Engraft and Hush – Michele Seminara PLUS bonus poet interview

Today another Australian poet review/interview, Michele Seminara, who has recently released a small book “Hush” through the small independent publisher Black Rune Press, I purchased and read this collection soon after release and then was fortunate enough to be sent a copy of Michele Seminara’s earlier book “Engraft” (Island Press) by the poet herself.

“Engraft” has four sections, the opening one titled “Mammoth”, the opening poem “Hoary” starting;

Fifteen thousand years I have slumbered
In my icy casket, a hoary
Princess waiting
Not to be kissed, but punctured
By the pick of a prying scientist.

Personally I was reminded of a song by The Triffids “Jerdacuttup Man”, although miles apart in content, the book reflecting a digging up of the past, a collection of memories. Moving straight from a digging up to the honesty of ageing in “All Dried Up”;

I
an old lady
waiting in this parched bed
for something to happen

which cannot happen

I
an old lady with an impatient
unsated belly

that will not rain

I
an old lady
whose slow mind spreads
so far her eyed has
lost sight

I
the one
who age must not tame –

May my drying up cause this spark to flame!

These are poems of self awareness, raw;

Impassive as a mountain
I sit, hand resting reverentially in
the infertile valley of my lap,
(from “Self Seen”)

the self being compared to a dog in the very next poem, pulling on a leash, “world jerks my neck”

The book contains unsettling works, poems addressing child sexual abuse, but they are also, at times, sensual, the shorter poems breathless, drawn out with space, stretching, extending the experience;

The Lover

The skin’s sumptuously soft.               The body’s
thin,
                                                hairless,

                                    vulnerable. She
doesn’t look
            She      Touches                       his
sex,          caresses                  the strange
novelty. He moans,     In dreadful love

And          the pain is
slowly                          borne towards pleasure.

This poem is an erasure poem sourced from Marguerite Duras’s novel “The Lover” (translated by Barbara Bray). Erasure poems take an existing work and erase text, framing the end result as a poem. The collection containing four such poems. Three other works are a free-form remix of Stuart Barnes’ work, another poet I have interviewed, and Michele Seminara’s poems highlighting the evolving thought processes, highlighting language.

The trials and tribulations of motherhood are explored in the section “Mother” “obediently becoming (for me)/what I never wanted/you to be”. All domestic depths are explored here on the page, a drug addicted child, the loss of a child, a tender but harrowing collection.

“Hush” a smaller book, also soaring with familial bliss and plunging to the depths. A work that contains only thirteen poems it features an Edvard Munch paiting on the front, “Ashes” (1894). The book a limited edition print run of only fifty copies, is beautifully presented. If you are interested in a copy, try blackrunepress at gmail.com

 

Over to the interview with Michele Seminara, and as always I am forever grateful for the poet’s time and honesty. I am working on something else with both Michele Seminara and Stuart Barnes, hopefully it comes together and you will get to see the result in the upcoming months.

 

Thanks you for agreeing to this interview, I’d like to talk about your two publications, “Engraft” and “Hush”.

Q. Both of your works are very “unsettling” and in “Dead Ottla” (a poem sourced from the letters of Franz Kafka) you say “(Writing is a form of prayer, Dear Ottla,/ a key to the chambers inside oneself:” Your work is very personal, leaving yourself open and raw on the page, is writing cathartic for you?

Absolutely. Especially writing poetry, which expresses the inexpressible best of all, in my view. Basically, when life feels intense, I pick up a pen. I also write to have fun, relax, learn, experiment, grow and communicate – but I’m first and foremost of the Bukowski school:

unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.

(‘so you want to be a writer?’)

That might sound naff, but that’s why and how I write poetry, and also why I read it. It’s a solace for the soul.

Q. “Engraft” ends with a cento drawn from the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, unrequited love and “Hush” with “Only darkness; easeful darkness.” Is there any hope?

Always, but we don’t always feel it. That’s why there’s poetry – and religion! For many, like Kafka, they are forms of the same thing.

I’m a Buddhist, and it’s a faith that encourages you to look at life realistically – although not in a morbid way. Buddhists meditate upon their own deaths to bring an awareness of life as ephemeral, and to inspire themselves to apply effort to creating peace within. That’s where the hope lies.

 Q. Your latest publication “Hush” features an artwork by Edvard Munch “Ashes” (described as when  lovers are consumed by the hot flame of passion their love turns to ashes) and it contains an ekphrastic poem “Blood Nature” in response to his famous work “The Scream of Nature”. You obviously have a love, a connection to his work, how did this come about?

I feel Munch’s artwork, like Bukowski’s poetry, shoots ‘like a rocket’ out of his soul. I resonate with the darkness he sees in the everyday. It amazes me how we live as if life lasts forever and as if there isn’t sickness, separation and death. I’m drawn to Munch’s heightened sense of seeing. I think we all experience this when we go through difficult times – our skins are thinner, and we see things as they really are – but often we’re quite distracted, or numb. I like to look things in the eye. I find it perversely comforting.

 Q. I really enjoyed your “erasure poems”, can you explain a little about the process, why you chose those texts, did you have a clear message or view before/during/after the erasure?

I love the process of erasure, and usually work with texts I’ve read many times and feel an emotional connection to. I instinctively choose a favorite passage and start circling words and teasing out connections. I’m looking to converse with the writer, as well as to find an objective correlative to my own experiences within the text.

Sometimes writing erasure or found poetry is a way of saying what you want to say using some else’s voice. It’s a strange process! You have to be ok with some initial chaos and embrace chance when you write that way. You’re not completely in control of what emerges. I enjoy the discovery! I also like being able to say things I wouldn’t be bold enough to say in my own voice, and hiding behind the other writer.

 Q. As I mentioned in the first question, your poems address unsettling subjects, for example childhood sexual abuse, all the dirty laundry’s here on the page, however there is a Buddhist hint of forgiveness, is the art of writing about these experiences a forgiveness in itself?

That’s a wonderful question. I think it is a forgiveness – of the self, and others – a way of processing experiences, some of which can be quite horrendous, but still holding a sense of compassion around it all. I am definitely from the ‘better out than in’ school of writing. I look to poetry to help me with the big questions and experiences.

 Q. Your book “Engraft” contained a section “Mother”, a celebration as well as the frustrations and anguish of being a mother, and your new chapbook “Hush” is very deeply rooted in “family”. These are subjects you return to often, but it is not always a rosy picture that you paint. Can you talk a bit about this subject matter and why it features so prominently?

Because that’s what I’ve been doing with the last twenty years of my life – mothering – and because it’s the most intense role I’ve played: the ups are so up and the downs are so down. Therefore I write about, and from, my domestic trenches. Some people might think that’s boring, but I think it’s the real deal.

 Q. As I ask all my interviewees, and given your breadth of reading where your poems are drawn from many sources, including the Bible!!!, can you tell us what you are reading right now and why?

I’m reading a lot of Sharon Olds. I love her passion and boldness, and also her simplicity. She’s a very intuitive writer. I find myself binging on certain writers when I sense I have something particular to learn from them at that point in time. Perhaps there’s something in my own writing technique that’s holding me back, or some new way of seeing or expressing that I’m ready to learn, but whatever it is, I’ll be drawn to a certain writer to learn via the osmosis of reading. So I’m rereading Satan Says, Stag’s Leap and Odes.

 Q. Finally, what are you currently working on, is it something you can tell us about?

I’m working on BUGGER ALL because Verity La has sucked me dry this year, and I don’t write well when I have my administrative hat on. I LOVE being Managing Editor of Verity La – it feeds me in many ways, and I thrive off the connections I make with other writers, and learn a huge amount from it all. BUT it leaves little time for the creative brain to kick in. So although I’m tinkering on a few poems, I have a sense that I’m creatively gestating, waiting until the end of the year (when we take six weeks off publishing) to give birth to a whole book of poems. Either that or I’ll just go to the beach and enjoy an empty mind. Will keep you posted!