Karin Cecile Davidson

The characters of Ramona Reeves’s debut story collection, It Falls Gently All Around, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize (University of Pittsburgh, 2022), lead us through the oak-lined streets, the trailer courts and truck stops, the tunnels and rough-hewn coastline of Mobile, Alabama. Like a love letter to her hometown, Reeves introduces these linked stories in honest and direct strokes, through the humor and compassion and grand mistakes of her main characters Babbie and Donnie, and from the perspectives of Corinne and Fay and the other personalities who appear inside these pages. The stories move through time, not chronologically, but in a way that makes sense to the collection, calling up themes of class and race and chasing down dreams, no matter the distance. From the portrayal of place to the exploration of lives on all sides of town, no matter how discrete, Reeves reveals a landscape that is as distinctive and dimensional as her prose, one which allows the reader to linger and, by the last page, wish for more.

“The beauty of Mobile was not found in its midtown or downtown high-ceilinged homes with their historic nameplates, prim azaleas, and impressive oaks. The beauty swelled from the dirty bay, the muck of oyster beds and oil rigs, and the fume-scarred Bankhead Tunnel … The cracked and broken parts of the city, if taken as a whole, amounted to shapes, color, and light that made Babbie want to live. That was her beautiful city.” —Babbie from “Wheel of Fortune”

KARIN CECILE DAVIDSON: Tell us about Babbie and her city, of your relationship to Mobile, and how place in these stories means much more than location?

RAMONA REEVES: Thank you for that question and for interviewing me, Karin. And thank you to Newfound for publishing this interview. About Babbie and place—on the one hand, Babbie is an insider in the stories of It Falls Gently All Around. She’s lived her entire life in Mobile, and she’s made some poor choices, some stemming from a belief that she doesn’t deserve better. As a character, I think she sees the surface beauty of Mobile, but it’s tainted and complicated for her because she’s experienced the underside of that beauty. In that sense, she’s also an outsider because she’s not permitted into the grand places of Mobile except as hired help (in “Queen of Frogs”) or as a potential nanny (in “Aphrodite Reclining”). So Babbie’s perspective on Mobile is informed by the way she feels about herself, the restrictions others have put on her, and the choices she’s made. Dorothy Allison wrote a great essay that’s included in The Writers Notebook, a book of essays published by Tin House. In the essay, Allison talks about place being informed by characters and their desire, emotions, and context. That’s what I tried to do in this collection, to build a sense of place through character perspectives. Because I’m a native of Mobile, I also wanted defamiliarize the city and bring fresh news to it through characters and objects that perhaps defy some stereotypes people may have about the Gulf Coast. I also use trees a lot in the book as a marker for class. Trees are a big part of the visual terrain in Mobile, but I hope they telegraph a lot more. I wanted them to connect to themes in the book.

DAVIDSON: That Dorothy Allison craft essay is truly amazing, I completely agree, and I think you’ve succeeded in creating that kind of informed place in your collection, partly in how you’ve established connections among the characters. To me, this recalls something Jennifer Egan once said. In her 2011 interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jennifer Egan reflected on the characters of A Visit from the Goon Squad (which she also referred to elsewhere as “linked stories”) and how they were related: “At first, the characters were ‘little islands far apart—I didn’t see the land mass that connected them till later.’” Did you feel the same about your collection’s characters at any point? Which character was most difficult to write? And who came straight to you, telling you everything you needed to know? And did the overlapping relationships occur naturally over time in the drafting, or did you sometimes have to force these folks into the same space?

REEVES: I began this collection as part of a class I was taking. We were studying several interconnected story collections such as Olive Kitteridge, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, Mary and O’Neil and others. I wrote three or four stories while taking the class, so I always knew there would be connections, recurring characters, etc., between the stories. When I went back to finish writing all the stories, I think my experience was similar to Egan’s deft description. There were certain stories I knew would be part of the book and others that came as a surprise. When Fay, for example, showed up in the story “Anniversary,” I felt drawn to write an entire story in her POV, but it wasn’t until I wrote “Anniversary” that I knew that. She was one of the easiest characters to write, as least initially. I found Rowan and Claire the most difficult to write. Their privilege allows them to look away from situations and ignore many social issues, but in their stories I tried to hold their feet to the fire, so to speak. And yes, I sometimes needed to create situations for the necessary interactions between characters. Parties and group scenes created opportunities to further develop characters, and in some cases, forced them to confront problems they’d been avoiding. But there’s also a lot to be said for placing two characters in tight quarters and seeing what happens. I’m thinking of Babbie and her ex-husband in the bathroom stall in “Last Call.”

“Some people had to make do with pressing their noses against the pretty parts of life.” —Babbie from “Last Call”

“… the road between maybe and certain always seemed under construction in his mind.” —Donnie from “The Balanced Side”

DAVIDSON: In exploring the lives of your characters, you find language that not only tells the stories but is specific to and works to develop each character. The way you string together words and thoughts, with sensory details dashed with mild and sometimes outright humorous tones, to create an almost wild irreverence and at the same time a deep respect for your fictional world is phenomenal. How did your style of writing develop? Has it been present since the beginning, or did you find your way to this distinctive style over time?

REEVES: That’s a fantastic question, and you’re the first to ask it. Years ago, I had the idea that writers were supposed to know early on what their style was. Maybe some do, but that was not the case for me. I spent years writing stories in a range of styles until I finally found my own through practice. Writing is its own teacher, which basically means that I had to work at it to find my voice and style, and I think I’ll need to keep working at it. It doesn’t feel like something that’s completely settled, but rather, something that continues to grow and develop. And thank you so much for saying my style is distinctive. That’s nice to hear.

“Some mornings … he sat … and listened as the birds began to wake. In those moments, he heard his father urging him to fly.” —Donnie from “The Balanced Side”

“Driving over the water gave her a sense of flying.” —Fay from “The Right Side of the Dash”

DAVIDSON: There are motifs of falling and flying throughout the collection—falling into trouble, falling in love, falling out of one relationship and flying into another, feeling called to fly, and having the freedom to fly. Falling rain, flying debris, falling bowling balls, flying down the highway. I heard you say once that “Chicken Little” was a favorite childhood story, the refrain of which everyone knows as “the sky is falling!” Tell us about how falling and flying relate to the stories of It Falls Gently All Around and perhaps to other writing you’ve done.

REEVES: I’m so glad you picked up on those images in the book. I don’t know, but I think stumbling or falling in life and then getting back up is the nature of being human and that because of it, people long for and look forward to uplifting moments. I’m talking about those perfect moments that may last only seconds but can inspire us to continue marching forward. This feels true for Donnie and Babbie, the two main characters, and truthfully, for all the characters in the collection. They fall, recover, and try to soar. Sometimes, however, if they soar too high, too soon, there’s an Icarus consequence. I’m not sure what it says about me that I loved “Chicken Little” so much as kid. Maybe I loved that she’s a Captain Happen in the story—that’s a Charles Baxter term. She definitely stirs up the barnyard and makes the story happen. Ha!

“He liked Duran Duran. She preferred Bon Jovi and Prince.” —Babbie from “It Falls Gently All Around”

DAVIDSON: Mostly alluded to, but sometimes mentioned, are the songs your characters dance to, as in “Sighting Dolphins” when the Knockers softball team celebrates their tenth anniversary, and the music they listen to inside eighteen-wheeler cabs driving west on I-10 or under the pines of the Bay Oak Trailer Park, “a heavy guitar riff, crushing the quiet of the early afternoon.” From Southern rock to disco to gospel, what would your playlist for It Falls Gently All Around sound like?

REEVES: I’ve never shared them, but I do have playlists for both Babbie and Donnie. The playlists helped me get to know them better. Donnie’s playlist is heavy on Southern rock and country. Babbie’s picks include many women artists such as Dolly, Adele, Aretha, and Bonnie Raitt. I think if I created a playlist for the book as a whole, I’d include Emmylou Harris, Jason Isbell, Alabama Shakes, ZZ Top, Mobile’s Excelsior Band, Joy Oladokun, Tanya Tucker, Marcia Ball, and some Lena Horne. I’m thinking about Horne’s “Stormy Weather.” And Babbie is onto something, I think, with her Bonnie Raitt pick, so I would add Raitt as well.

“… what Corinne saw as truth: people destroyed what they could not understand.” —Corinne from “Aphrodite Reclining”

DAVIDSON: Thematically, these stories are linked in terms of place and class, with place defining and revealing class in diverse ways, specific to the viewpoint the story is told from. There are many moving parts, one connected to another, all working together beautifully. Babbie thinks of “the pine tree side of town” as her side of town, simpler and less refined than the neighborhoods rich in live oaks and magnolias. In contrast, Corinne considers her privilege as complicated by her love of a woman, understanding that “circles could provide … but also prevent,” exclusiveness weighted against inclusion. What was it like to explore and negotiate all the connections and divisions? Did the characters guide you in ways that helped make sense of exclusion and inclusion?

REEVES: The characters often guided me. Corinne was a difficult one to write, though, until I realized her story hinges on her fall from grace, which happens because she is unable to live up to the expectations placed on her. Those expectations include marrying a man from her same or higher social stratum. She doesn’t marry a man, and her partner is from a class of people that some see as being beneath her. It was interesting exploring how Corinne is excluded. It became clear to me that her class standing is not only about money but also about conforming to a particular set of expectations and that this is one of the ways class operates to keep some people out and pressure others to remain in lockstep. Similarly, it was interesting to explore Donnie’s stories in which his brother and sister-in-law appear. Donnie doesn’t want to be like his affluent brother, and yet I think he wants his brother’s acceptance. Exploring those connections and divisions was exciting, but also sad at times. I could see characters almost connecting with others in the ways they most desired and then often falling short.

DAVIDSON: A trio of unrelated questions: (1) Which character would you most like to hang out with? (2) If these stories were made into a TV series, what actors could you see playing them? (3) Did any of the characters ever give you trouble, and if so, did you just lean into their direction or steer away from it?

REEVES: I’d most like to hang out with Deirdre or Fay. I honestly have no idea about who I would cast as that’s not my area of expertise, but Octavia Spencer came to mind for Deirdre, and Sally Field for Fay. Ha! Maybe Adam Driver for Donnie and an unknown for Babbie? But regardless, I hope people will read the stories and imagine their own casting! And yes, some of the characters did give me trouble, namely Rowan, Claire, and occasionally Donnie, but yes, I leaned into those challenges by continuing to write their stories. I also sometimes let those stories sit for a few weeks while I worked on something else. Doing that often helped me gain more clarity about a problem I was trying to work out in a story.

DAVIDSON: What directions do you see yourself taking in the future, with literary influences and aspirations in mind? Story collection, novel? New landscapes or maybe others familiar to you that we just don’t know about yet?

REEVES: I’ve been working on a novel for a while. It contains two time periods. One starts in Texas and ends up in Georgia, and the other starts in rural Alabama and ends up in New York City. The novel works with some of the same themes but adds new ones around truth/falsehood and independence/dependence.

Ramona Reeves lives with her wife in Texas. In addition to winning the 2022 Drue Heinz Prize, her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, Bayou Magazine, Texas Highways, Pembroke, Jabberwock Review, and others.

Karin Cecile Davidson is the author of the novel Sybelia Drive and the story collection The Geography of First Kisses, winner of the Acacia Fiction Prize.  Originally from New Orleans, she writes stories set mostly in the Gulf Coast region.

The post Her Beautiful City: An Interview with Ramona Reeves appeared first on Newfound.

Gary Percesepe

In the following interview with poet and philosopher Gary Percesepe, Andrea Lee reflects on the sources and influences of her new novel, Red Island House; the enduring beauty, poverty, and legacy of colonialism in Madagascar; the unique challenges of a Black American woman confronting cultural differences in a remote African nation; Jacques Derrida’s notion of survie as linked to notions of inheritance, memory, guilt, forgiveness, and the unforgivable; and whether Madagascar has a future. The New York Times ran an excerpt of Red Island House, which Newfound readers can find here. The daughter of a Black pastor who grew up in a prosperous Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, Lee is currently writing a memoir with the working title, Lincoln Went Down to the Nile.

GP: Andrea Lee, welcome to Newfound. Red Island House is so many things at once: an epic novel set in the remote African island of Madagascar; a look at neocolonial ravages in one of the poorest countries on earth; a deconstruction of the idea of “Paradise”; a narrative of a Black American heroine confronting her ancestral continent. What inspired you to write it?

AL: The novel grew out of my experience as a sojourner in Madagascar–that’s to say, someone who has visited the country every year since the late nineties. For a long time I resisted writing it because I felt my knowledge of the country was too shallow. As you know, I live in Italy, where the Indian Ocean is a popular tropical destination, and my family and I came to Madagascar purely as vacationers. Madagascar is one of the most beautiful places in the world, a huge Indian Ocean island with astounding biodiversity and a unique cultural mix, and it was easy to be captivated by the coral beaches, the lemurs, the baobabs, the intricate mixture of indigenous peoples. It was also impossible to ignore the fact that the country, a former French colony, is one of the world’s poorest, and carries the scars of centuries of foreign exploitation. Underneath my enjoyment I felt a queasy guilt at my own privilege.

As always, though, I was looking and listening, gathering up anecdotes from those coastal places where Malagasy and foreigners mingle. One night we ate in a pizzeria called Libertalia, with a pirate painted on the wall, and there I heard a local legend about a shipload of French and English pirates who found the coast so beautiful that they built a crude settlement of the same name: a brawling, “liberty”-minded colony that scandalized the local tribes and was finally eradicated in slaughter and flames.

That 200-year-old tale pushed me to write my novel. For a long time, I’d been intrigued by the trope of tropical paradise: first, that places so described often have a colonial past, and second, that modern foreigners who settle down on palmy beaches often find, not Arcadia, but existences full of misadventure. Behind the hotels and dive centers in Madagascar, I saw the ugly evidence of hyper development, sexual tourism, pillaging of resources.

So my Madagascar observations inspired stories, some of which appeared in The New Yorker. And then I joined them together into a larger narrative, a novel with a theme of neocolonialism. I wanted to explore what happens when humans try to exploit paradise: a parable of the Fall of Man. My working title was Paradise Twisted. To unify the novel, I created a single setting: a big villa, the Red House, built by foreigners on an edenic islet in Madagascar. I named the islet “Naratrany.” In Malagasy, the word means “wounded land.”

GP: I was fascinated by the physical description of the Red Island house itself, with floors that look like blood. You described it to me once as “a discount Tower of Babel.” How did these images of the house come to you?

AL: Traveling in the Indian Ocean, I saw the huge Italian villas of Malindi, and other grandiose European vacation houses, and I was struck by their vulgarity. On my first visit to Madagascar, we stayed in a decaying beach villa built in the 1950s, the last decade of French colonization. It was by far the grandest building in a community of fishermen and cane workers, and I immediately equated it with the big house on a plantation. That house had a gloomy, haunted atmosphere; I had horrible dreams there. The floors were painted a deep red common to a lot of old European houses in the region, but to my imagination this color irresistibly suggested bloodshed, an accumulation of old crimes. So, the Red House came into being, an emblem of human greed and colonial depredation. I intended the place to be–like Manderley, or Tara–an almost living presence.

GP: The main character in Red Island House is Shay, who is deeply conflicted on many levels. The “arc” of her character in this novel is fascinating. It is easy for you to relate to her?

AL: Shay is a unique literary character, a Black American woman confronting cultural differences in a remote African country. Her interior journey is the thread joining the vignettes that make up Red Island House. It’s easy for me to relate to her; through her I wanted to express an aspect of myself–my reaction to Madagascar, which ranged from a confused feeling of kinship with people who looked like me, to a deep shame at my own entitlement. I envisioned her as perceptive and adventurous, married to an Italian but deeply attached to her Black American heritage; so I made her an expatriate professor of black literature. Still, for all her learning, Shay is thrown off balance by Madagascar, and that conflict drives the narrative.

In her story, I wanted to play with another colonialist literary trope: the swashbuckling adventure yarn, where an explorer battles his way through a savage land. As a child I loved H. Rider Haggard and his genre, and always longed to see a heroine who was more like me. So I decided to subvert the old stereotype of a white man in a pith helmet, and create a Black heroine of the diaspora, who goes deep into the unknown continent of her ancestors. As the years pass, she gains humility and wisdom. The greatest challenge she faces is having to confront her own privilege as part of the developed world, her personal heart of darkness. And Shay does encounter “savages,” but in general their skin is white.

GP: The vivid descriptions of smells, tastes, sounds, and views made me feel as if I had spent a year in Madagascar. Beyond this, the book is a compendium of detail about the culture of the country. What research did you do for the book?

AL: As I said, I hesitated at first. In this period of public discourse about appropriation, the project seemed a bit presumptuous. So, I decided two things. The first was to focus on the in-between world of resident foreigners. The second was to offer respect to the country by researching history and cultural detail, thus avoiding the typical American tendency to see African countries as an undifferentiated mass.

Madagascar has one of the richest literary traditions of any African country–the first literary review in Africa was founded in the nineteenth century by Malagasy writers. I read poetry and prose from authors like Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo and Naivo (Patrick Naivoharisoa), as well as translations of the ancient national oral epic, Ibonia, and oral poetry like the Malagasy hainteny. I read foreign missionaries’ records, and the journals of Dutch slavers in the Indian Ocean. I read the eighteenth-century General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson, which recounts the myth of Libertalia.

And I explored outsiders’ fantasies about Madagascar, such as seen in early letters of Paul Gauguin–did you know that he first planned to live there, instead of Tahiti? And then, there is Hitler’s horrific plan to exile Jews to Madagascar. In Noel Coward’s Private Lives, frivolous socialites dream of escaping to Madagascar, as does Natasha in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. William Burroughs’s surrealistic novella Ghost of Chance takes place in Madagascar. Throughout the novel, I include pieces of this information to honor the complexity of a country familiar to most people around the world only through the Dreamworks film franchise.

GP: You grew up as the daughter of a pastor of an historic Black Baptist church in Philadelphia. As a philosopher and pastor of a church myself, I sense a deep, though not obvious, spirituality in this novel, particularly at the end, which I found deeply moving. I want to ask you what part does the sense of the sacred play in it? And do you feel that there is a kind of redemption operative in this novel?

AL: To open the novel, I borrowed a quote from Naivo, one of the foremost young Malagasy writers: “Madagascar is a sacred country, though at the mercy of outside interests.” And certainly, to me at least, there is an intense spirituality diffused through the air of the place. This may connect to the fact that, besides Christianity and Islam, one of the official state religions is Animism, which lends a sense of soul life to the landscape. As someone who grew up in a religious family, I sensed this atmosphere immediately–and I also felt that the damages wrought by human-induced climate change and foreign exploitation were a spiritual violation.

The novel ends with a look at the future and the new life it brings. Although there is loss and destruction, there is also birth. And birth is always a sacred event, bringing with it, however briefly, a primal sense of hope. I wanted to suggest the idea as well that the profound violence of colonialism is always in some ways accompanied by the creation of a new culture–a mixed culture–that springs up inevitably in spite of the bitter facts of conquest, enslavement, destruction, racism, classism, plundering. As Shay is forced to recognize, no culture colonizes another without being subtly colonized itself. So Red Island House does not have a happy ending, but it offers the redemptive sense that humanity survives and evolves.

GP: As you know, I’ve written about the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In our correspondence, you mentioned Derrida’s notion of survie, which in Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas is linked to notions of inheritance, memory, guilt, forgiveness, and the unforgivable. Shay, of course, is an academic who would be familiar with these broad themes in the Western tradition. I’d love to see literary critics and philosophers pick up on these themes in your work. Is there ever really a post in post-colonial? As Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” What Ibram X. Kendi calls “racialized capitalism” is ravishing the island, along with the rest of Africa. The continent of Africa today is almost 90% unvaccinated for COVID. Of course, this question, posed from within the Christian tradition, cannot even be asked apart from the notion of hope. Another way of asking this question is, what hope is there for Madagascar today?

AL: To me, Derrida’s survie in general suggests the capability to witness and endure–to accept–paradox. I mean the Tiresian gift for contemplating both sides of the coin at once: past and present, self and other, life and death, male and female, oppressor and victim—and, as you have said, forgiveness and the unforgivable. By the end of Red Island House, Shay is approaching a glimmer of this kind of visionary acceptance.

As for the future of Madagascar, I think that hope is a subjective thing when you are dealing with a largely marginalized country of 30 million people, most of whom struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day, an island nation already enduring the ravages of climate change, where thousands in the famine-ridden Southern regions are reduced to eating locusts. As you have suggested, neocolonialism is alive and well, in the form of sex tourism, environmental degradation, and Wild West-style plundering of resources by kleptocratic politicians allied with foreign states. Yet, at the same time, those Malagasy who are surviving have an almost magical resilience and creativity: the country has a high literacy rate and is one of the most digitally advanced of any African nation, while the capital, Antananarivo, is home to an exploding art and music scene. There is an incredible young population–the median age in Madagascar is twenty–that is very future-minded, striving against all odds for a place in the contemporary world.

GP: These are complex themes you address. Was it difficult initially to identify an audience for the book?

AL: I think that in the industry there was an eagerness to pigeonhole it as a very different kind of book: a more conventional novel about love, marriage, and travel, against a flat, exoticized tropical background. In fact, I was advised by an experienced friend that it was best not to mention the word “identity” or “colonialism” in my book discussions, as it might hamper marketing! I found this very frustrating–yet now it seems that the book has reached its proper audience: readers interested in exploring cultural collision and the legacy of history in one of the most beautiful and least-known countries on earth.

GP: Andrea, you are currently writing a memoir. What can you tell us about it?

AL: In a way, I’m addressing the subject of Arcadian fantasies all over again. My memoir is called Lincoln Went Down to the Nile. It describes my childhood in the sixties and seventies in a prosperous Black suburb outside Philadelphia: an aspirational place in which the neat lawns of Lincoln Avenue did indeed run down to the Nile Swim Club–the first Black swim club of America. The doctors, ministers, teachers, and businessmen of the neighborhood were deeply involved in the civil rights movement, but also devoted to achieving the American suburban dream for their families. The result was a feeling of mingled comfort and uneasiness that influenced their children: an extraordinarily creative generation of Black writers, filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals, who grew up in that idyllic green space. I think the subject is particularly timely as attention has recently been drawn to the strong Black communities of the past, lost to deliberate destruction, or dissipated through increased possibilities offered by integration.

After writing about a place as far away from my American roots as Madagascar, it’s very moving for me to return to home territory. The more that I write about countries where I live as a foreigner, the more fascinating I find the small landscapes of my growing up. Even in the familiar there is always some deep mystery to explore.

The post Interviews • Andrea Lee appeared first on Newfound.

Language is where I was born, the home I lost, the apartment where I live now, the room I returned to when I translate, the city I visited when I studied German, the neighbor’s house I see from my window but have never visited. – Kaveh Bassiri

This year’s winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry prize is Kaveh Bassiri, for the chapbook “99 Names of Exile,” to be published by Newfound in Summer 2019. It was a pleasure to talk to Bassiri about the sound of language, issues of translation, culture, and more:

Laura Eppinger: The opening dedication of this chapbook is lines from “La Cantatrice Chauve” by Eugène Ionesco:
“He’s not English. He’s only been naturalized.
And naturalized citizens have the right to have houses,
but not the right to have them put out if they’re burning.”
This absurdist play is all about slips of the tongue, mistaken identity, miscommunications, and the limits of language in expressing ourselves. Are these themes you explore in your work?

Kaveh Bassiri: Yes, all those issues—such as “miscommunication” and “the limits of language”—are found in the chapbook. I am interested in the power and limitation of words. We try to harness the vitality of language, as it slips away and writes us. I am interested in how we find ourselves in language, how language defines us and determines our opportunities.

When you live in different languages, when you cross languages and cultures, these issues become even more obvious. Language is where I was born, the home I lost, the apartment where I live now, the room I returned to when I translate, the city I visited when I studied German, the neighbor’s house I see from my window but have never visited.

Ionesco wrote “The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve)” while trying to learn English. As I understand it, he used an English primer for French speakers, L’anglais sans peine (“English without pain or toil”) put out by the French company Assimil (as in “assimilation”). He first considered L’anglais sans peine as the title for the piece. English primers inform my work—the role learning English plays in becoming an American, with all its implications.

The quote from “The Bald Soprano” is both funny and dark. The play isn’t about assimilation or immigrants, but as a French playwright writing English characters, those themes found their way into the work. In our current climate, the quote seems especially apt for what many immigrants are experiencing.

Eppinger: The poems are evocative and no doubt sound beautiful when read aloud. Still, the shape of each poem on the page is striking—“Mihrab,” “Peeling the Seed (Part 2)” and the title poem come to mind right away. When drafting a poem, do you have a vision of how it will look on paper? Or is the sound of the words more important at first?

Bassiri: The form of the poem is very important to me. It is like the meter. You can’t avoid it, so why not consider it seriously? I am always searching for the proper container. Like many poets, I cast the poem in different forms to see what happens. For example, the prose poems in the chapbook were once lines of verse. “Majnun” was once a sonnet in fourteen lines.

For me, traditional forms like sonnets and more experimental forms like concrete poems have a lot in common. They are both containers that limit and shape the words. The container can be visual or aural. For example, with “Peeling the Seed” I wanted to have the visual sense of two different peelings, as if you are peeling the orange first (part 1), and then the seed (with the erasure in part 2). At one point, the original shape of the poem resembled an orange.

Sound also provides a container. I love soundscapes like anaphora. The poem “How to Build a Bomb,” for example, used the anaphora “Say …” In the end, I took most of them out. But the original directive formed the container that made the poem possible.

Eppinger:  I have this hunch that the alignment of the text in “Mihrab” is meant to evoke a prone posture of prayer. Am I right about that? Are the words of this poem praying?

Bassiri: Actually, with “Mihrab,” I was thinking more literally of the niche in the mosque wall that indicates the direction of Mecca. The wall is the page, and the direction is East. Persian is also written from right to left.

But, yes, it is supposed to evoke a prayer, with every two syllables being like the prayer beads of a Muslim tasbih—itself a form of zikr, a repetition of short utterances. Words are the mihrab.

Eppinger: That titular poem, “99 Names of Exile,” strikes me every time I read it. Racial epithets and concepts like “Dirty” and “Forsaken” are listed as three columns of text, ostensibly defining “Exile.” Both “Villain” and “Victim” appear on the list, one of many contradictions. Also listed: “Unspeakable, Unthinkable, Untouchable.” Back to the Ionesco—can exile be named?

Bassiri: It is impossible to limit the scope of what exile means or who a person in exile is. Exile encompasses many things.

We can do the same thing with the word “immigrant.” What do these words conjure in our mind? How have they been manipulated to limit or define immigrants and their experiences? I am hoping the use of alliterations like “dis” and “un” reinforces the absence, the undoing of the names, the exile that happens inside the words by pinning a label like “un.”

The inspiration for the poem comes from the 99 names of God in Islam. The names work as labels and attributes, encompassing a much broader range of words than one may imagine. We have “most merciful” and “most kind,” “the first” and “the last,” as well as “the avenger” and “the destroyer.” God is, of course, beyond any specific attribute. The best we can do is to produce a field of words for our idea of god.

Eppinger: I’ve read and reread “Invention of I” several times, drawn to both its power and its playfulness. The poem is broken into two sections, seemingly comparing one language to another.
Part 1 is set up like:
“In Farsi, if you take bread from a verb, you make history.

In English, for a perfect past, it isn’t enough to exist, you must have things.”

Part 2 takes this form:

“In English, we capture with an army of nouns.

In Persian, we guard them with the veil of adjectives.”

Clearly there is a lot more going on here than the feel of a language—culture, history, religion, geopolitical power and more are wrapped up into speaking a language in a specific time and place. Is it difficult to capture all these other forces that bubble up when learning or speaking different languages?

Bassiri: I do hope the poem conjures different possibilities in the minds of the readers. I don’t expect them to come up with the exact references, though usually I have specific things in mind.

A number of sentences start with a play on grammar. For instance, the Part 2 example you mentioned has to do with the use of adjectives in Persian and the emphasis on nouns in English. I remember one of my issues when I first started to write papers in English was the overuse of adjectives, as if I didn’t trust the nouns. I am always amazed by how many nouns there are in the English language. But the reference goes beyond just nouns and adjectives. In Iran there are many veils in our customs, not just the women’s hijab. For example, Iranians also use a complex web of civility, called taarof, that produces another layer in conversations.

One more thing I should mention is that the poem begins with “in Farsi” because it evokes the time I grew up in Iran and was learning English. The Iranian language is called “Farsi” in Iran.

The second part is a reflection of my life in America, where English is my main language and the Iranian language is called Persian. The debate over whether we should call my native tongue Persian or Farsi has been going on for a while. Many of my friends insist that we should use “Persian” because that is the name in English, the way we use German and not Deutsch.

But I’m not making any specific point about this politicized topic. My use is more a reflection of my personal experience of this change and the role the languages played in my life.

Eppinger: The speaker in your poem “Alarm” describes living in California while many of his family members are in Tehran, including a sister who has gone missing. It contains the line, “We contain no message, are no messenger.” What a devastating sentiment—to be exiled from the ability to decipher language, or from sense of purpose. Are grief and exile necessarily the same thing, or are they different?

Bassiri: Being an immigrant means different things to different people. Immigrants cope with the experience of exile in their own ways. For Iranian-Americans, the experience is determined by such socio-political events as the Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War (one of modern history’s longest conventional wars), September 11, the sanctions against Iran, the Muslim ban. My own experience has been shaped by all of these events, whether I’m talking about my sister going to jail as a political prisoner when I was young or about my wife not being able to join me because of the travel ban now.

Eppinger: I am wondering if you could talk about the influences you drew from while creating the poems of this chapbook.

Bassiri: For a long time, I didn’t want to write anything about my heritage as an Iranian or about being an Iranian-American. Maybe because I didn’t want to be reminded of or to engage with the negative media coverage. I also didn’t want to be an immigrant poet or to be labeled as one. I wanted to write like the great American poets I admired, such as Stevens, Eliot, Bishop, Plath, Ashbery, etc. I remember (to my embarrassment now) during a workshop with Merwin, he was trying to encourage me to study and learn from the great classical Persian poets like Hafez, Rumi, and Ferdowsi. I told him that I wanted to write like him and that I left Persian culture behind a long time ago and had no interest to go back.

It was during my MFA at Sarah Lawrence College that I decided to write about my experience as an Iranian-American, though I was uncomfortable. I am still uncomfortable. I don’t want to write what is expected. I don’t want to repeat the same clichés, be a spokesman for Iran or Iranians, or try to gain empathy or publication because of political circumstances. However, I also don’t want to deny my heritage or to avoid writing about something that matters to me. I need to write responsibly.

To write these poems, I experimented and found inspiration in many immigrant writers: Charles Simic, Li-Young Lee, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Agha Shahid Ali, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Myung Mi Kim, Etel Adnan. Gloria Anzaldúa is also a hero. African-American poets are among my greatest models—how so many expand the language while addressing important issues of identity and the socio-political condition in America. They are a great foundation for American poetry. I read widely and am influenced by many different styles, but reading poets of color gave me the courage to write the poems in this chapbook.

I have to say that, in the past few years, we have a lot of amazing young poets who are doing great work. I think they are redefining the shape of American poetry. I am in awe of all the talent. It is a very exciting time.

Eppinger: I agree! Finally, what are you working on now and how can we see more of your work?

Bassiri: First, I want to thank you for the interview and the thoughtful questions, Laura.

After working on the chapbook, I started to put together a manuscript built on the same themes. I am also working on another chapbook. My most recent poems are based on my visits to Iran in the past few years. I am not sure where they are taking me. For this year, I am focusing more on translation, however, including translating the poetry of a contemporary Iranian woman writer, Roya Zarrin, for which I got a 2019 fellowship from the NEA.

Laura Eppinger is the Managing Editor at Newfound Journal.

Cover photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

The post Naming Exile: an interview with Kaveh Bassiri appeared first on Newfound.

Demcak is a Renaissance man who works in unusual ways, cutting up blocks of text from a variety of sources and rearranging them, to create his poems. In “Cryptopedia” he mixes this method with the murky, monstrous and mysterious to create something unsettling yet genuinely moving and thought-provoking. Demcak’s success comes from his pitch-perfect subject choices and his ability to turn a seemingly random selection of lines and quotes into a twisting narrative, a short, emotive gut-punch. It takes talent to write poetry, but Demcak has proved he is not only a great talent, but a true craftsman.

Demcak’s poetry has appeared in a range of journals and we were lucky enough to have him share his craft, as well as some words of wisdom, with us at Newfound.

Josh King: Would you tell me a little about your writing life in general? Have you always considered yourself a poet? Did you study it, or just happen to fall into it?

Andrew Demcak: It’s funny now because I did consider myself to be primarily a poet until I wrote my first novel (“If There’s a Heaven Above,” JMS Books 2013) and I was already happy just writing poetry. Now I see myself as an author, a content creator in various forms. I have an MFA in English (Creative Writing/Poetry) from Saint Mary’s College of California. I studied with Brenda Hillman and her husband, Robert Hass. I’ve always been interested in language. I grew up in a house full of limericks, dreadful puns, and Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs. I love pushing words around on the page a making them do things they don’t want to do.

King: Does this collection signify a change of form or focus for you, or would you consider it part of the Demcak canon?

Demcak: It’s an extension of the canon. Many of my poetry books are collections of cut-up poems I created from various sources.

One of the things I love about history is: what we used to call magic, we now call science. – Andrew Demcak

King: It’s such a fun and unusual idea for a collection; people are undoubtedly going to focus on the idea behind it as much as the words themselves. Did this idea germinate while reading Wikipedia articles and discovering their innate potential for poetry? Or from a desire to find poetry in this unexpected place?

Demcak: I was thinking about classical myth and modern myth, the urban legend, when I stumbled upon all these entries in Wikipedia in my search for source material to cut up. I was more than thrilled to see so many of these subjects represented in Wikipedia. I’m glad that the Chupacabra has an article, for example. I’m intrigued by cryptozoology. No one in the West believed pandas were real when they heard stories about black and white bears in the 1920s.

King: Could you explain the process of creating this? What did a typical day’s work look like while researching and writing “Cryptopedia”?

Demcak: It’s a rudimentary process, I must say. I print out the Wikipedia article, cut it into pieces, place the pieces into a paper bag, shake them up, and then draw out a few scraps at a time and see if the random words inspire me to write a line.

I love using a finite set of language (the article itself) because the word choice is already limited by the subject matter. It helps when I edit the poem for meaning because the word choice keeps the poem within the subject (for example, I’m not going to find the word “subarctic” in an article about the Chupacabra. I’m going to find the words: blood, chickens, nightmare, goat, glowing red eyes, sucking, etc.)

King: During the writing process, were you tempted to release the poems without saying that they were cut ups from Wikipedia? Or is that too much of an innate, important part of this collection?

Demcak: I’ve published the poems both ways, but I think the process is interesting. I like to be honest about my work. Plus, it’s a fun way of creating content. Maybe I will inspire others to try cutting up their own work or the work of others.

King: At first I was tempted to think that you’d used Wikipedia’s “random article” button, but there are definite themes and connections running through “Cryptopedia.” There’s this triangular back and forth between scientific ideas, religious figures and mythological or folkloric creatures. Is this reflective of your own diverse beliefs, or simply a result of trawling though such a diverse website?

Demcak: My beliefs entirely. One of the things I love about history is: what we used to call magic, we now call science. I also love the line between myth and reality, especially in a spiritual sense. Belief makes the unreal real, because belief is real. It’s all a testament to the human mind, as with my poem, “Brain in a Vat.” What is reality to a brain in a vat?

King: There’s another unsettling theme that runs throughout, that of creatures which are famed for kidnapping or attacking children or instances of children going missing or being sold. To generalize more, “Cryptopedia” seems to run on themes of absence, both domestic and cosmological, hidden threats and unexplained conspiracies or myths. Reading your poems alongside the original articles themselves made my stomach turn more than once. What made you seek out these vicious characters and create a book dripping so heavily in the world’s mysteries?

Demcak: I think our mythologies are maps for the human psyche. These scary characters show up in stories whichever part of the world you are in and in every time-period. We’ve always known them. They are nearby, sly and illusive, waiting for us. I’ve always liked the darker side of things (I was a goth as a teen!), so I naturally gravitate to that. The dark side of the human psyche is fascinating to me.

King: You’ve included a sort of cheat-sheet at the end of the collection, with brief explanations of what each subject of the poem is. I think it offers a great palette cleanser and anchor point for the work. Was this always the plan? Why not just leave the reader to linger on the poetic summations, or explore at their own leisure?

Demcak: Part of the fun of this collection is discovery. But I worried that some of the lesser known subjects might confuse readers and put them off. The notes about the poems are like a guardrail so no one skids off the road and doesn’t come back.

King: What place do you think poetry has in today’s world? As an artist, do you feel any duty to confront the world’s problems, or do you feel, perhaps, that it’s your job to distract people from them?

Demcak: Poetry moved into popular music and then came back on its own to the stage in poetry slams. It’s in every culture and every language. It has always had a place, even if it’s just scrawled in a personal journal. As an artist, my response to the question “Do I confront or distract from the world’s problems?”—I do both. But I like poetry most for its language. For me, I write a novel to know what happened, what I felt, but I write a poem to hear the words rubbing up against one another.

King: What are you reading at the moment? As the year comes to an end, are there any books or works that have stood out in 2017?

Demcak: I thoroughly enjoyed “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” by Norman Ohler, and I’m reading “The Other” by Thomas Tyron right now (I can’t keep away from horror fiction!)

King: What is the best piece of advice you have ever received regarding the writing life? Do you have any words of wisdom for a writer embarking on their first collection?

Demcak: Best advice: Don’t compare your work to another’s work. You are on your own path, on your own journey, and it, like your work, is unique to you.

Words of wisdom: Be your favorite author.

If it’s criticism, it’s petty.

Believe in editing.

Always move forward with your writing, even if you are moving blindly forward.

Be brave with your work; do the thing you are the most afraid of doing.

Bonus mantra: Each time I touch my work, it gets better.

Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and now lives in the UK. His fiction has been published in BlazeVOX magazine and The Matador Review, and he divides his time between writing articles, plays and drawing comics.

Cover photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

The post “Cryptopedia” – An Interview with Andrew Demcak appeared first on Newfound.

The series was inspired by a book discovered in a used bookstore, which generated a personal photographic inquiry into the world of UFO documentation. Her work is as serious as it is playful, found in both the lightheartedness of subject matter and in the thoughtfulness of her photo compositions. Marino’s work was recently featured in Newfound Journal’s Other Worlds Issue this spring, Art Palace in Houston and greyDUCK gallery in Austin. In Marino’s discussion with Newfound, she shares her work influences, how the series started, what she loves about photography and her standing on extraterrestrial life.

Courtney Simchak: What or who inspires and informs your work?

Rebecca Marino: A lot of books. I definitely consider myself a research-based artist and I do a lot of digging around before I start making things. The digging often starts in books– Mostly science fiction and science non-fiction books. I really enjoy Carl Sagan’s work and I’d say that he informs my work more than anyone.

Simchak: In your series, The Best Evidence Available, you mention that the project was inspired by a found document. Where and how did you come across this document and what was it, exactly?

Marino: I found the actual book “The Best Available Evidence” at a Half Price Books. It’s really old and worn and it felt a lot more like a lost archive or document than a run-of-the-mill paperback. It consists of witness accounts, photographs, diagrams, histories–all “evidence” that was essentially pulled together to prove the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

Simchak: Did your series turn out how you had planned or did it develop differently over time? How do you prepare to make work?

Marino: I usually prepare by doing a lot of research beforehand. For me, ideas usually come from information. There’s never really a set overall plan. I think that’s probably a really disappointing way to try and make work, because you never know what new ideas will spring out of others as you go. You have to leave room for growth and change or I would imagine you’d get really bored. Every series I’ve worked on develops differently over the course of time. Sometimes it even changes as I’m installing it in a space.

People are always trying to fill the void with something that’s bigger than themselves and the extent or potential for what that could be is really interesting to me. – Rebecca Marino

Simchak: There is a humor in your work as well as a serious inquiry into the parts and boundaries of belief systems. Can you talk more about that?

Marino: I think a good sense of humor is really important. Without it, I’m not sure how much interest I’d have in making art. Humor is also a nice access point for people, which I think has worked pretty well for me thus far.

But yes, I’m definitely asking some more serious questions too, specifically concerning belief in The Best Available Evidence. With that project, I think using the subject matter of UFO sightings is a somewhat comical way to bring people in, but then to ask these more reflective questions–what do you require to believe in something? Is this photograph believable? Or do you just want to believe? People are always trying to fill the void with something that’s bigger than themselves and the extent or potential for what that could be is really interesting to me.

Simchak: What is it that you love most about astronomy and physics?

Marino: Astronomy was a real game changer for me in my practice. I took an astronomy class in school and it started really changing the way I saw things. I’d see a dried up pond on the side of the road and think it was a crater. Everything just becomes bigger and more important and more amazing. It’s a child-like, almost naïve way of looking at the world, but it makes things as intriguing as they probably should be. I love astronomy (and science in general) for taking the very mundane aspects of everyday life and expanding upon them in a bigger cosmic perspective kind of way.

Simchak: Do you believe in extra-terrestrial life?

Marino: Oh most definitely. This conversation is always really funny to me. There are over 500 solar systems out there (that we know of) and still counting. It’s ridiculous to me that people would think there isn’t life out there.

Simchak: Why work in photography instead of another medium? How did you get started in photography?

Marino: I started getting into photography in high school. The honest truth is that we could take a course at an elective campus that focused on career training (including, but not limited to cosmetology, hotel management and culinary arts) and if you took a class there, you didn’t have to take gym. So I took commercial photography to get out of a gym class. Hilarious, but I totally fell in love with it and decided that was what I wanted to go to college for. I work primarily in photography because I enjoy it. However, a lot of my photographs are quite sculptural and as you can see The Best Available Evidence actually incorporates a lot of sculpture, installation, and even an audio piece.

Simchak: Due to the documentary nature of photography, many photographers use the medium to prove or attempt to prove science and folklore. Elsie Wright’s Cottingley Fairy photographs, which featured paper figures but were touted as proof of the existence of fairies, come to mind. Do you think, in an age of fake news and overly-doctored images, that we still are exploring the boundaries between reality and fantasy?

Marino: Photography is a really interesting medium because a lot of baggage comes with it. It’s used as a tool to document as well as a tool to create art, and that line between fine art photography and photojournalism is a precarious and blurry one. I like messing around with that line and playing with the connotations people have (or the side of the line they’re usually on) when they look at a photograph.

I think we’ve always been grappling with what’s real in a photograph. What’s pretty amusing to me are the vulnerabilities that photography inherently has (as opposed to overly doctored or Photoshopped photographs) which people often overlook. We’ve always been able to manipulate a photograph with things like exposure and framing. All photographs are constructions, really.

The fairy photographs crack me up–I’ve always loved that story and actually thought about it a lot when I made those UFO photos. I feel like this is where you really let go as the photographer. It’s way less about the person presenting the images (I mean, in the case of the fairies, it was children) and so much more about the people who are looking at them and judging what they are. It’s a way to measure the cynicism (or hope) people. That push and pull is fascinating. And yes, I think we’ll always be exploring that. Who wants to see the fairies and aliens? I mean, who doesn’t, really? But who can actually convince themselves something is there, right?

Rebecca Marino is an Austin-based visual artist whose work focuses on cosmic perspective. Her work has been featured in TX National, grayDUCK Gallery, Art Palace Gallery, and by the Humble Arts Foundation. She currently serves as the co-director and curator for Pump Project and is co-editor and co-founder of Conflict of Interest.

Courtney Simchak lives in Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post The Best Available Evidence: A Conversation with Rebecca Marino appeared first on Newfound.

Clara Burghelea is Editor-at-Large for the Village of Crickets (VOC) blog Small Points of Light. Originally from Romania, Burghelea is earning a multi-genre MFA at Adelphi University. A poet, writer and translator, she has been published in print and online in In-Flight Literary Magazine, Straylight, Indiana Voice Journal, and Ambit Magazine under the pen name of Witty Fay. Her first volume of bilingual poetry, “Nefelibata,“ was published in 2014.

Josh King: Was there a “light-bulb moment” that inspired you to start writing?
Clara Burghelea: I have been writing all my life, I guess, keeping diaries when I was in high school, then commonplace books I did not know had a name until I took a poetry class with Judith Baumel last semester. In college, all I did was read and write, then I took my MA in Translation Studies (which should tell you I have had a foot in both camps for a long time.)

Writing became compulsory when my mother died. I was left with these unresolved feelings, self-doubt, and disconnection from social life. I developed a feral disposition, a search for something that was missing. It turned out I was looking for words but I wanted to pursue them in a sort of organized manner. I also craved the literary community, my own writing tribe.

King: What themes do you consider dominant in your work? Is there a reason for this?
Burghelea: I grew up in a communist country until I was 12 and this marked my childhood and impacted my adolescence. First, I did not know I had a voice and that it mattered. Then, I lacked women role models in poetry and fiction. Finally, I had my traditional upbringing shaping myself and the way I saw the world. Then I experienced motherhood, loss and a sort of restlessness. My current obsessions are pretty much related to all these things.

King: How much do you feel your writing is affected by the setting you are in? Whether that’s being at home or in a café, being in your own country or a foreign one?
Burghelea: Setting is essential in the creative process. I am a gregarious recluse which means that as much as I love the company of others, I become overwhelmed by the outer human noises and feel the need to isolate myself. It depends on the choices at hand. Back home, I could easily go to the countryside. Here, I find a quiet alley in Central Park or go the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, where I either write, read or simply allow my own thoughts to take a halt from the urban clamor.

But I am not a ‘nature’ kind of person, as much as I appreciate the salt-smacking seaside breeze of one of my favorite Greek islands, Thasos, or my grandparents’ cottage in Romania. It is more a matter of how the setting alters the state of mind.

Living in New York on my own feels like a self-imposed exile because it was my choice to leave my family for two years and depart from my comfort zone. It is quite a challenging experience. Edward Said was the one who beautifully expressed how geography defines us. He said none of us are outside or beyond geography and therefore we are not free from the struggle with it. I guess I am carrying mine around and at the same time, I am always departing and returning to it.

King: When writing, do you have an audience in mind? If so, is this audience determined by nationality? Language spoken? Cultural sensibilities? Is there any defining characteristic of this audience at all?
Burghelea: I only write in English but I cannot help wondering if my poems or stories are getting to the right audience. But then again, who is that audience? I know it is a niche one though there is a history of writers of different nationalities who chose to write in English. Ultimately, it all comes down to good writing but since English is not my native language, I feel I always have to go the extra mile in getting the natural flow of the language on the page. So, in terms of language, there is no audience since I expect to have my poetry or fiction read by people who appreciate good writing, but as far as the themes of my writing are concerned, I imagine it is a matter of taste. Some people will simply not be interested in reading stories about how it feels to a have a communist upbringing as a legacy.

King: “The Great American Novel” is a term often used to describe a quintessentially American book, typical of the North American experience at a certain point in history. Which book might be the best candidate for the Great Romanian Novel? Which author might be best qualified to write it?
Burghelea: To my mind, the Great Romanian Novel is “The Forbidden Forest” by Mircea Eliade. Eliade was a novelist, as well as a historian of religions who fled Romania when the communist regime came to power. He settled in the U.S. where he became a professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago in 1958.

The novel is about Stefan, a man torn between his love for two women who lives under the pressure of his times—the novel is set in the late 30s and 40s—and searches for his own identity. It has elements of magical realism and discusses essential human themes like time, love, fate, history. It is a book that shaped my literary tastes when I was a teenager and still feels worth revisiting every year.

King: It seems to me fair to say that a large percentage of people in the US would find it difficult to name a Romanian writer or a famous work of Romanian literature, or perhaps I am just betraying my own ignorance. Do you feel a conscious desire to promote your country’s literary style when you are writing? Do you feel under any pressure to represent your country in your own work, because it is less represented generally?
Burghelea: It is true to a certain extent, although for those who considers themselves citizens of the world literary community names such as Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Eugen Ionesco, Norman Manea, Mircea Cartarescu, Matei Visniec, Ioana Nicolae, Ana Bladiana or Herta Müller—winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009—should be familiar. For instance, Norman Manea is a Romanian novelist and essayist who is a writer in residence at Bard College in New York. His memoir, “The Hooligan’s Return,” is exceptional in covering 80 years of life experience and struggles.

I don’t think there is a literary style specific to Romanian literature though there are obviously recurring themes. I like to speak of Romanian writers in all my encounters with writers of different nationalities and I often mention the need to have more female writers better represented in Romania and abroad. I do not feel pressured to promote Romanian literature, but I take every opportunity to speak of talented people of my generation, such as Marius Chivu, who is a poet, novelist and translator. His short story collection, “End of Season,” was translated into English by Alistair Ian Blyth.

For those interested in a detailed list of all the worth reading poets, novelists, essayists and playwrights, I recommend “The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945” by Harold B. Segel.

King: Was there a particular reason that you chose to study in the United States, rather than somewhere else in the world?
Burghelea: I lived for four months in Boise, Idaho, two years ago and visited the most important cities on the west coast. I guess that was the moment when I fell in love with the potential of American literary life. There are no creative writing programs in Romania and only a few in Europe, so I knew here all programs used the workshop model and I was very much interested in this idea of being part of a writing community. I only had money to apply to three programs and I chose them from different parts of USA. Adelphi was the winner since they fought for me the most. It was a great choice.

King: In today’s unpredictable world, how do you view the role of the writer, or literature in general, if it has a role at all?
Burghelea: In the contemporary, uncertain, hate-fuelled, politically challenged, socially unstable world we live, literature is as necessary as breathing. It has the mission to use language and stories to reach out and connect, to generate empathy and help readers embrace otherness and diversity as means of personal growth. The study of literature is essential, especially for young people, since one of the roles and responsibilities of a writer is to act as a civic citizen and facilitate access to reading and writing. By teaching others about the force of the written word, we are teaching them to stand up for their rights and liberties and use their voice to fight for human values and against injustice.

At the same time, I believe literature is born out of discomfort and uprootedness. It is a state of being in constant transit where we, as readers, can find a temporary home. To my mind, all reading and writing is a sort of exile, a movement towards another language, another writer, another world. Ultimately, towards yourself.

JK: If you had to recommend one book as required reading for the schoolchildren of the world, what would it be?
Burghelea: The book that mesmerized my childhood was “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils” by Selma Lagerlöf. It taught me about empathy, otherness, geography. It captured the naughtiness of childhood and though it had its moralism, it was diverse and took one from the animal kingdom to flawed human interactions. I guess the book is a metaphor for breaking away from the family since Nils literally flies away on the back of the farm gander. Delicious. Though, I must say my own kids – I have a daughter and a son – did not appreciate it but rather devoured all Roald Dahl books and Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

Clara’s Required Reading List

“Ways to Disappear” by Idra Novey
“Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff
“Karate Chop” by Dorthe Nors
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery
“A Visit form the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan
“The Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie
“An Unnecessary Woman” by Rabih Alameddine
“Night Sky with Exit Wounds” by Ocean Vuong
“Twenty-One Poems” by Adrienne Rich
“The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda”

Recommended Romanian Novel: “The Forbidden Forest” by Mircea Eliade.

You can find Clara’s work and much more from the vibrant New York scene  at www.villageofcrickets.com

The post The Required Reading Interviews: Clara Burghelea appeared first on Newfound.

I recently had the opportunity to speak to George Spisak about her experiences founding a literary magazine, the welcoming space Uprising provides for writers to speak their minds, and the magazine’s incredible ability to offer payment to their contributors in its birth year.

Rebecca Henderson: Describe for us the origins of The Uprising Review.

George Spisak: The Uprising honestly began as a conversation between some friends and I. We wanted to have a place where writers could write and submit whatever they want, regardless of their lifestyle and personal choices. All four of us noticed publishers who restricted content in a variety of ways, whether the content of the actual piece (i.e. no violence against women/children or piece must be written entirely vegan), or the author themselves (i.e. must be of a certain sexuality/race/gender, etc.), and we all agreed that we weren’t entirely comfortable with it.

I wholeheartedly support a publisher publishing whatever they want, even if they have restrictions I don’t entirely agree with. At the same time, we wanted a place that was as free speech as possible. Somewhere that the merit of a writer is determined by their writing, not a color/sexuality/gender or limited writing vein. We’re hoping that this freedom will enable conversations between writers and readers of all sorts, about all topics.

Henderson: Your mission statement emphasizes freedom of speech and a diversity of ideas. How do you think this sets you apart from other literary magazines?

Spisak: I’ve personally noticed many literary magazines with restrictions on what can and cannot be submitted to them. While I agree that this is every publishers’ right—a business owner should be able to control their content and public image—I also know that this isn’t what I want to see in the literary community.

Creative fiction is one of the safest ways to spur discussion about all sorts of topics. Whether it’s a straight-laced fantasy or a hard-hitting, gore-spattered horror, there’s room for growth and discussion of both reader and the writer.

Harder topics like social and political issues can also be safely explored in fiction. It’s the best way to explore the negatives of society and bring a discussion about. But if we’re restricting that by only letting certain people write certain things or removing the ability of writing about one thing completely, is the problem really going to be solved?

Henderson: Can you broadly outline for us the steps you took to establish The Uprising Review?

Spisak: Honestly there weren’t many. Will (W.O. Cassity), suggested that he wanted to start up this “free-speech” magazine on a social media site called gab.ai. The rest of us jumped on the chance to join. We made a Trello board (a site for organizing business and such), and did a few informal meetings on Skype and Discord to figure out exactly what we wanted this to be and how to shape it.

We’ve been hacking away at it since September (2016). Once January rolled around, we made weekly meetings to discuss and delegate tasks, figured out the website (thank you, Stephen Willis), and started accepting submissions in March. Our official launch is April 15, so we’ll have a few pieces up and will be publishing regularly from then on.

Henderson: What was the most rewarding aspect of founding this literary magazine?

Spisak: For me, it’s reading all the great submissions we get and sending out acceptance letters. I’ve been able to read fantastic stories from all sorts of people and I absolutely love it. Second to that, knowing that I’m making a small haven for writers of every walk of life to come together and just enjoy fiction again.

Henderson: What factors allowed The Uprising Review the opportunity to pay contributors?

Spisak: Literally Will. Without him and his fantastic business strategies and amazing human being-ness, we wouldn’t be able to pay contributors right out of the gate. As we grow, we hope to increase payment. We’ll see what happens in the future.

Henderson: Literary magazines often come and go; what does the future look like for The Uprising Review, and what do you find your biggest obstacles are?

Spisak: All four of us are looking at really great things for The Uprising. We named it something clever for that reason! In all seriousness, we’re hoping to continue to grow and develop as a magazine. We want to be known as a place for everything and anything writing-wise, quality included and ensured. Reaching a point where we are a respected and known place for writers everywhere is my main objective, and the others agree.

We’re a place for good literature, and that’s the be-all-end-all of it.

I think the biggest issue we’ll have going forward is growth. We’re four people tackling a rather large project and all of us have “real jobs” and writing on top of that. But, that’s a problem to tackle when we reach it. Right now, we’re at a scale we can handle.

Henderson: What advice would you give those wanting to establish their own literary magazine?

Spisak: Find some friends and spend a few months planning it. If you have the opportunity to be a slush reader for another place, I really do suggest it. It’ll give you a feel for one aspect of the magazine scene at least. You don’t need entirely detailed planning, but some basic framework for your goals, mission statement, and how you’d like to grow it forward is a must.

Henderson: Can you offer our readers any parting wisdom?

Spisak: If there’s something you want to do, do it. Find friends with like-minded goals or hack it out by yourself. If you want it, there’s going to be other people wanting the same thing.

Rebecca Henderson holds a Master’s in German and a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing. Best expressing herself through the written word, she enjoys the smell of burning rubber and can recite the ABC’s of the automotive world upon command. Rebecca hopes to shift your world perspective through her words, because looking out the same window every day hardly makes for an interesting life.

The post An Interview with George Spisak, Co-Founder of The Uprising Review appeared first on Newfound.

Rebecca Henderson: When did your relationship with professional editing begin?

Richard Adin: I began my career as an editor in 1984 when I was hired as executive editor with a legal book publisher. Shortly after I began my work with the publisher, I realized that it could be a learning step toward starting my own business; eventually, Freelance Editorial Services became my full-time business.

Henderson: What prompted your career switch from lawyer to professional editor?

Adin Actually, I have had many careers in the course of my life. I worked as a short-order cook, a bridge toll-collector, a shoe salesperson, on a road crew clearing brush, a social worker, a welfare frauds investigator, on an assembly line, as a marketing executive, as a bank officer, a used car salesperson, a job placement counselor, a law clerk, a lawyer, and an editor.

I had difficulty finding a profession that I wanted to make a permanent profession. The combination of excellent pay, benefits, and a lot of time off, convinced me to leave the world of lawyering for the world of editing.

Alas, I was not really cut out for the corporate world. However, I found that I enjoyed editorial work. Consequently, I started focusing more on building my own business and ultimately left someone else’s corporate world to become a full-time freelance editor in my own business.

Henderson: What do you enjoy most about professional editing?

Adin: The thing I enjoy most is the challenge of providing high-quality editing within a relatively short time-frame and doing so profitably.

I enjoy the challenge of deciding whether the words the author chose convey the author’s message; if they do not clearly do so, the challenge is offering an alternative. Words matter. The right word but in the wrong context can lead to, at worst, disaster, at best, misunderstanding.

Copy-editing is a never-ceasing challenge to provide the best edit one can within a relatively short time-frame. Copy-editors have to figure out how to serve both interests—and to do so profitably. Over the years that has been a major challenge.

Henderson: What advice would you give writers who are looking for editors to help them in their publishing journey?

Adin: First, shed the thin skin and develop thicker skin. Remember that everyone has the same goal—to make your book the absolute best it can be. Inevitably, there will be disagreements, but deal with them at arm’s length like a professional.

Second, choose a professional editor, someone who does this for a living and not as a side job. The professional editor has experience, knowledge, and the specialized skill set necessary to make your book better. Remember that editing is much more than catching a spelling error.

Third, choose a professional editor because a professional editor always remembers that it is your book and you make the final decision, no matter how right or wrong your decision may be.

Fourth, be prepared to work with a professional editor. Give the editor the information the editor needs before you are asked for it. Here’s a good place to start: “The Business of Editing: What an Author Should Give an Editor”. Also make an effort to learn what it is you want the editor to do. Make sure when you say you want proofreading, you understand what proofreading is; otherwise you and the editor will be talking past each other. A good place to start is my essay, “Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor”. Finally, understand how an editor evaluates your manuscript. Ask the editor to explain it. To illustrate, “The Business of Editing: Evaluating a Manuscript” describes how I evaluate a manuscript.

Fifth, read carefully my essay, “When Authors Look for Editors”. This essay has a lot of good information for authors looking for editors.

Finally, hire a professional editor, not your child’s English teacher or your next-door neighbor who thinks spotting some spelling errors in the latest bestseller qualifies them to be an editor. Editing is like other professions—it requires education and experience, not just putting out a shingle that says “Herein Lives an Editor for Hire.”

Henderson: What makes someone a successful/unsuccessful freelance editor?

Adin: Lots of things separate the successful from the unsuccessful freelance editor but the most important is this: successful editors run their editing business as a business. Unsuccessful freelancers view themselves as more of an artisan than a businessperson. The business aspects cannot be ignored in hope that everything will work out (see my book: The Business of Editing: Effective and Efficient Ways to Think, Work, and Prosper).

Henderson: What role does your blog play in comparison to your Freelance Editorial Services business?

Adin: My blog, An American Editor, plays no role in my business. I started the blog seven years ago to pass on knowledge that I had gained over the years. I got tired of seeing the same questions with the same wrong advice on the various editing forums.

Henderson: What, in your opinion, is the future of editing?

Adin: Editing needs to become more like other certifiable professions with national standards, a governing body, and a disciplinary body—in other words, editing must become more professional so that authors and publishers can easily distinguish between a professional and nonprofessional editor. In addition, there needs to be a standardized professional education career path and continuing education.

Henderson: What advice would you give those wanting to pursue a career in professional editing? Do you recommend any programs, materials, resources, etc.?

Adin: I have always thought that the best education for the editing profession is to study philosophy and critical thinking. Philosophy, when done right, teaches you to think and how to think. This ability is critical for editing and can separate an average editor from the great editor. Studying English, writing, and literature is okay but is not preparatory for an editing career.

The other important course path is business. Editors run their own businesses. To make the business succeed, they need to understand business fundamentals.

For those interested in an in-depth look at the editing process, see the multi-part essay series, “The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap.”

Henderson: What is your greatest accomplishment, in terms of professional editing, thus far?

Adin: That my reputation as an editor is such that I am sought after and have more work offered than I can take on—even working full-time. Probably the nicest thing that happens is when clients are willing to alter their production schedules to accommodate my needs.

Henderson: Do you have any other words of wisdom you’d like to share?

Adin: A professional editor is both competent and ethical. One cannot be a professional editor without both. A successful editor is a professional editor who also has learned how to run a business and thinks of editing as both a business and a profession. Success, no matter how defined, cannot come about absent professionalism, competence, and thinking like a businessperson.

Rebecca Henderson holds a Master’s in German and a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing. Best expressing herself through the written word, she enjoys the smell of burning rubber and can recite the ABC’s of the automotive world upon command. Rebecca hopes to shift your world perspective through her words, because looking out the same window every day hardly makes for an interesting life.

The post An Interview with Richard Adin of “An American Editor” appeared first on Newfound.

Ross occasionally reads poetry live, but says it is sometimes difficult for her to participate live poetry readings while living in a rural area. On the page, her work can be found in Newfound’s print issue No. 3. Her other poetry chapbooks include “A Tiny Hunger” from YellowJacket Press, and “My Mississippi” from Anchor & Plume Press.

The poetry in “The Graffiti of Pompeii” is inspired by the actual graffiti excavated from the site Pompeii is believed to have been located in Italy. The 26 poems in the collection are one part history lesson and many more parts creative imagining. The collection gives a voice to the ancient people of Pompeii, before the eruption of the volcano on Mount Vesuvius.

Ross got close to the supposed site of Pompeii several years ago, which is near Naples, Italy.  There, Ross spent time on the Amalfi Coast but did not get to see the ruins of Pompeii–she chose her vacation spot before she had the idea for this chapbook.

Ross is a joy to talk to, especially when the topic is “The Graffiti of Pompeii.” She enjoys writing narrative poetry and prefers telling stories and sharing experiences that are actualized into meaning through images and emotion. “The Graffiti of Pompeii” does exactly this. Ross took actual found graffiti and brought it back to life by creatively and fictionally telling people’s stories through narrative poetry. She uses exceptional imagery and strong language to  bring these stories to life, captivating every reader.

I marveled at the words and I wondered about the people who wrote them. -Laura Sobbott Ross

Megan Andreuzzi: You use very strong language and imagery like “she’d held the first fruits of the sons of Rome in her teeth more than once” and “they were sewn from the backs of their mothers’ eyelids.” These jump out at readers and make our imaginations run wild. I wanted to point to these two examples because they are quite haunting. What were you hoping to provoke from the readers? What do you feel from it? What are some of your favorite lines out of all the pieces?

Laura Sobbott Ross: That particular poem, about the prostitute named Attice, begins the series. The graffiti was meant to be a recommendation by a patron and was written on a bench at the Maritime gate, which was a main entrance into the city. What I felt was despair, layered beneath face paint, hunger, and her own power and powerlessness. The prostitutes were known as the “ninth hour girls,” meaning their business started nine hours after sunrise, so there was kind of a visual darkness and an internal one. “The stars brought anguish, a mirror of this dark city’s small burnings.” That poem was hard to shake. I wrote it first and put me in the mindset to write the others.

I like “Figulus loves Idaia” with its images of the fisherman in longing, the sweet and dizzy “Bees are like Lovers in That They Live a Honeyed Life,” and the pub poems: “Come and Drink with Us, Oceanus” – who was a famous gladiator of that era, and the feisty barmaid’s: “Whoever Wants to Serve Themselves Can Go on and Drink from the Sea.”

Andreuzzi: What inspired you to write “The Graffiti of Pompeii”?

Ross: I teach English to ESOL adults, and we were covering natural disasters. When it came to the word volcano, I mentioned Pompeii, and many had never heard of it. I found a video, without language, that showed what might have happened that day. It sparked an interest in me, and later through my own research, I found out about the graffiti of Pompeii. I was fascinated by it.

The graffiti that was unearthed was such a relatable sampling of humanity. Some of it was just everyday kind of stuff: Antiochus hung out here with his girlfriend Cithera, some of it was mischievous and funny, some sad and philosophical, and some of it was astoundingly poetic. I marveled at the words and I wondered about the people who wrote them. The volcano erupted in the first century A.D., and those unwitting historians told us so much in such aching plain speak, sometimes with a wink. I decided to try and flesh out the stories behind the writing, using both my imagination and information I’d gleaned through extensive research.

Andreuzzi: Where did you find the information for The Graffiti of Pompeii? In your author’s note, you mention it is from the excavated discoveries from Pompeii. Is this true? Tell me, was this actual found graffiti?

Ross: Indeed. There is so much graffiti which has been unearthed, and archeologists are continuing to find more. I did extensive research not only on the graffiti, but on Roman culture in the first century A.D. so that the poems would feel real and relevant. The citizens of Rome liked their wine watered down, but their fermented mullet sauce strong and on everything! Imagine the smell, especially since they used urine on their laundry.

Andreuzzi: Are the parenthesis in the title the location and the italicized text excerpts from graffiti?

Ross: Yes, and you can see from the variety of locations how the graffiti was written all over the city. Often, there were responses to what others had written, kind of like an ancient version of social media. There is even graffiti about graffiti: Oh walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed you have not already collapsed in ruin.

Andreuzzi: Do you feel connected to any of the characters? Do any of them remind you of yourself? If so, which one(s)?

Ross: That’s an interesting question. I’d have to say none of them, or all – the village in my head! It was more important to me to get a good read on the characters behind the graffiti, and to have them fleshed out authentically, rather than leave any of myself behind. That being said, the one sounds most like me is the voice of the one standing at the window at night (x. House of Caecilius Iucundus), but I wouldn’t have thought about that until you asked me.

Andreuzzi: I can relate to the ‘village in my head’ sentiment. How long did The Graffiti of Pompeii take you to complete?

Ross: It took only about a month and a half. Once I got started, I just kept writing, before work, on work breaks, after work, on the weekends. I wanted to “lay down all the tracks” while I was in the same head space. I wrote twenty poems initially, and then added another six.

Andreuzzi: How did it feel when you were notified to be one of the finalists for the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize?

Ross: It was so exciting! The judges noted the quirky humor of the book, which was gratifying.

Don’t worry about what anyone else says or thinks about your words. Do what you love; do what inspires you. -Laura Sobbott Ross

Andreuzzi: You have other chapbooks published. Could you share a little from them?

Ross: (“My Mississippi” from Anchor & Plume Press is) collection of poems is a personal homage to a family history set in the Deep South. As with any family, there are stories, myths, and lullabies. The ones in these poems weave a complex backdrop to the flat and unforgiving dominion of the Delta. The land is both harsh and magical, a rural setting of bayous and blackberry thickets, and a vast horizon scored with distant latitudes and longitudes of pasture fences. Here, life is steeped slowly and spooned from a map of truths passed on like treasured recipe cards. There is hardship, triumph, and longing. Threading it is all like a collective vein, is the river. It’s what we know. It’s where we will return.

from the title poem “My Mississippi”:

“For every city, a river, blood
pact between land and water,
sharing what brothers would:
homestead, livestock, harvest, dreams.”

And from the poem “Full Moon” of A Tiny Hunger from YellowJacket Press:

“None of us could sleep.
Roofs and lawns opaline
between razored shadows.
Bald light unfolding pastures.
Ponds rife with surfacing fish.”

“Pale light striking–
a calibrated shaft.
Midwives swear by it,
when more babies are thrust
blue-white from the womb.
We all felt it and stirred,
cobwebbed beneath
our thread-counted sheets.”

Andreuzzi: Who are some of your favorite poets?

Ross: There are so many! It would be easier for me to say which journals I prefer: Disquieted Muses, Ruminate, Cold Mountain, Glass, and Earthshine is one in which I almost always discover a poem I want to keep forever. That being said, a couple of my favorite poets are Susan Elbe, and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Andreuzzi: What style of poetry do you enjoy reading?

Ross: I love poetry that is accessible, image-shimmered, but gritty, and full of light and shadow – meaning strong emotion; I’m drawn to that.

Andreuzzi: Do you have any advice for other poets?

Ross: Don’t worry about what anyone else says or thinks about your words. Do what you love; do what inspires you. Your voice is unique and necessary.

Megan Andreuzzi is an animal lover and a traveler from the New Jersey Shore. She earned a degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA in Liberal Studies with a dual concentration in writing and a minor in theater.

The post “The Graffiti of Pompeii” – An Interview with Laura Sobbott Ross appeared first on Newfound.

To read “Flower Wars” is to see all of these labels both interwoven and dismissed. Amador’s collection, though it so delicately touches the nerves of modern life and confronts the shadows that we see growing in society’s corners, is able to provide for multiple types of reader. It is light, beautiful and fully capable of staking its claim as part of the contemporary poetic renaissance.

Nico Amador’s work has appeared in Poet Lore, Nimrod International Journal, MiPOesias, HOLD, Big Bell, Plenitude, Bedfellows, and APIARY Magazine, and he is an alumni of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Writer’s Retreat. “Flower Wars” will be published by Newfound in 2017.

Writing in a way that risks exposure, that connects in an honest way, is a matter of integrity for me – Nico Amador

Josh King: I’d love to hear a little more about your writing history and your personal view of the writing life. Has your poetry, in your view, always been the shape that it is now, or do you see it reincarnating continuously as you mature?

Nico Amador: There’s a few different stories I could tell about my writing history but I think it’s fair to say that I probably wouldn’t have become a writer if I hadn’t first become an activist. I became politicized as student in the wake of 9/11, from seeing the ways the government was manipulating the fear of terrorism to wage a war on Iraq, to profile Muslims and immigrants, to fuel the systems that funnel young people of color into the military and into prison.

At the same time, the spoken word and underground hip hop scene was thriving and these art forms were real tools for drawing people into these issues. Open mics became a recruitment strategy for our campaigns on campus – but that meant all of us had to be ready with our own work in order to ensure enough readers for a successful event. Everyone was expected to put their name on the list. So really, I first started writing poems as a function of my political work.

But the effect of having that space within our organizing work was transformative beyond whatever initial motivations we had for it. It allowed us to build an organizing culture that wasn’t based on dogmatism – participation required a measure of personal courage, vulnerability and witness. I felt that it deepened our commitment to each other across issue and identity, as well as to our own voices. It kept me returning to the page despite how difficult and clumsy it felt at times.

Certainly, my poems have evolved since then. My curiosity has led me to other influences and I’ve moved away from a performative style to one that’s quieter, more authentic to who I am. But I still write with those earlier rooms in mind. Writing in a way that risks exposure, that connects in an honest way, is a matter of integrity for me. I hope to never embarrass myself by becoming so pretentious a writer that I couldn’t find an audience with the person I was when I was twenty.

King: So, with that in mind, do you consider yours a writing life? Do you have a schedule for your writing, or does it come out when you are politically motivated?

Amador: My work as a writer and my political work inform one another but each requires its own kind of attention. I don’t have the privilege or desire to abandon all other commitments in order to devote myself completely to the writing life, so making room for both is a constant negotiation but one that has a symbiosis to it. My political work gives me a location from which to write from – it takes me places, literally and figuratively, and those places become sites of tension and wonder and longing and relationship that is worth writing about.

At the same time, the vision and the imagination that is necessary to the success of social movements can be easily consumed by the daily work it requires. It’s a grind – conference calls and meetings and hammering out the same kinds of emails over and over again and facing down the feeling that nothing you’re doing is meeting the urgency of the crisis at hand. Writing is a way to root in a practice of creation. I try to write most mornings for at least a couple hours, and there’s a discipline to protecting that time that I think is important for anyone in the long haul of social change work. It’s more than self-care, it’s staying conditioned to an attitude of possibility, of thinking elastically.

King: For those who know a little about you and work, both in writing and in activism, your poetry seems to do great justice, and act as great contextual pieces, to the causes you have stood for. Do you find that you are under any obligation, or any innate compulsion, to write from the perspective of a queer person, or about race, especially in the political climate in which we currently live?

Amador: One impact of oppression is that our sense of choice is narrowed. It imposes circumstances in which we can only be one thing or another, it robs us of our complexity. The poem is a space in which we are permitted to be whole. I find relief in getting to approach the page, not from a sense of mandate but from whatever questions are alive inside me. In getting to ask, what is true for me today? What am I drawn to that is delightful or troubling or strange? And each day the answer is allowed to change if it wants to.

Ultimately, that kind of process does those causes or perspectives more justice, as you say, because they’re allowed to exist within a kind of internal democracy, one that has many interests and many points of intersection. That to me is queerness or racial justice at its most liberatory. It’s not just the assertion of a single issue or identity, but about lifting the restrictions that have been placed upon us so that we can live in the full range of who we are. In this current climate, which is so restrictive and so polarized, I want to keep insisting on the right to have places where we get to experience freedom, wherever we can find it.

King: Tell me a little about the creation of “Flower Wars.” How long did it take? Do you remember the moment that it first sparked into life?

Amador: The oldest poem in “Flower Wars” is at least eight years old and the newest is only a few months old. In that span of time I wrote about sixty or seventy poems in order to be able to curate the slim collection that appears in this chapbook, because I was still teaching myself how to write during that time. Many of the poems in “Flower Wars” started as writing exercises, I didn’t have a plan for them. But at a certain point, I could see which poems had lasted, and how they spoke to each other.

One day I printed everything out and sat with pages and pages of poems spread out on the floor of my office and shuffled them around until I understood the story they were trying to tell. After that, it only took about a year to fill in the gaps and finish shaping them into the final manuscript.

To be trans or gender non-conforming is, in many ways, to live at the perimeter of what is considered real. – Nico Amador

King: When reading through “Flower Wars,” I was drawn in by the rises and falls from reality into a kind of surreality that you achieved by changing the time frame, the form the poem comes in or the vantage point we have as a reader, for all of which there are numerous great examples. How much do you find the vivid and personal themes affect the way you present your work?

Amador: So much of this chapbook is shaped by how I came to an understanding of myself as trans and what that meant in relationship to the rest of my environment and the histories I’m connected to. To be trans or gender non-conforming is, in many ways, to live at the perimeter of what is considered real. So much of who we are is not given validity in culture or language or law or ways of thinking about the body.

The surreality of the poems are an expression of what it feels like to interact with the world when our place in it has to be either imagined or explained in approximation to what is more readily known and understood. Invention and metaphor become a necessity, a way of building a bridge between ourselves and what others define as reality. There is pain that comes from the isolation of that position, but also a tremendous access to magic and beauty. I wanted my words to reflect both.

King: As a mixed-race writer, and a Latino, how important is a sense of place in your work? Is it important for a poet to anchor themselves to a certain place?

Amador: Most of the poems in “Flower Wars” are sourced in some way from encounters with place, real or imagined. But the way place shows up is episodic, it’s in these acute moments that happen as part of a larger journey, there’s not a single anchor. There’s descriptions of places like Denver, Minneapolis, Nicaragua, which I’ve only passed through as a visitor, but there’s very little of Philadelphia, where I lived when I was writing those poems, or San Diego, where I’m from.

I do think that’s partly about being mixed race – I think that’s what Anzaldúa means when she describes what it is to live in the borderlands or when Rebecca Walker writes that she feels more comfortable in airports than anywhere else. That our sense of belonging isn’t attached to one place but in what’s liminal. When I’m in one place too long I get restless, I feel depressed. It’s when I’m in motion between places that feel most alive, when I’m able to see and think most clearly about what’s around me.

King: How do you think poetry fits into today’s society? Obviously, in recent months, even days, the poetry that has erupted has been loud and powerful and creative, but how, if at all, do you see the poet speaking out against society’s evils in a way that can make a difference?

Amador: In any highly repressive system, I don’t doubt that the role of the poet is necessary, though it is difficult to know exactly how or what that means. It’s something I think a lot of writers are struggling with right now, myself included.

I was just listening to a discussion about Adrianne Rich and how even in the role of the poet she saw herself as a worker. I took that to mean not only that she saw her poetry as a form of labor, but also that she didn’t view herself or her labor as superior to anyone else’s. There’s something in that attitude that I find helpful for this moment. That the role of the poet isn’t to deliver truth to the masses from on high, but to be a worker that is allied with other workers that will have to fight the battles ahead on multiple fronts.

The poem is only useful as much as it’s a tool used in relationship to other tools and strategies – the word alone will not save us. I can’t say what each of us should do or how we should act at this moment, but I think we all should be asking ourselves, Where can I push back on or withdraw my participation in institutions that are causing harm? Where do I have the ability to influence power? What am I willing to risk? What actions can I take to be in solidarity with those around me?

King: I saw elements of e.e.cummings, of Alberto Rios, and a mix of the surreal and the natural, colliding head on to express something banal and human. There are also mentions of poetry and poets, such as Pablo Neruda, peppered throughout, creating a sort of timeless world where poets share the modern world. Where do you see your fitting into the poetic tradition? Who would you list, if there is anyone, as your main inspirations?

Amador: June Jordan was the first poet that I really latched onto as an influence, first because of her politics but later because of her lyricism and her effortlessness with sound in a poem. She gave me my ear and my attention to the arrangement of words within a line. And yes, of course, Neruda, the lushness of his poems, the emotional force of his imagery. The first time I heard Eduardo Corral read it was as though he’d conjured a door and handed me the key. And I also spent several years learning from the poet Michael Loughran, who has been a wonderful teacher and whose personal influences span a very different territory – The New York School, Gerald Stern, Mary Rufle, Dean Young – to which I was somewhat resistant at first. But I’ve come to love those poets also, they’re helpful counter-weights, they keep me from becoming too lofty or too pretty.

King: Speaking of inspirations, what are the best pieces of advice you’ve received from other poets? And what advice would you pass on to someone wanting to write their first collection?

Amador: Don’t be boring. Not just in what you write but in how you observe your surroundings in between the times you sit down to write. To try to notice what others aren’t noticing or to notice them differently. That, and I also had a mentor tell me to treat the poem as a made object, a thing that can be taken apart and reconstructed and made better if it isn’t working. Taking on that attitude helped me become a more fearless editor of my own work. That’s the advice I’d pass along, to put in the time in on revision and insist on pushing the poems as far as they can go.

Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and now lives in the UK. He divides his time between writing fiction, non-fiction and drawing comics.>Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and now lives in the UK. He divides his time between writing fiction, non-fiction and drawing comics.

The post “Flower Wars” – An Interview with Nico Amador appeared first on Newfound.