How do you know when a poem is finished?
Poetry doesn’t finish. A text solidifies into different drafts and iterations—even into the book object—just to become malleable again to transform and reshape itself. I do usually read my poems out loud and if the text feels sustained over the course of that reading, I let it go for a while.
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
The lack of apparatus. Volunteer culture lends itself to the hobbyist. Limited structures of support, paid opportunity, and the non-existence of a sustainable career as a poet forces the serious writer to split their attention in order to survive. By default, a poet has at least two careers; if lucky, they can feed into each other and support each other, but the luxury of being permitted, through the systems of self-reliant capitalism, to prioritize poetry for more than short periods of time is a fantasy. I listen to friends working in other creative fields and they have unions that insist on certain, realistic payment rates, overtime compensation, mental health time off, and so on. The reality is that were one to enforce certain rates onto the poetry community, a lot of the most interesting projects wouldn’t be able to function. That said, though, valorizing poetry as relevant social discourse and not normalizing free labour would be a huge step forward.
Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
I used to work according to the idea of a self-contained poem. Now I’m no longer sure whether I write poems at all. It’s one of those (pretentious) slippages perhaps, but I find it useful to think of poetry as not quite being poetry and yet still inhabiting that space which is curious about and builds with language. The idea of the poem is a bit stifling, for me. There’s something adjacent, overlapping, and more expansive which is both simpler and much more interconnected with other disciplines—currently this mode excites me.
What are you working on?
I just finished a collaborative residency at Artexte with the U.K.-based artist, Kadie Salmon. We co-created a sculptural artists’ book in three parts, entitled, Incipit, Scree, Explicit. And so, over the past few months, I’d been writing a set of 20 experimental sonnets which belong to this work, pushing the project further, but also responding to Kadie’s visual work—a dialogue in creative growth. We’re hoping to exhibit the artists’ book in-person next year, if COVID19 allows, and while my writing process is mainly completed, I’m thinking of ways of publishing documentation surrounding the work or sharing it beyond the presence of the artists’ book itself. Otherwise, I’m working on three manuscripts. One is written translingually, also in collaboration, with Khashayar Mohammadi in English, Afrikaans, and Farsi. An excerpt was just published in Collusion Books. It hinges on the shared g fricative sound prevalent in both Afrikaans and Farsi, our respective first languages. This is a very playful work, but also has a lot to say about the interconnectivity of language and culture. It’s tentatively forthcoming in 2023. Independently, I’ve been working on a collection of long poems informed by my current doctoral research on poetry reading recordings and their archives, as well as my active practice of literary curation. Finally, I’m slowly compiling a book-length version of Unfurl—a collection of essays or informal literary criticism.
Photo credit: Dean Garlick
Why is poetry important?
Poetry is language and thinking. Poetry is a way to be critical without discourse, to make more organic connections, to leave room for the flourish within the linear. This implies, in turn, that poetry allows for vast possibility, is a constant opening into the generative. All of this, while abstract, is crucial, on the individual level of expression, but even more so on the more collectively human level of speaking reality.
