Ana Božičević was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1977. She emigrated to NYC in 1997. Her first book of poems is Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, November 2009), a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her fifth chapbook, Depth Hoar, will be published by Cinematheque Press in 2010. With Amy King, Ana co-curates The Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn. She works at the Center for the Humanities of The Graduate Center, CUNY.
W: Ana, this is poetry, art, words, text, essay, readings and much more, what does the word poetry mean to you in 2010 in an era fully immersed in multimedia, internet and television?
Ana: Poetry to me seems now much as it ever was: an old human practice, people reacting to/interacting with their environment, processing their experiences and transforming their worlds through words. That our reality now has new layers added by the technological media we interact with and through certainly influences the way poetry is written and read. But I don’t think poetry needs to be protected from the influence of media; reality was never pure, and we should have more faith in our ancient practice. Poetry can absorb anything thrown its way…
W: Stars of the Night Commute is your first released poetry book, I did not read it all yet, I have to admit, in some excerpts I’ve found -maybe- explicit words, lines, with such rich vocabulary, an English more Cambridge academic and Briton-styled than U.S. East Coast, don’t you think ?
Ana: I really don’t know what kind of English my English is. People here like to use the word “hybrid” so maybe it’s that word. I studied what you call Cambridge English by the way of Croatian grade-school high-school & college textbooks and English Romantic poets. Then I moved to NYC at 19 and absorbed its stirred pot of accents and cusswords. I still have a Croatian accent and, doubtlessly, some bookishness lingers – though my poems sure like to curse. My view is that there’s nothing that doesn’t belong in a poem, there’s no language, high or low, that I won’t include if it fits. Even emoticons :). Dante was right.
W: A book that some reviews defined as awesome and terrifying, I could tell it was something that I never read before, a state-of-the-art poetry, did you expect this actual coverage and interest in your first book and how do you feel about this enthusiasm for your first poetry book?
Ana: Thank you. Well, I love it! It has been a solid little debut, I’m elated by the Lambda Literary Award nomination, the response I’ve been getting from U.S. readers and reviewers (most recently a right-on review in Jacket) and new connections with people on either side of the Atlantic. Suddenly I find myself with a whole new crew of friends and translators, and seeing my poems translated into Croatian & Serbian by the likes of Damir Šodan & Željko Mitić, being in conversation with European poets, theorists, feminists – all this makes me feel connected, grateful.
W: Could you tell us how words and phrases are written, are there impulsive instances, events or situations that influence your subject, object or style in writing? Is there something natural and deeper than just re-interpreting a kind of reality ? Your poetry is really pure and so clear, this lets readers have quite a few interpretations about the words and meanings…
Ana: I’m glad you think my poems are pure and clear. That might have something to do with writing in English: even though I know the language quite well by now, I like to handle its essential elements, use deceptively “simple” words, and leave things a little elementary, a little rough around the edges. That way the poems can be both rich and poor at the same time. And readers can populate them with their own memories, sonic & syntactic emotions. There’s no one true interpretation of a poem. I don’t believe in purity, but it can be a hot disguise. I don’t write quickly, there are long periods of no words at all, and then they come in gushes – so yes, I guess they do come spontaneously, and you can see the rhythm(s) of those gushes in the work when it’s done. I see my poems as a part of reality rather than as its interpretations, they are objects/beings that you can hold in your hands, that I can throw at you, that might be used as tools. Birds sing, people sing – that’s how I try to see it.
W: Before this interview we talked about the Genova International Poetry Festival covered by Fabio our senior Italy Editor, you checked it out through Web, what are your thoughts about this festival and its actual role in the international poetry scene?
Ana: This festival looks like a dream. For a few years I worked for PEN American Center, whose World Voices Festival aims to accomplish something similar to the Festival in Genova, but its domain is, to a great extent, fiction. Looking at the Genova Festival site, you only need to say the names of writers assembled there: Mark Strand, John Coetzee, Wole Soyinka, Evgenij Evtushenko, Wolf Biermann, Bernard Noël, Arjan Leka, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Besnik Mustafaj, Benny Andersen, Svetlana Carstean, Krisztina Toth, Sibila Petlevski… that variety is a kind of poem too. The American poetry scene can get too wrapped up in itself – its movements and periods, though often influenced by international poetry, do spiral into self-involvement. It’s a huge country and too few of its people speak other languages or read poetry in translation. That just now was a gross generalization, but the United States’ class structure and the practices of its publishing industry are facts. So, an event exclusively aimed at presenting international poetry, aiming to bring poetry into conversation with other artforms – it seems incredibly relevant, and – please invite me, I’d love to come!
W: Do you plan to come to Europe to let European audiences discover your poetry and readings?
Ana: Again, I’d love to – who will have me? As a “young” poet, writing poetry isn’t what I do for survival, I have a job – I work on organizing cultural/poetry events at the Center for the Humanities of the City University of New York (here’s an example of an event we recently hosted with several prominent poetry organizations, the Annual Chapbook Festival) – so my travels are often constrained by time and resources. t + $ = I’m coming! I hope I’d have something to offer European audiences – perhaps a taste of USA poetry processed through my Osteuropean head would be just the thing.
W: You are following many projects, readings, Web sites, is there enough time remaining to write another poetry book, could we expect some fine poetry release for this year?
Ana: This year a small book of poetry will be published by Cinematheque Press – a chapbook called Depth Hoar (Givre de profondeur). Are you familiar with the chapbook format? They are books anywhere from 12 to 40 pages in length, so not as long as a full-length manuscript, but sizeable enough to make a poetic whole. I am working on my next book – I’m about halfway there. I’ll stay silent on that one for now.
W: Readings (“STAIN OF POETRY: A READING SERIES”) seem to be one of your main activities, could you tell us more about this series you are working on with Amy King, how it is going, how have you become involved in this project?
Ana: Well, Amy was already curating this series when I joined her, and over the past few years we have developed it into one of New York’s (or at the very least Brooklyn’s!) major reading series. We hold readings on the last Friday of every month, and feature six poets reading their work for ten minutes each. The poets come from all over the USA, we feature both “established” and “emerging” poets, and if we’re lucky we get an international guest every now and then. You can read a longer history of the series in my recent piece for Otoliths magazine, or at the series site stainofpoetry.com.
Amy: Stain has been one wonderful way of giving back to the poetry world. I enjoy giving readings myself, but I also know that providing a venue for other readers is an option I’ve been happy to invest in for a number of years now. Hosting the readings each month brings us together regularly and helps sustain the sense of a local poetry community. Readings in general are platforms not only to hear each other’s works, but to interact and discuss poetics in a personal way that online discussion or daily life may not permit. The poetry community, like any community, needs to be cultivated, and as a member, volunteering to plant a few seeds or water the garden regularly is rewarding and an opportunity not to be missed by any poet.
W: A question about new media and communication: does the internet give you more power or more freedom for poetry dissemination? Is that compatible with a poet’s philosophy?
Ana: Yes, I think the internet certainly does provide an important (and egalitarian) new mode of dissemination, especially for poets who might traditionally have had a hard time getting heard, for small and experimental presses (there’s a thriving world of these here in the USA!) – the internet offers the platform for a truly alternative poetry scene. To quote Amy’s recent excellent interview on Huffington Post, “Poets are full of ingenuity, embracing it with an eye towards the shapes language takes. We see the changes in literacies, the technologies altering how people read and receive texts, and we react. With the advent of POD (print-on-demand) and the proliferation of E-books, small presses are springing from the giant’s loins and poets are doing it for themselves. From numerous niches, Whitman is stirring beneath our boot soles.” There’s nothing more compatible with the poet’s philosophy than finding a spot on the village green and saying one’s poems aloud, or handing them out. Walt Whitman would be proud of us, I think…
W: Could you tell us a bit about the difference between how poetry is received and disseminated in Europe (where there is not much enthusiasm for it) and the USA, where the enthusiasm appears to be considerable and poetry has many followers, as evidenced by the success of your reading series?
Ana: It surprises me that you say poetry is underappreciated in Europe – truthfully, I didn’t know that, but then I am not in Europe often enough to know. The USA is so huge, so though the number of people who enjoy poetry here might be miniscule compared to the masses who read, say, crime novels, there’s still strength in numbers – with so many writing and literary programs at universities, so many local and internet mini-scenes, you end up with quite a few readers. My answer to your question, and to the tendency to generalize about how poetry is or is not received, is to go local – look into poetry circles in major and minor towns all over Europe, look around on the internet, and I’ll bet my pen you’ll find some unexpected & wholly vibrant communities. For example, I did a lot of research into Croatian women poets, and I was delighted to discover a thriving network of writers & theorists I had no idea existed. Beyond the poetry supported by prominent publishers & national cultural organizations, there’s much wealth lurking in the avant-corners of Europa – there must be, I’m sure… but perhaps that’s just my acquired American optimism talking.
Remedios Varo (Spain 1908 – Mexico 1963), Ícono, 1945 [Icon] / Óleo, incrustaciones de nácar y hojas de oro sobre tríptico de madera [Oil, mother-of-pearl and gold leaf inlays on a wooden tryptich] / 60 x 39,3 x 5,5 / Malba – Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires / Reproduced with kind permission of Anna Alexandra Gruen.
http://www.nightcommute.org
http://stainofpoetry.com
