Please tell us about the making of “dear indigo scissors.”
“dear indigo scissors” is part of a series of epistolary poems I’ve been working on since March 2014. It started with four poems, grew into thirteen, then, with some prodding by my workshop leader (hi Heidi!), grew into thirty-seven. They’re a product of the uncomfortable intimacy in the lyrics of Jamie Stewart, singer of the band Xiu Xiu, the melancholy affect of Sabrina Orah Mark’s epistolary poems “The Oldest Animal Writes a Letter Home” from her wonderful book Tsim Tsum, and the disparity in Gertrude Stein’s declaration that poetry is all about naming, yet for prose to name something is to kill it. I wanted to harness that intimacy and melancholy. I wanted to write from a desk on the interstice of that animating and deadening effect naming has. Writing to objects allowed me to play with the idea of naming as it relates to objectification, to feel like I was doing that middle-walking in a way that’s dynamic and subversive.
“dear indigo scissors” in particular is part of a movement in the series that contemplates the addressers relationship to the ecosystem, individually and globally. I tended to write through this by vacillating between the theoretical and visceral. For example, when the addresser writes “It is a pastoral landscape meant for shifting” referring to the chin, I started thinking about how humans idealize their role in nature (a kind of self-pastoralization), then wondered how it might activate that sense if the addresser levels themselves like the trees earlier in the poem. As for starting the poem: those scissors are real. I’ve had them for three years I think. My mom gave them to me.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working, with wild shifts in productivity, on shaping a full-length poetry collection (including a selection of the series “dear indigo scissors” is from), a different bunch of poems from the perspective of a cyborg who has become cyborg through disease, a novel set in a future in which memories are used, sold, and abused as drugs, and, earlier in the year, I submitted my first journalistic article about music.
What rituals or routines do you have to help maintain your writing practice?
I try to be working on too many things at once. That way, if I don’t feel like I have it in me to think about all of the plot points in a novel, I can just work on one little cyborg poem, or if I don’t feel particularly cyborgian, I can surely listen to Björk’s “Violently Happy” five times in a row and write a little bit about how I want to buy a sleeping bag and live on the side of the road made by her voice. Also, I try to deescalate what it means to “be writing” for myself. Maybe tonight just listening intently to Björk and wishing I was that cool is enough writing for the day.
How do you approach revision?
Since I’ve started mostly writing in series, I find that I do my best revision when I revise in series as well, so that I know (or am reminded of) how each poem relates to each other. Because I don’t have the concentration to read and revise thirty-seven poems in one sitting, I find that often read through all of the poems, but maybe only change a few words in a few of them (sometimes three, sometimes five, sometimes one).
Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.
I played drums in several metal bands long before I started writing. I loved it, especially playing the passages that were very heavy, slow, and plodding. I think the idea of heaviness I developed from metal — the way the noise of the loud, thick guitars hummed on my legs, the way the cymbal swells saturated the air around me — meant music felt like a physical environment I inhabited rather than a sound I was creating. Looking back, that sense of inhabitation of non-physical environments, a synesthesia of place maybe, has been present in my writing ever since I got serious with it.
“dear indigo scissors” is part of a series of epistolary poems I’ve been working on since March 2014. It started with four poems, grew into thirteen, then, with some prodding by my workshop leader (hi Heidi!), grew into thirty-seven. They’re a product of the uncomfortable intimacy in the lyrics of Jamie Stewart, singer of the band Xiu Xiu, the melancholy affect of Sabrina Orah Mark’s epistolary poems “The Oldest Animal Writes a Letter Home” from her wonderful book Tsim Tsum, and the disparity in Gertrude Stein’s declaration that poetry is all about naming, yet for prose to name something is to kill it. I wanted to harness that intimacy and melancholy. I wanted to write from a desk on the interstice of that animating and deadening effect naming has. Writing to objects allowed me to play with the idea of naming as it relates to objectification, to feel like I was doing that middle-walking in a way that’s dynamic and subversive.
“dear indigo scissors” in particular is part of a movement in the series that contemplates the addressers relationship to the ecosystem, individually and globally. I tended to write through this by vacillating between the theoretical and visceral. For example, when the addresser writes “It is a pastoral landscape meant for shifting” referring to the chin, I started thinking about how humans idealize their role in nature (a kind of self-pastoralization), then wondered how it might activate that sense if the addresser levels themselves like the trees earlier in the poem. As for starting the poem: those scissors are real. I’ve had them for three years I think. My mom gave them to me.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working, with wild shifts in productivity, on shaping a full-length poetry collection (including a selection of the series “dear indigo scissors” is from), a different bunch of poems from the perspective of a cyborg who has become cyborg through disease, a novel set in a future in which memories are used, sold, and abused as drugs, and, earlier in the year, I submitted my first journalistic article about music.
What rituals or routines do you have to help maintain your writing practice?
I try to be working on too many things at once. That way, if I don’t feel like I have it in me to think about all of the plot points in a novel, I can just work on one little cyborg poem, or if I don’t feel particularly cyborgian, I can surely listen to Björk’s “Violently Happy” five times in a row and write a little bit about how I want to buy a sleeping bag and live on the side of the road made by her voice. Also, I try to deescalate what it means to “be writing” for myself. Maybe tonight just listening intently to Björk and wishing I was that cool is enough writing for the day.
How do you approach revision?
Since I’ve started mostly writing in series, I find that I do my best revision when I revise in series as well, so that I know (or am reminded of) how each poem relates to each other. Because I don’t have the concentration to read and revise thirty-seven poems in one sitting, I find that often read through all of the poems, but maybe only change a few words in a few of them (sometimes three, sometimes five, sometimes one).
Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.
I played drums in several metal bands long before I started writing. I loved it, especially playing the passages that were very heavy, slow, and plodding. I think the idea of heaviness I developed from metal — the way the noise of the loud, thick guitars hummed on my legs, the way the cymbal swells saturated the air around me — meant music felt like a physical environment I inhabited rather than a sound I was creating. Looking back, that sense of inhabitation of non-physical environments, a synesthesia of place maybe, has been present in my writing ever since I got serious with it.