All Letters Are a Mimick
A Conversation with Bonnie Emerick
OS Collaborator Bonnie Emerick talks about her new digital chapbook, Ventriloquy, available now from The Operating System.
Greetings! Thank you for talking to us about your process today! Can you introduce yourself, in a way that you would choose?
Why are you a poet/writer/artist?
I truly don’t know any other way to be. Having written since I could literally pick up a pen or pencil, writing is simply a part of me. It’s not a matter of some Cartesian “I write; therefore, I am”; it’s more of a matter of “I am; therefore, I write.”
When did you decide you were a poet/writer/artist (and/or: do you feel comfortable calling yourself a poet/writer/artist, what other titles or affiliations do you prefer/feel are more accurate)?
I called myself a writer before I ever called myself a poet. It still seems silly to identify myself as a “poet,” though the MFA program I attended did begin to instill that designation. As a result, I deduced that everything, essentially, is poetry. As I experiment with words, sentences, essays, paragraphs, plays, and drawings, I return to “writer,” which opens up the world of letters and literary arts for me.
What’s a “poet” (or “writer” or “artist”) anyway?
Any individual engaged with words and ideas is a writer.
What do you see as your cultural and social role (in the literary / artistic / creative community and beyond)?
This is a really hard question. I truly believe that writers can change the world by creating connections. In Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Claudia Rankine’s speaker asks, “Why are we here if not for each other?” Writing IS being “here” for each other. If by “role,” you mean “purpose,” then one purpose of writing and sharing writing is to forge connections that create webs of empathy and compassion around the globe.
Talk about the process or instinct to move these poems (or your work in general) as independent entities into a body of work. How and why did this happen? Have you had this intention for a while? What encouraged and/or confounded this (or a book, in general) coming together? Was it a struggle?
Each poem in this collection was immediate and fairly smooth. Their revision and the coming together in the collection was very challenging. I actually named a file on my computer “thisisthelastone” because of the many times I revised it. So, the start was painless; the middle was painful; the ending, an exhale.
Did you envision this collection as a collection or understand your process as writing or making specifically around a theme while the poems themselves were being written / the work was being made? How or how not?
The title poem echoes Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation, revolving the chaos of memory in play — spoken, linguistic — representation, and snapshots (blinks) of time. That serious play inculcated the forms of “Tillie + I in America,” “Red Light Green Light” (which is based off children’s rhymes), and “The Body We’re Given.” Tillie, a friend-persona or alternate-ego or memory stand-in, was created through these poems and makes appearances either directly or indirectly. Characters are another mode of ventriloquy. Other poems, written years apart, commiserated around Tillie, creating the core of her memory in retrospect. Either through forced forgetting or involuntary loss, absences in memory (what we don’t see and what we don’t want to see) arise on the page in blank space.
What formal structures or other constrictive practices (if any) do you use in the creation of your work? Have certain teachers or instructive environments, or readings/writings/work of other creative people informed the way you work/write?
I do frequently write under self-imposed, yet playful constraints — but these poems, specifically, did not follow a formal structure — unless following the children’s rhyme is following a formal structure.
It is almost impossible to contain, here, a list of all writers who influenced me. However, the most influential, personal mentor to me was (is) Laura Mullen. She gave me permission, confidence, and support to be. I always write by hand first and then transcribe onto the computer, but I was censoring the writing in the transcription. “Let the mess in,” she said, and I did. She instilled in me a sense of ethical accuracy. We writers, no matter the genre, must be accurate to experience. This is different than realistic. I define “experience” very broadly, but I do believe that writing has ethical undertones.
Speaking of monikers, what does your title represent? How was it generated? Talk about the way you titled the book, and how your process of naming (individual pieces, sections, etc) influences you and/or colors your work specifically.
More than a decade ago, I read an influential article about the diagnoses of women as “hysterical” — and insane — and its etymology in “hysterectomy.” At the same time, I was in a Rae Armantrout hypnosis: I was reading everything by her, when I landed on “ventriloquy is the mother tongue.” In what ways is hysteria a “mother tongue”? Is “mother tongue” gendered? Then, I found Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee: “She mimicks the speaking. That might resemble speech.” Speech seemed bound with my gendered female identity — excessive, hysterical speech. All letters are a mimic. The truth (lowercase t) seemed to be that writing and speech are ventriloquized. Perhaps thought is not, but the outcome of that thought — figures created by others that I borrow.
What does this particular work represent to you …as indicative of your method/creative practice? …as indicative of your history? …as indicative of your mission/intentions/hopes/plans?
I am going to answer this question in phrases: confident experimentation, personal history, Jessica, dancing on the page, family, Transformers, trauma.
What does this book DO (as much as what it says or contains)?
I hope to give permission to others who have as much joy and as much trauma in their personal histories as I do — I hope to give them permission to let their histories exist (not be erased). I might have answered this question differently a year ago, but, as a teacher, I see that our younger generations need permission to share the most difficult parts.
What would be the best possible outcome for this book? What might it do in the world, and how will its presence as an object facilitate your creative role in your community and beyond? What are your hopes for this book, and for your practice?
My hope for this book would be that it creates connections — especially among survivors — forges empathy and builds compassion.
Let’s talk a little bit about the role of poetics and creative community in social and political activism, so present in our daily lives as we face the often sobering, sometimes dangerous realities of the Capitalocene. How does your process, practice, or work otherwise interface with these conditions?
All writing can be activism. This book, in particular, indirectly partners with all movements intended to give voice to those who have not spoken. If the best hope for the book is to create connections among survivors, then a healing is had; if healing is had, one can fight for oneself and for others. Until the myth of Philomena returns to her her tongue, we will have to take to our looms — our letters, our drawings, and, yes, our hashtags.
I’d be curious to hear some of your thoughts on the challenges we face in speaking and publishing across lines of race, age, ability, class, privilege, social/cultural background, gender, sexuality (and other identifiers) within the community as well as creating and maintaining safe spaces, vs. the dangers of remaining and producing in isolated “silos” and/or disciplinary and/or institutional bounds?
The selectivity of the poetry publishing community breeds a line of competitiveness; almost like a heredity, this line can be traced from elementary to secondary schools to universities and graduate programs. The line can be traced through the Wallace Stevens of the world and over to the Gertrude Steins and back to the PB and Mary Shelleys. Even the designation of “poetry” becomes a selective one — and that’s why I tend to love those who push, push, push the boundaries of “poetry” and who embrace any writing as writing. In my worst moments, I have created boundaries risen from competitiveness. I have grown from those worst moments, and teaching has helped me get there. When you see the freedom — the embracing, permissive freedom that writing anything can have on an individual — you realize that boundaries kill.
Is there anything else we should have asked, or that you want to share?
If we examine our definitions of what “writing” is, I believe we will begin to see that writing is more powerful and more pervasive than ever.
About the Author
Bonnie Emerick’s poetry has been published in print and online magazines, including Cannibal, the tiny, How2, So To Speak, Quarter After Eight, Little Red Leaves, and Fogged Clarity, among others. Her digital chapbook, Ventriloquy, is forthcoming from The Operating System. She teaches secondary English in Telluride, Colorado.
ABOUT THE COVER ART:
The Operating System 2019 chapbooks, in both digital and print, feature art from Heidi Reszies. The work is from a series entitled “Collected Objects & the Dead Birds I Did Not Carry Home,” which are mixed media collages with encaustic on 8 x 8 wood panel, made in 2018. Heidi writes: “This series explores objects/fragments of material culture- -how objects occupy space, and my relationship to them or to their absence.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Heidi Reszies is a poet/transdisciplinary artist living in Richmond, Virginia. Her visual art is included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts CLARA Database of Women Artists. She teaches letterpress printing at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, and is the creator/curator of Artifact Press. Her poetry collection titled Illusory Bordersis forthcoming from The Operating System in 2019, and now available for pre-order. Her collection titled Of Water & Other Soft Constructions was selected by Samiya Bashir as the winner of the Anhinga Press 2018 Robert Dana Prize for Poetry (forthcoming in 2019).
Find her at heidireszies.com
