Alexus Erin : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

Growing up, I was classically trained as a singer. I spent a lot of time in choirs, so sonic resonance and polyphony are both concepts and tools I return to often. As a listener, I often oscillate between emo and rap; both genres use lyrics in ways that feel natural to me as a poet. Third-wave emo was incredibly intertextual, melancholic and tongue-in-cheek. American rap music has an amazing literary tradition, which is also deeply intertextual and political. I am a huge fan of Earl Sweatshirt’s craft. I think he is always leaning to rhythm in expansive and thoughtful ways. And eloquence? Unmatched.

Alexus Erin : part four

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I have been an avid reader of Michael Dickman since I was a teenager. My English teacher gave me her copy of The End of the West on our way to Dodge Poetry Festival; I don’t think a week will pass without me rereading “We Did Not Make Ourselves”. “Valentine” by Lorna Dee Cervantes; I used to perform it on the poetry recitation circuit. Also, pretty much anything by Louise Gluck- in undergrad, I carried a copy of Averno in my backpack.  

Alexus Erin : part three

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, and Odes by the incomparable Sharon Olds.

Alexus Erin : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Intuition/ asking the poem “what’s the deal here, anyway?” and letting it tell me.

Alexus Erin : part one

Alexus Erin is an American poet and performer, living in the UK. Her poetry has previously appeared in Potluck Magazine, The Melanin Collective, The Nervous Breakdown, The Audacity (audacityzine.com), American Society of Young Poets, God Is in the TV, LEVELER, Silk + Smoke and a host of others. She was the 2018 Fellow of the Leopardi Writers Conference and a performer at Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2018). Her screenplay, American Lotus Project, won an award at Temple University’s Diamond Film Festival. Her chapbooks Two Birds, All Moon (2019) and St. John’s Wort (forthcoming- 2019) were published by Gap Riot Press and Animal Heart Press, respectively. Erin’s full-length collection, Cartoon Logic, Cartoon Violence is forthcoming (2020) from Cervena Barva Press.

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

I think structural aspects of lyrical poems have access to the expression of the embodied experience in really resonant ways. So many contemporary poets are also using enjambment, page-space and alinearity in order to interrogate memory and use self-reflection to confront the reader. I saw a wacky meme on the internet the other day that said, “I’m handing out flyers that say ‘confront yourself.’” I think poets that choose to forgo traditional formatting can get readers to do just that: put change to work, use discomfort as an invitation. I think fracturing says a lot. Negative space is your friend. Time is relative and then constructed, etc.