Della Watson: Let’s start at the beginning: What did you eat for breakfast?
Steffi Drewes: This morning I made a mango coconut raspberry smoothie and immediately decided I should have one of these every day.
DW: Good god, that sounds delightful—much like your poetry, which seems to have a jazz-like quality, as root sounds repeat and mutate. How does sound develop in your poems?
SD: It usually starts with a single phrase or line, or a couple of words that sound like they belong together even though they signify totally different things or emotional contexts. I try to pay a lot of attention to word connotations, because I want there to be multiple interpretations available to the reader. But I basically start riffing off that one word combination or image and see where it leads me. I do like the comparison to jazz because there is definitely a sense of play and improvisation, of tuning into the words and trying to establish a balance (or rather a tension) between logic and mystery, pleasure and peculiarity, beauty and discomfort—in sound and context. The story unfolds itself. I try not to let a preconceived narrative interrupt the language.
DW: You and I both received our MFAs from art schools. Do other art forms have a role in your poetry?
SD: Absolutely. I have always sought out museums and galleries as sanctuaries and sources of inspiration. In grad school, getting to my classes involved walking past installations of student work or in-progress critiques of all kinds—architecture, sculpture, fashion, painting, photography—so I was constantly surrounded by creative energy. Taking book arts and photography classes also informed my writing, in terms of visual presentation, collage and splicing techniques. I like thinking about the overlap between the visual and literary art worlds—the shared vocabularies, the possibilities for collaboration. I had a great experience collaborating with a photography student and would love to do something like that again. Right now, I’m working on a series of poems with the working title “Installation” that is very much in conversation with the practices of visual art-making, gallery installations, and everyday scenes that strike me.
DW: Tell me about the “Horizon Line Drawings” series.
SD: It was part of a writing exercise I started a few years ago. Each poem was originally named for a day of the week, but I renamed the series because each poem seemed like a simplified account of the day’s events, like an outline or line drawing. For me, “horizon line” was about the fact that I wrote them at the end of each day, looking back long after sunset and tracing where I had been. I assigned them arbitrary numbers because titling them with days of the week felt just as arbitrary, yet numbers seemed to indicate that there were many more entries, either existing or yet unwritten.
DW: There’s a phrase in your poem “Days Before the Tunnel Failed Us” that struck me as interesting: “how these nets are nothing more / than loops and loops of vowel sounds.” I’m gonna go out on a limb and identify this as a statement of poetics. If you care to join me on my limb, answer this: Are you the fish or the fisherwoman?
SD: As far as writing goes, sometimes I’m the one swinging the net and sometimes I’m the one getting caught—but I can usually escape! To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have a poetics statement in mind when I wrote that. In fact, I’ve revised that section of the poem multiple times but always kept that phrase the same. Ars poetica? Maybe so. For now, I will happily join you on the limb.
DW: So while we’re out on that limb, tell me, do you consider yourself avant-garde or experimental? And for that matter, do you ally yourself with any of the poetry “camps”?
SD: Only those poets who like to go camping, because it is important to have allies and I enjoy being outdoors. But I don’t find the labels all that helpful when it comes to my own work—maybe because I’m so deep in it. Every poem I write feels like an experiment—that’s what keeps it exciting for me. I try to challenge myself and my readers with different forms and rhythms, phrasing and narrative structures, but maybe that impulse to try new things is a reflection of both my attention span and writerly intention. I wouldn’t keep writing if it felt predictable and safe.
DW: So while we’re out on that limb, tell me, do you consider yourself avant-garde or experimental? And for that matter, do you ally yourself with any of the poetry “camps”?
DW: So while we’re out on that limb, tell me, do you consider yourself avant-garde or experimental? And for that matter, do you ally yourself with any of the poetry “camps”?
SD: Are you in need of a hard yes or no or “I am X” for this one? I seem to have received this question several times. . .
DW: It must be an email glitch. Just ignore any repeat questions.
DW: So while we’re out on that limb, tell me, do you consider yourself avant-garde or experimental? And for that matter, do you ally yourself with any of the poetry “camps”?
SD: OK, now it’s just getting funny. That’s probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve received this question via email. It’s almost as though the computer refuses to accept my vague question-dodging answer. As if it is imperative that I answer this question. Nothing like a little ghostly technological persistence to make a girl batty and doubt her words!
DW: So while we’re out on that limb, tell me, do you consider yourself avant-garde or experimental? And for that matter, do you ally yourself with any of the poetry “camps”?
Interviewer’s note: At press time, Steffi Drewes’s email account was still being bombarded with the persistent poetry-camps question. We fear that Steffi may be haunted by this question for the rest of her life.
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