On the Poetics of Congregation amid Dispossession: A Conversation
The ghazal is a cumulative form that builds on established metaphors in a non-linear fashion. . . . I see tremendous liberatory potential in its cumulativeness. . . . When writing a ghazal, my poetic voice is not just my own, just like my pain is not just my own.
I try my best not to think too hard about categorizing what is part of my work as an “artist” or “writer” and what’s a diversion.
That sense of the un-holdable world-horrors and calls to action alongside pictures of scarves that my friends knitted and soup that they made and thirst traps and flowers and trees and cats, the sort of simultaneity and unprocessability . . . vibrating in your pocket, definitely fed METABOLICS.
I felt an urgent need to write with more-than-human animals in ways that felt celebratory. We can’t erase the eco-grief that is now a part of our daily living, but meditating on the ways we’re carrying other species around in our very bodies was frequently joyful.
We’re all beholden to our community whether or not we admit it.
I’d like to think of the book itself as an act of prayer—a way of spreading the net of my attention, of turning people’s gaze towards the things that matter to me, that I think need more attention than they’re getting.
What if I wrote a novel about this situation of being a nameless voice and published it under my own name?
MySpace was a great website because it was fueled by music fandom. . . . We need to find a way to get back to communities, to organic, real-world friendships.
My whole life, I’ve been desperate to feel the spiritual impulse. Sadly, however, I’ve never experienced it. Pure Cosmos Club was my attempt to understand what it must feel like to be blessed with the gift of faith.
I have no doubt that Lagarce is a cornerstone of contemporary French theatre. It’s been only twenty-eight years since his death, and his plays are already considered classics.