Alli Warren: fault tree seems concerned with relativity, and how relativity
affects time & "event.” Can you speak some about malleable reality, or
realities in the book? The book seems to represent a distrust of Time. Does it
distrust Space equally? ["HERE depends"]. Do you? Would you prefer an
objective world not determined by perspective, or do you find comfort in how we
each create our own realities? ["if time bends / then bend back // if it suits
you"]
kathryn l. pringle:
The book's "I" does, very much so, distrust both Time and Space. But
the two are so linked and that’s where I agree with the narrator.
I find time and space to be the primary makers of
place - and place is fundamental to human actions (I considered
saying "existence" there but then I realized that I don't believe
that) as it provides a place for humans to act. In turn, the making of place is
also the shaping of identity. This is where both the narrator’s (and at times
my own) distrust and hope lie - in humans as makers of places. Reality
is malleable in this way and I do take comfort in that because I have
feelings about it.
Objective worlds/realities cannot exist. I can't even
imagine it really - though I know people have tried to create them (in places
and pages). If my grasp of certain ideals and ideas around objective worlds were
even somewhat reflective of what you mean by the question --- I'd say I abhor
the thought. I'd have to stop feeling in such a world and I rather enjoy having
feelings. But, note - I'm speaking from this place and time (which is
constantly being made and unmade) when answering the question.
AW: Can you say
more about the place of your current situation? I imagine some of Oakland and
the Bay Area seeps in? If so, how? How does geographic place affect your
writing?
klp: Oakland is
huge in my writing right now. I'm writing a novel now and the cities (there are
only two so far) in the novel borrow a lot from Oakland's downtown/uptown ---
and Adam's Point --- so I'd say that situates me pretty plainly. Oakland is in
fault tree, too - "there's no me there."
Place affects every aspect of my writing but I think mostly
in that I live in the USA and I'm fascinated by how we made/make this country.
I'd say everything I write - and most overtly the novel I'm writing now - is
about the un/re/making of this country. I don't think I'll ever run out of
things to say on this matter.
AW: I'm curious
about the one "poem" in the book (which the perspective/narrator
refers to as a poem because of its form (couplets)). Can you tell me about what
it was like to write this poem? & How it may be different from other
writing in the book?
klp: Yeah, that
part is a good example of how architecture influences the book (and RNB too)...
I consider poems (words) environments. It is important to me
that readers feel autonomous and feel compelled to enter the environment and
move through it how they please. But it is also important to me that the book
is its own environment and leads the reader through it, too. So I have markers
(not titles) and imperfect page breaks, etc. I don't know where I got the idea
that couplets = love (I want to give Gillian Conoley credit for this but I
maybe just put it together that way in my head while studying with her as an
undergrad) but for me... poems in couplets are love poems.
There are various clues to "the monument" in the
book (and snow) and that place in the book is a monument. It had to be built as
such. It towers and has a distinct shape. If the book could be laid out as a
city it would be the tallest building in the city. It is imposing. It casts.
So, in a way it is different - the writing - because it is
what looms over the environment of the book. It is, perhaps, the origin of the
narrator's emotional distress and humanness. It felt very heavy to write. It
felt like the hinge of the book and was actually written quite early in the
book's life so it makes sense that I consider it a place of origin. I think it
was after I wrote that (we can get into whether or not I write anything if you
want) that I got that - this-is-going-to-be-a-book feeling.
AW: Let’s get into
it. Do you write anything or not?
klp: O geez. Yes.
I write. But I'm definitely not in charge. I feel more like the custodian of my
work. The work does what it does... it comes through how it comes through... it
is only my job to try and get it into the world and represent it (read it) as
well as I can. I know I'm writing a book when I've disappeared from it.
AW: You say,
"It is important to me that the reader feels autonomous and feels
compelled to enter the environment and move through it how they please."
Do you feel that if you can create (thru the writing) an environment in which a
reader feels autonomous, that that might somehow affect a reader in the reality
outside the book? In the sense that they may begin to feel more autonomous in
other areas of their lives, in “the real world”? Maybe this is a spooky
question, or a question about your relationship to politics & poetry. I mean
to ask if you have any big ideas about what you wish poetry could do,
or bold (perhaps "irrational"?) claims about what poetry can do,
versus, say, voting.
klp: My short
answers: yes. yes. maybe.
See, the problem with wanting poetry to do something...
something big and bold and political and world changing... is getting people to
hear it. I think oftentimes poetry is preaching to the choir. And yes, it still
does something in a real-world way. Someone can be affected by something read
and that something read is processed and then comes through that someone and
into someone else's world.
I want people to be autonomous. I want people to have
agency.
I don't have a political agenda - unless just wanting people
to think for themselves can be construed as a political agenda.
I'm not saying that a book that comes through me is going to
give anyone either of those things. I'm saying the making sense of the book
requires a reader. And I don't mean it in the "a book can do nothing until
it is opened" sort of way (tho that is true). I mean... if the writing in
the book doesn't require anything of a reader but to turn the page... I don't
know that I can say it is doing much. It is entertainment. And that's valuable.
I get that. But it isn't what I want to write. And it isn't usually the poetry
I want to read.
AW: What for you
do poets do (if anything)? Or what can poets
do? Or what do you want poetry to do? Create environments?
klp: The poetry I'm most
interested in reading and hearing does something. Yes. Creates an environment.
Builds meaning and place with the reader/audience. Comments on society. I have
trouble stomaching pretty for pretty's sake in all things - or clever for
clever's sake.
AW: You say,
"I know I'm writing a book when I've disappeared from it," and you
talk about being a custodian of the work. What is this thing that moves through
you? Or what force makes the writing when you disappear? Is this
"talent"? Or something psychic or spiritual or the thing that makes you a poet in the first place. Or is it just
plain old Martians?
klp: Not Martians...
though I wonder if this is what Spicer meant by Martians.
I have the same experience when I'm running long distances.
The part of myself that is usually forward and most present in my body recedes
and energy fills the front and center of me. It isn't that I’m gone from myself
completely... I'm just hanging out behind the energy - I’ve disappeared from
the action.
I think a lot of people experience this. I'm sure there's a
name for it.
I know runners and writers that don't disappear at all. They
are present for every single mile or word. It sounds grueling to me. I’m a
pretty resilient person but I don't like to suffer quite that much.
I’ve tried to put together manuscripts without that
experience and they aren't very compelling. I wouldn't be a good custodian for
them.
Whatever it really is... I'm grateful to it. It allows me to
finish things.
-->
Alli Warren is the author of Grindin (Lew Gallery), Acting
Out (Editions Louis Wain), Well-Meaning White Girl (Mitzvah Chaps), and Cousins
(Lame House Press). With Michael Nicoloff, she wrote Eunoia (Abraham Lincoln)
and Bruised Dick. In 2013, City Lights will publish her first book. Recent
writing appears in Lana Turner Journal, Where Eagles Dare, and Saginaw. From
2008 through 2010, she co-curated The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand.
Currently, she co-edits the
Poetic
Labor Project, and lives in Oakland.
-->
kathryn l. pringle is an American poet living in Oakland, Ca.
She is the author of fault tree (winner of Omindawn’s 1st/2nd book prize
selected by C.D. Wright), RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (Factory School 2009) and two
chapbooks: The Stills (Duration Press) and Temper and Felicity are
lovers.(TAXT). Her work can also be found in the anthologies Conversations at
the Wartime Cafe: A Decade of War (Conversations at the Wartime Cafe Press/
WODV Press 2011) and I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les
Figues 2012).
