Author Jacqueline Kirkpatrick took the time to share a bit more with us about her process in creating “Alpha Bet”.

Delaney Kochan: One thing I love about how you wrote this piece is how clearly it teaches the power of sharing emotion by showing scene. When it appears easy, you know you’re reading a talented writer who’s crafted each sentence to be unencumbered with internal narration. What was your editing process like?

Jacqueline Kirkpatrick: It’s probably a terrible thing to admit, however, the most honest response I can offer is that I don’t edit much. One of the first writers I fell for was Jack Kerouac and not long after I started reading him I found the “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose.” I’ve been writing based on that method since. Most of my work is stream of conscious. I pop on headphones, queue up the tunes that bring back certain memories and I close my eyes. I’ve been lucky that it makes sense most of the time but I run the risk that it sounds absolutely bonkers. Those pieces stay safe and in the dark in the filing cabinet.

I almost never edit content. How I write something the first, for me, is the purest form of self-exploration. I usually don’t change it. There were entries I wrote that didn’t make it into the full piece but that I had to get out out of the way to keep going. Those are the 2 a.m. pieces. The ones we have to write in fury, collapse with a breath that we didn’t realize we were holding, have a drink to it and then save it in a file named, “Not Yet”. The One Day work. Ha!

Having said all that, my kryptonite is the comma. Knowing that commas kill me so quickly I started the habit in middle school of writing short, concise sentences that don’t allow me the opportunity to mess up. I’ll do a lot of things in life to avoid red pen marks on my pages.

Kochan: You chose a very interesting structure for this piece. How has this specific organization helped order the chaos in your life as you look at it?

Kirkpatrick: I started a piece in my late 20s before “Alpha Bet” that listed, alphabetically, the lovers I’ve had. At the time, I thought it was interesting and a bit bold to just put it all out there. Here’s their name, here’s what they did, here’s what I did, and here’s why I’m heartbroken, but I realized after the second entry that I was just writing it so that I could complain about a recent ex. So, I scrapped it.

But the idea never left. Having a piece that was an encyclopedia of who I was that someone could cross reference or understand the whole picture without a boring chronological telling was important to me. It also really helped me in coping while I was writing it. If I felt anxiety or pain in one section I could change my tone the memory in the next.  I like this set up not just so I didn’t get bogged down in pain while writing it but that the reader wouldn’t have to be either.

Kochan: How difficult is it to tell the past truthfully and compassionately? How did you train yourself to do it?

Kirkpatrick: Good question. I think it’s so difficult it’s impossible. I know I’ve hurt others in how honest I’ve been in my work and while I want to apologize, I’m at the point in my own unraveling process where I’m trying desperately to say fuck it. I can’t water down or negate suicide or rape or struggling with my place as a woman or a mother. Basically, now I’m at this point where I’m saying, “Here’s the plate, eat what’s on it. If you don’t like it, starve.”

I’m not saying it to be a jerk to my parents, or my lovers, or even my own daughter, I’m saying it because I’ve felt it. A writer always hurts themselves first. That’s the best training guide I have as a reference in any attempt I make to be more compassionate when writing about things that could potentially hurt others. I know how much I hurt myself by the things I write so I know how much I’ll hurt you. It may not seem it, but I’ll try to do my best.

Kochan: As someone who tends to write prose in a non-narrative form, I’ve recently realized that my tendency is rooted in an educational emphasis in poetry in addition to the natural inclinations of my thought-patterns. Where does your writing history originate? How did it help produce this piece?

Kirkpatrick: Poetry was my first love. Before Kerouac, I read Sexton, Dickinson,  Parker and Plath. Plath was (and still is) my number one. She had this ability to reveal her emotions in such a raw way but also maintain grace turned me on as a writer in my teens. I imitated her work for a long time before found my own voice. Then once I read Allison, and Oates, and Kerouac, and created a library I could depend on, I felt more secure in letting myself feel free to get down to the nitty-gritty of what I was feeling, or more importantly, what I wanted to feel.

“Alpha Bet” is a combination of a lot of memories and writing forms and styles, synthesizing. It was fun for me to create this piece because it’s so many things: an ode, a prose poem, a memoir, a eulogy, a confession, an apology and a choose-your-own-adventure all in one. 

Kochan: Tell me about your desires for this piece and its existence in the world? What do you hope the reader receives? 

Kirkpatrick: The original piece is over 110 pages. It’s a complete encyclopedia.

For this contest, the complete manuscript didn’t fit the requirements, but I still felt I couldn’t sit on it another second. I went through it and trimmed it down to the most important bones. The interesting part for me long after the contest submission was that I went back through it and realized if I had to submit it again, that day, I would have picked different entries. And today, I’d probably do the same.

Every day we wake up just a little different and who I loved the most yesterday might be different today or what I thought made me who I am Tuesday might not be it on Thursday and I love that. It’s the most organic thing I’ve ever written because it’s these quick snapshots of very pure memories for me. I want the piece to be out in the world not just because it’s this mosaic of people and places and experiences, but because I think so much of what I went through, and still go through, speaks a language universal. I would love a reader to pick up the piece, read it and feel like even though they just read MY history, and MY outlook on things, they know themselves a little more, or better yet, want to create their own encyclopedia feeling a newfound sense of bravery or that they could be loved and accepted on what admissions they have to reveal.

Kochan: What was the most difficult part about writing this piece?

Kirkpatrick: I think the hardest thing, while it may not seem it on the surface, was the title. Of course, the basic first reaction would be that the piece is in alphabetical order, so it makes the most sense but it worked out that way as a third or fourth reason to keep it.

Kochan: What makes this “Alpha Bet” special to you?

Kirkpatrick: The piece covers my first half of life. The beginning. The choices I made or wagered on to get me here. It’s also the strongest attempt I’ve made at covering so much in one piece. It’s the most risk I’ve taken at revealing so much, so quickly and honestly.

Delaney Kochan is a poet and essayist published in Under the Gum Tree, Ruminate, Red Clay, and other literary magazines. She served as Managing Editor of The Forager, a lifestyle magazine, and now writes for the online city guide, My Colorado Springs and various online publications in addition to Newfound. Find her work at www.delaneykochan.com

The post “Alpha Bet”: An interview with Jacqueline Kirkpatrick appeared first on Newfound.

A finalist for the 2018 Newfound Prose Prize chapbook contest, this piece details her experience of obtaining a “Genius Visa” so she could continue to live and write in the United States. She was gracious enough to chat with me more about her process and underlying beliefs on immigration and belonging.

Delaney Kochan: Tell me about the structure of the essay. Is there something significant about the number 82 or the way you chose to structure your piece?

Ploi Pirapokin: The essay is numbered to reflect the eligibility criteria to qualify for an O-1 visa, as though it were a checklist that needed to be ticked off once completed. I wanted the seemingly never-ending numbers to mimic the arduous process of waiting, and of constantly proving my worth as though it were easy as arithmetic—if I only did X, then I would get my visa; what do I lose when I do Y; what risks do I take if I do Z. 

Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets” and Weike Wang’s “Chemistry” played a huge part in guiding how I braided my narratives. I had the entire chapbook up on a wall and made sure to find a pattern I could follow. If I hadn’t mentioned Justin Bieber in a while, or needed a poetic image, I’d slip it in—all in service to the through-line.

I wish I had a reason to end at number 82, but that’s just where I’ve stopped for now. I’ve since found out that number 82 is one of the magic numbers of protons and neutrons that can make an atomic nucleus exceptionally stable, filling out its shells without any room left for adding more. The number also refers to Messier 82, a starburst galaxy more luminous than the whole Milky Way. I’d like to think that my essay, with its alien imagery and space metaphors, is in itself a container stable enough to hold the light within me. Doesn’t that sound literary?

Kochan: What is it about Justin Bieber that made him an accessible parallel for you in this essay?

Pirapokin: I’d like to think that we’re comparable in looks and talent (Hello, J.B.!)

What about the Biebs is inaccessible? He’s a young, fresh-faced, neighborhood kid, plucked out from obscurity, forced to grow up in the public eye only to be the butt of all jokes. People didn’t like him because he was feminine, famous, and rich. What made me empathize for him was when I read about the White House petition to deport him. I realized how quickly Americans turned against a non-U.S. citizen by using Bieber’s immigration status against him, as though his immigration status would be the thing that would hurt him most. Instead of saying, “We’re going to take away your money, your fan base, and your voice!” people (and who are these people who have the authority to decide?) believed that he didn’t have the right to be in this country when they so willingly welcomed and claimed him before.

He could only be in America if he was this cute, bubblegum-popstar, and if he showed any signs of failing to meet that, he didn’t deserve to be here, whereas American celebrities are allowed to have flaws and make mistakes.

Kochan: What is your favorite song of J Bieb’s?

Pirapokin: “Where Are Ü Now” from Purpose. Also, he has enough fun songs to warrant an entire 45-minute SoulCycle class dedicated to him.

Kochan: You depict so clearly how the political and personal spheres merge. How do we reconcile policies and ideas with the complication and grey that is the people they’re created to serve?

Pirapokin: I strongly believe policies need to serve the ideas of our time. However, people are not willing to risk their immediate safety and financial security for strangers that don’t concern them. I’m not going to protest on the streets because if I get caught, I could get deported. But I’m going to find ways where my skills and my experience could be more helpful and useful. That is how I make peace to coexist. Collectively, every nation needs to show those desperately holding onto power that there are other ways of governing, that power is earned through respect and in service of others.

Kochan: While many would expect your immigration status to affect work opportunities, the effect your non-citizenship had on your personal relationships – even so that some questioned your character – is entirely unfounded to me. The trustworthiness of a human based on his or her citizenship follows faulty, and yet not uncommon, logic. Can you speak to philosophy of origin and belonging, and its influence on practical identity and how we view others?

Pirapokin: Immigrants and foreigners everywhere will always be used as scapegoats to avoid solving the shortcomings of a nation. Americans use citizenship as a way to discern between “us” and “them” because it’s a piece of paper that separates one from being authentically American or not. The problem with that is that anybody can be or become American. So if the borders that define a nation are penetrable, then there needs to be a new way Americans, and those of us living here, view and speak of “the other.” Who are we “othering” and why? Who gets to “other”?

Kochan: Considering all the extreme hoops to jump through and the distasteful treatment, what about America kept you interested in staying?

Pirapokin: Because I’m legally considered a genius in America and just some regular person in Hong Kong! I’m joking. I’d like to turn that question around: what is the reason you aren’t immigrating? I have a creative career here, friends, and a beautiful place to live.

Kochan: For yourself, how do you identify yourself?

Pirapokin: Isn’t the process of identifying oneself always in relation to another? That changes for me. I discover how like or unlike I am to someone else every day. Some of the things I liked I have grown to dislike over the years. For me the beauty of writing is making that moment in time when you’ve defined yourself permanent before it changes again.

Kochan: Something profound that you noted was the difference between nationality and ethnicity – that being an American can only refer to being of a nationality, while being Thai can refer to either. How do you think this complicates (or simplifies) the American identity?

Pirapokin: It’s a simplification of the American identity people don’t want to hear about because it upsets the balance of power and calls into questions of those in power.

Kochan: What is your favorite thing about being Thai from Hong Kong?

Pirapokin: That I could opt out of the cultural expectations of being Thai and Cantonese whenever I pleased. Since I wasn’t considered “truly” Thai or “truly” Cantonese, I could pick and choose what worked for me. My favorite thing too would be eating a fusion of Thai and Chinese food that my family makes.

Kochan: Is there something you like about being Thai from Hong Kong living in America?

Pirapokin: I have cultivated a multi-lingual lexicon that tries to find the common elements between each culture. On a practical level living in San Francisco, I get discounts at massage parlors, first seats at dim sum restaurants, and can order myself a drink at the bar. Being able to switch from “foreigner” to “native” in these spaces have been very helpful.

“How to be Extraordinary in America” is a Newfound 2018 prose prize finalist.

Delaney Kochan is a poet and essayist published in Under the Gum Tree, Ruminate, Red Clay, and other literary magazines. She served as Managing Editor of The Forager, a lifestyle magazine, and now writes for the online city guide, My Colorado Springs and various online publications in addition to Newfound. Find her work at www.delaneykochan.com

The post “How to be Extraordinary in America”: An interview with Ploi Pirapokin appeared first on Newfound.

It is a body, wrecked and then stitched together with words. Feel free to disassemble it, rearrange it, make it yours. – “Portrait of a Body in Wreckages”

“Portrait of a Body in Wreckages” is much more than a silhouette of it’s author, more than the form and parts of a human specimen. It’s a graceful dissection of the experience of a body in the world. Winner of Newfound’s 2017 Prose Prize, Meghan McClure’s fragmented essay is a collection of autobiographical vignettes that offers readers intimate rumination, allowing us to feel our own bodily landmarks and signposts through its careful illumination of how the physical intertwines with the rest.

It’s a well-balanced piece; the meta sections are visceral and grounded in the sensory, but the anecdotal sections are especially powerful. It’s a chapbook in which you can easily be absorbed.

I had the honor of probing deeper into the chapbook and it’s author:

Delaney Kochan: “Portrait of a Body in Wreckages” is broken into four sections that appeared to me as two relationships between seemingly opposite ideas: place and white space or potential; communion and isolation in the body. How did the manuscript divide into these sections?

Meghan McClure: After a couple years of collecting the fragments and research that make up this book I started to see some threads running through, so I sort of teased them apart and grouped them to find the commonalities. Of course, these things are at the ends of a continuum and can overlap, but it was a way of sorting what felt chaotic to me. I find comfort in organizing things and writing is no different – it helped the enormity of writing about the body feel a little more manageable. Isn’t that what we do when we write? Try to boil it down?

Kochan: My first experience with fragmented essay was reading “The Balloonist” by Eula Bliss. Reading it was like exploring the thread-web of a detective map. Following the thread with my finger, I could only see the next piece when I had arrived at it, only finding the map readable at the end. It created a way for me to view the many surfaces of a topic. It allowed the mundane to tell it’s ordinary story with sufficient weight. What is it about the fragmented essay that made it the right medium for your portrait?

McClure: Oh what a great book and what a beautiful description of reading it! Everyone should go read that book! I think what leads me to the fragmented form is the same thing that makes me watch an intense movie with my hands by my face. I want to be prepared to look away or to only partially watch through my fingers or to plug my ears when things get to be too much.

After a particularly big surgery a few years ago I knew that the scar was going to be big and grotesque for a while and when they first took off the bandages I couldn’t look at it. I would try and would instead pull the hospital blankets up higher or glance at the nearby skin that hadn’t been cut or I’d look at it with my eyes barely open so I saw it as a blur, not the actual thing, but what I could manage of it. Writing this book was much like that. Everything in slow pieces. And it would have been dishonest to write it as anything other than fragments.

Kochan: Abuse, miscarriage, and disease are all things you reveal in your body’s history. Could you address the violence and rejection that occurs in the body and why this portrait was done from view of wreckages? Does it have to do with the way you discuss pain? You write, “Pain reminds me of the space I take up. Without pain, the body becomes invisible.”

McClure: As long as I can remember, and even before I can remember, my relationship with my body has been one of distrust. I was born with medical issues and spent a long childhood sick, in out of doctor’s offices and hospitals, comparing my body to those of friends and classmates, and so I don’t know another way of viewing the body.

This book became a sort of reckoning with that. Of trying to find the ways that has influenced how I interact with the world. It also feels like my way of trying to forgive my body. Of trying to write through finding a more whole view of a body that up to this point I’ve only looked at in pieces. That is a complicated and tense assignment, one that only happens in bits here and there.

It would be dishonest for me not to include the fact that I wrote this when my daughter was a toddler and the only time I had was very pieced together and much of this was written in a few minutes during naps, after she was in bed for the night and I wasn’t too exhausted, when I could get her occupied with Play-Doh for a few minutes. So, emotionally and practically this was set up to be in fragments.

Kochan: As I read, I began to think of the body as a communication tool. Does the body’s existence indicate we are meant to be in relationship to others?

McClure: I absolutely believe that we are meant to be in relationship to others. Even in all its failings and pain and awkwardness, I’ve always been grateful that my body allows me to be in communication with so many other wonderful bodies. Even if it isn’t physical touch, our bodies convey so much. The way a friend pulls on her shirt when she is overwhelmed, the smell of a newborn’s head, the way a child chews their fingernails when they are sorting through new emotions, the way I dodge eye contact at all costs, the sound of a stranger humming a happy little off-key tune. It is all our bodies interacting. And isn’t that beautiful?

Kochan: In the text I found an interesting dichotomy of bodies not being singular, but also belonging to self. Can you share more about the body’s relationship to others? I was particularly caught by of the powerful image of you holding your daughter, wishing to “never divide like cells.”

McClure: Becoming a parent taught me, more than anything else, how the body can come to belong to so many others. I became a place of rest and comfort and a playground and a safe zone. My daughter used playing with my hair as a way of calming herself. My other daughter rubs my earlobes. In so many ways we became one, but I am profoundly aware of how that oneness will end, yet be held in their bodies forever. It made me consider all the bodies that make up my body: my parents, my brothers, lovers, doctors, dear friends, etc

Of course these things all look different. Some are safe, comfortable places and some were my introduction to violence and the way bodies can harm each other, but all of them make up the way I interact with my own body and the world around me.

Kochan: Do you view the body as inheritance? As our right as humans? Some of the facts you shared about the body are incredible: how many scents your nose can remember, how many blood cells exist and perish in the body. Tell me about the kind of research you conducted to complete this piece and where your desire to study it emerged from.

McClure: One beautiful side-effect of spending so much time in hospitals or in bed sick as a child is that I had access to all this wonderful information about the body, experts to answer my questions, and plenty of time to read. I’ve always used facts as a way to find my place in this world, finding a way to be okay with things that seem too big. So, I’ve been researching this book forever. But I did a lot of re-researching to make sure I wasn’t just storing lies in my head. And sometimes I was! I had to recalibrate some things I thought about the world because I’d misremembered facts.

I don’t know if these bodies are our right as humans, but it is most certainly a gift to live in a body that replaces its stomach lining every three days and can withstand acid that can break down aluminum foil!

Kochan: The piece opens: “The body is the first landscape. The first place one knows. The first place one leaves, returns to again, leaves” And later you write, “‘My wound is geography.’ And this is my way of saying, I am a place. Come visit, stay, inhabit.” When did you start seeing the body as geography? How did that language alter your thinking of body?

McClure: I love this question! I hadn’t looked at this way but I think you are spot on. By putting myself at the head of this exploration I gave myself a freedom to explore areas I hadn’t before. It gave me a power that I didn’t have alone in my head.

It was easier to parse through all of the information on the page because it felt official, in a way, to map, as you say. And mapping is important. Before I sat down to write this book this sort of thinking about my own body felt self-indulgent, but in giving myself the task of pinning down the boundaries and barriers and landscapes that make up who I am, I was able to name more clearly which felt less self-indulgent and more human.

I think I’ve seen the body as geography from the moment I was 12 and in the library and found books that explained to me trauma and the body and the stories we all carry. This is my shout-out to libraries and the way they save lives.

Kochan: In the Spaces section you write, “To believe your body doesn’t matter is a form of suicide. A form I’ve attempted time and again.” Can you tell me more about the conflict of living in a body and the trauma it causes?

McClure: Our bodies fail constantly. And sometimes I want nothing more than to quit the body and live as an unencumbered mind.

When I was younger I wasn’t quite aware enough of it to say it that way so I would just not eat or I would drink too much or do the things so many of us do to escape. Every day is a reckoning to live in the body. To truly inhabit it and not just tolerate it.

I think as someone who lives with a chronic illness and other medical issues I am acutely aware of my body and have to work hard to stay present with it, to not forsake it when I feel cut off from it.  In “Detailing Trauma: A Poetic Anatomy,” Arianne Zwartjes writes something that has stayed with me for a very long time and answers this question better than I ever could:

“I think it’s the persistence that captivates us. The way a heart will actually restart itself if stopped. Sinoatrial node flashing bright little codes, sparks of imperturbable hope, electrical impulses to beat and live and keep on.

The ability to keep generating fresh hope amidst the din. Amidst a landscape that overwhelms. Hospitals & ambulances. Car window shatter & crumpled metal. Breakups, divorces. Thinning skin and the gradual erosion of memory.

To keep on inexplicably and despite the pressing weight, the dread. Stubborn, refusing defeat: if only I had half the determination my heart has. Half the grit, little round bundle of feist and fearless.”

Kochan: One of my favorite lines in the piece: “The body, all of it, an instrument of empathy—” This is such a gentle way of viewing the body, especially in comparison to the violence you discuss. How did you come to this conclusion?

McClure: My first memories are made of this. I remember my mother with me through every illness, every painful procedure. Her body would reflect my pain. She would grimace with me, she would cry with me, she would stand up to rough doctors for me. She held space for my suffering. Her willing presence in the face of so much pain taught me that the body can and should hold space for others. We store our memories in our body and my memories of pain are intricately knit together with my mother’s empathy. All of this fills with me with so much gratitude it tips the scale away from despair. I want everyone to have that feeling.

Kochan: Accompanying the book, you’ve created a companion website. What are the collages meant to impress upon readers? What experience or understanding do you hope to create by offering these readings and visuals?

McClure: As a parent, sort of anxious, and crowd-averse person I don’t get to readings often. And I know there are a million reasons people can’t get to them, even when they want to. I was hoping to make an open and accessible place for readers to interact with the book and hear short readings from it.

I’ve also always been interested in the process of other writers and tend to be a very visual person, so I wanted to share the way I worked through writing this book which was kind of a visual smorgasbord of old records, science books, art, quotes, and these old anatomy flashcards I’ve had since high school. And I really wanted to compile literature about the body and the ways it fails us – that was very important to me. This is something I wish I had years and years ago and I hope that it helps someone else along the way.

Kochan: What do you mean by the concluding line: “To be touched and not know: that is the meaning of the body”?

McClure: The body is a mystery. Add other bodies to the equation and it goes deeper than mystery. There is so much we don’t know, will never know. There are so many ways we are touched and don’t realize how it effects us. There are so many ways we touch and never know how far the tremors go in another. No matter how close any two people are, there is always space between them.

No matter how well your body works, it will die. That’s where the mystery is. The beauty. We contain so much unknown. The body is a container for the unknown.

“Portrait of a Body in Wreckages” is available now at Newfound.

Delaney Kochan is a poet and essayist published in Under the Gum Tree, Ruminate, Red Clay, and other literary magazines. She served as Managing Editor of The Forager, a lifestyle magazine, and now writes for the online city guide, My Colorado Springs and various online publications in addition to Newfound. Find her work at www.delaneykochan.com

The post “Portrait of a Body in Wreckages”: An Interview with Meghan McClure appeared first on Newfound.