An Interview with Zoe Dzunko
First off, I found that with my 2nd chap No Sign on the Island, people often complimented the cover art (by Joseph Whitt) right off the bat. Have people done the same with Selfless (out since June at The Atlas Review), which boasts a gorgeous cover by Emily Raw? And how do you think the cover art enhances the themes of the chap?
The cover is often complimented and rightfully so, I think. This is something I can say because I had no hand in creating it and it has retained its objective wonder in a way that nothing I make myself ever will. Beyond that, what I appreciate most about the Selfless artwork is how much has been forged from simple elements--from thoughtfully and painstakingly executed design--and, for me personally, its beauty owes to the way these constitutive aspects of typography, paper and foil can communicate with such efficacy the spirit of the book. I appreciate simplicity in all things, so the way Emily's cover achieves an almost maximal opulence with mere lines of gold is a very beautiful thing and a perfect example of its economy. I mean, this line between OTT and austerity is a force in the book too and an ever-present dynamic in my mind/life; that is, the tug-of-war between too much and never enough, so the way this might be rendered visually with simple hues and shapes also strikes me as an interesting parallel. I think all of these ideas are in the book insofar as many of the poems are concerned with poverty and abundance--though their currency is more an emotional than fiscal one--as well as surfaces or illusions before and after they are descried or dismantled. Interestingly, the lines that adorn the cover are drawn from scans of my hair, so there is a lot of me, a lot of layers of me, in there; the cover and contents both.
Your chap was one of the inaugural TAR Chapbook Series winners. What’s it been like working with The Atlas Review?
It was such a pleasure that I felt a mild sense of sadness when the book was finished and the process came to an end. The care and attention the work received was really unexpected, and I was humbled by the lengths to which Natalie, Emily and the whole Atlas team went to ensure that every element was as fully realised or refined as it stood to be. It really felt as though no sacrifices were made, which is truly unique for a book this size and something for which I'm really grateful.
Selfless is filled to the brim with beautiful lyricism, and they tend to reach their peak towards the middle, not petering out at all but more breathing out. Is this an intentional aesthetic choice on your part or a happy coincidence?
I have to think coincidence because I've certainly never conceived of my poems in this way, as far as their pacing or movements are concerned. I'm drawn to endings, but kind of soft endings, like a palm turning over or a fist opening. I like the way you describe their progression as a breathing out, which is a very generous and kind of gorgeous way to think of a poem unfolding. Of course, bodily too, because I think less of poems as machines and instead as material or otherwise organic units, perhaps like bodily gestures which invite or obfuscate, conceal and disclose, and probably that climax in the middle--were I to diagnose it--as a cognitive or recapitulatory moment, and likely what follows as a reexamination of the poem's crux under the terms of fresh knowledge or recognition or whatever the coalescing of various impressions forms.
For a book called Selfless, your new chap is very concerned with the self as it works itself out in the world, through relationships and experiences. Was there a point in time when you knew this would be the theme of your chap and what was your process?
I sort of think of the title as joke that stuck. Selfless was the working title of an ever-evolving manuscript that I would add to and subtract from and, when it came time to start sending it out, that working title was the one it took and one that it never advanced beyond. I can't really imagine it existing with any other name now, it seems impossible. As time goes on, I'm more interested in the semantic applications of selfless, in that its meaning is quite distinct from other adjectives with the same suffix. It doesn't really mean a lack in the same way we take penniless or heartless to mean a deficiency; it doesn't mean an absence of self and rather the elimination of self-interest or ego, but it is interesting to me that benevolence or devotion stands to imply a relinquishment of the individual. Perhaps I've spent too much time looking at and thinking on this word, but it seems unique for the way it simultaneously signals erasure and virtuosity--this dynamic feels very real to me. So, yeah, it became clear to me that I was writing poems around this theme and that likely these are the ideas preoccupying me at this moment in my life. I think that is, or was, the process. These are the poems I'm writing now and this is a version of that story--I'm sure there are other versions of that story, but these many moments and interactions with self/selves are one vein I followed.
Speaking of which, when and where did you acquire the confidence to embark on such highly lyrical turns? What were your guiding lights, what did you turn to, people, books, programs, etc.? Maybe this is better asked: describe your poetic journey up to this point academically.
My journey is both very direct--that is, regimented and guided by prolonged periods of academic study--and also meandering, contradictory, a little confusing to me. I have been writing poems for what seems like a lifetime and also no time at all, and because I have been working on a dissertation made up of many poems but living a life devoid of any substantial IRL poetry community, poems feel immense and also non-existent in my daily life. So, my journey has largely been reading and writing alone and I think the upshot of that isolation is a freedom to write unreservedly and also necessitates doing so because feeling like an island means being the sole cheerleader of my work or poems in general. Writing alone in this little room away from everyone else means I have to remain fixed upon the notion that poems matter and that task approximates trying to be brave in my work. I don't think my poems are necessarily that, nor do they always read that way, but that is the mood I have to cultivate: that poems are not trivial and that bravery does matter. I do that with other poems but also music and film and places and research; whatever the mindset demands. For example, when I was finishing Selfless I would work mostly at night and listen to only a handful of songs: normally "The Body You Deserve" by HTRK and "Iron Moon" by Chelsea Wolfe. I was reading Culture of One by Alice Notley. It was a very specific rotation.
Your chap name-checks Kim Kardashian towards the beginning and then Jewel towards the end, and overall it seems very concerned with a fierce and awesomely vicious femininity. How has your personal philosophy evolved up to this point and how does your identity reveal itself in your poetry?
Jewel and Kim sneak in there, but really they make me very sad. Jewel because she makes everyone feel that way, I think, in this discarded over-lit convenience store way, and KK because she is everywhere and celebrity, with its frenetic and malaise-inducing over-saturation, animates for me mortality like nothing else does. Women, however, or just anybody that isn't a man and is battling their way through this treacherous society, are very important to me and to my poems. The older I get, the more I want to burn everything down; I believe in poems as missives, as warnings, or as reminders to be awake and accountable. I realise that to start the fire I really long to start, I'll likely have to do a law degree or something that permits me access to the structures I abhor, but poems are a power I very much believe in for their complete subversion of current politico-socioeconomic systems and for their first and foremost source of community and goodness.
What are your plans going forward?
I'm still in a post-study daze, so my immediate plans are sleeping, enjoying the summer, keeping things simple. I'm excited for 2017 and for doing more meaningful work with the organisations I belong to, for new issues of Powder Keg and The Lifted Brow, for my teaching work, and to take stock of these hundreds of poems I've accumulated and encourage them into new books, then finally moving onto different projects. Nothing exceptional but many exciting and very good things.
Blake Wallin is the author of the chapbooks Otherwise Jesus (Ghost City Press, 2015) and No Sign on the Island (Bottlecap Press, 2016) as well as the microchap The Lucidity of Giving Up (Ghost City Press, 2016). He is the Reviews/Interviews Editor for Ghost City Review.
