young’s anthology, African American Poetry, and Natalie Trethaway’s work. Because I just finished a class on her life and work, I’m still caught up in Lorine Niedecker's writing— she is simply masterful. My pandemic favorite for a lift was Khadijah Queen’s I’m So Fine; but my favorite immersive experience was Thomas A. Clark’s Farm By The Shore. There are many more, of course. So many poets, so little time….

TtD supplement #195 : seven questions for IAN MARTIN

IAN MARTIN is a “lumberjack-looking motherf***er” who writes poems and lives in Ottawa. IAN’s writing has appeared recently in n-o-b-o-d-y, Neutral Spaces, The Puritan, ottawater, Cypress, The Wild Literary Magazine, and SURFACES.cx. IAN has published five chapbooks, most recently I DON'T TRUST SKINNY PEOPLE (Ghost City Press, 2018). When not writing, IAN makes small video games and complains online. [ www.ian-martin.net ]

IAN’s poems “MOTIVATION” and “roguelike” appear in the thirtieth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “MOTIVATION” and “roguelike”.

A: “MOTIVATION” is a game poem about resentment and comparison. When I’m at my lowest, I get jealous. I see my friends succeed and feel like there’s no success left for me. I forget what I actually want in my life and start thinking about how I could get what they have. When the other person is doing the same thing, you get an unhealthy dynamic where you’re both motivating each other through spite to live up to a standard that neither of you really wants. I wrote this pre-pandemic but I think that now more than ever, we’re increasingly reliant on social media and increasingly disenfranchised by capitalism, and both of these things cause us to dehumanize each other and see humans as competitors. The actual enemy is the system and the standard that’s been set, but it’s easier to beat down and destroy something tangible, something flesh and blood.

“roguelike” is a poem about the video game genre of the same name. A roguelike usually involves conquering a large environment by defeating enemies and collecting more powerful equipment, all while making sure you eat, drink, and rest enough to stay alive. If your character dies, then they die forever – you have to make a new character and start from the beginning with nothing. Earlier roguelikes (and the original game, Rogue) are lonely, esoteric, and challenging. The graphics are just a series of text symbols on a black background, leaving much to the imagination:
 

(Above: A screenshot of NetHack, a roguelike game.)

You often find items with mysterious names and no clear purpose. You have to use them to see what they do, and sometimes they hurt or disadvantage you. The environments are large and wonderful to explore, but they’re incredibly dangerous, and you don’t stay alive for long. But as you continue to die and return to life, you learn, you get better, and you stay alive for longer.

These early roguelikes have a lot of mystery and magic to them, and their technological restraints and limits infuse them a lot of poetic value. My poem is just a very short ode to the genre, but there’s a lot more in these games that I’d like to explore through poetry, especially with their text art and symbology.

Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other writing you’ve been doing lately?

A: Like most of my writing these days, these poems are about lonely people in hostile environments, either of their own making, or of someone else’s. They’re little dioramas to find yourself in, to figure out who you are and what’s around you. It’s not always easy to find yourself in art. Sometimes you have to make something vague and strange and just drop yourself into it and see how it feels and what it does to you. Maybe it’s somewhere you needed to be but didn’t know existed.

I’ve always sort of unwillingly liked difficult, hostile games. I always complain about how frustrating they are, and how I never want to play them because I get so angry, but there’s something very satisfying about conquering something that hates you and wants to see you fail. Of course, these games don’t actually hate you: they’re cruel on the surface, but their purpose is to give you a challenge that you can learn to overcome. But that’s the nice thing about hard games – as bad as they get, they’re still controlled environments with clear rules and boundaries.

Poems, like games, can create these rich worlds that you live in for a moment, where you’re all alone, and you have to figure out where you are and learn how to survive. Little microcosms where you earn something that you can take with you when you leave.

Q: I’m curious about creative types who work in more than one type of genre, but haven’t spoken to anyone prior to you who works so actively within poetry and gaming. The ways in which you describe your attraction to gaming and the types of writing you’re attempting make me wonder how the two sides of your creative self interact, if at all. Does your work with gaming influence the ways in which you approach writing, and vice versa? Or are you simply attracted to these two different structures due to the commonalities you see there?

A: I definitely think I’m attracted to the two forms for similar reasons; they’re both about play, they’re about working within limitations, about creating worlds and spaces to explore. Until recently, I worked with the two forms pretty separately. In the past few years I’ve made a more conscious effort to combine the two, but I still tend to fall back into using one or the other. I’m still used to thinking of them as separate worlds, and there aren’t a ton of spaces where those things come together. (Though I’m finding opportunities – I just published a game with canthius, which mainly publishes written prose and poetry. Wild!!!)

But I think that working in any one artform inevitably affects how you do the other, whether it’s conscious or not. Since I’m actively making games and writing poems, all those ideas are always jumbled in my head and I’m always thinking about which ideas would fit best in what format. I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to communicate and evoke through my art, and poems and games to me are just different tools for realizing that vision. Sometimes one is more appropriate than another, sometimes I can combine them and do something really great.

Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? What writers or works are in the back of your head as you write?

A: “MOTIVATION” is pretty directly inspired by gamepoems, by writers like Holly Gramazio and v buckenham, as well as Yoko Ono’s collection, Grapefruit. I started thinking about this format after reading Harry Josephine Giles’s primer on gamepoems a few years back, which got me interested in trying to more consciously merge games and poems in my art. “roguelike” is mostly inspired by the writing style of old roguelike games, but also by some local Ottawa poets who have written about the video games they’ve played, like Leah Maclean-Evans’s poems about Stardew Valley, and Marie-Andrée Auclair’s poem about a Skyrim mod.

I’ve also been really into poems/poetic games made with the Bitsy Game Maker, like these by Sean S. LeBlanc, nat underscore content, mark wonnacott, and Sarah Gould. What I love about poems made in Bitsy is that they have physical space that you can move through. The text is hidden around and can be read in different orders. Bitsy is a very restrictive engine: the game space is small, you can only use three colours, and the player can only walk around and read text. Again, I think there’s a lot of poetic potential in these limitations – there’s only so much you can actually show, so there’s always a lot of power in the gap between what’s visible and what’s implied.

Q: I’m curious as to how you build your poems as being “inspired” by different games. Are you using the game as a prompt, or attempting to articulate something about the game itself in the poem? Are the ideas around any particular game utilized solely as a jumping-off point, or are you attempting to replicate structure within these pieces?

A: It depends on the piece. With “roguelike”, I’m trying to articulate something about this type of game, about how the game is designed and how it makes you feel while playing. I’m also trying to capture the aesthetics of the genre in the poem: the worlds of roguelikes are huge and empty, and the descriptions of the environment and the items you find are sparse. Poems are also often about space and economy, so I’m trying to make a connection there. And as a game designer, I’m just really interested in the evocative potential of game systems and rules, so writing poems about those systems is another way to look at them and think about the intentions behind them.

I’ve also written pieces where I use the game more as a jumping-off point to talk about something else. For example, I have a poem about Pacman that uses the game as a touchpoint to then think about human bodies, what we do with them and what they were “made for”. As a game character, Pacman is made to eat pellets. But does he actually want to do that? Or does he just not see any other options?

Q: With a handful of published chapbooks under your belt, how do you feel your work has progressed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: Looking back at my first chapbook, I think some of the work could use some tightening, but it all feels recognizable next to the work I’m doing now. I’ve always been writing about loneliness, alienation, and escaping to better worlds. I think over time, my work has gotten more specific and more personal. Not that there wasn’t a lot of me in my early work, but my current work is very tied to my own specific preoccupations and identity – I’m writing a lot of video game poems lately, my last chapbook was about navigating the world as a fat person, and I’m publishing more poems about my gender identity and how I fit into prevailing narratives of gender. My earlier work spoke more generally about feelings of alienation, and now it’s more about the specific mechanics of alienation, and about figuring out and filling the gaps and problems in current discussions of identity and belonging. I think I’m going to stay on that path for a while.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: My most read book of poetry is still probably the collected works of Alfred Starr Hamilton. I’m always trying to get there, wherever those poems live.