In Some Stylized Sense, Vulnerability
Dear Terese,
When we were invited to chat together I wondered where we might start. We’ve been friends for a few years and message every few weeks, our work has appeared in both genre magazines and literary journals, we’ve been on literary panels together, we both work across different forms (creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry), we’re both editors, and we each have projects coming out during a pandemic: you have your second chapbook Manifest with Gap Riot Press and I’ve my debut poetry collection Side Effects May Include Strangers with McGill-Queen’s University Press. However, the Puritan’s interviews editor Cho Min very kindly (and helpfully) provided us with a conversation starter through a 2018 University of Toronto convocation speech by Dionne Brand, explaining that she felt “both of our works does ‘a work’”.
I’ll get to your writing in this context in a moment, but I wanted to talk about other ways I see your art doing “a work.” Brand states in that speech: “Art does a work in the world. The movement into the big and beautiful world some of us are trying to create comes for me, through making art that reimagines, art that accounts, art that recovers the beautiful world from breakage.”
I think it’s quite amazing that in this time of isolation, of fragmented communities, you’ve been constantly reimagining the work of your peers across another medium and creating beauty that’s helping people (including yourself) recover from various forms of breakage.
During this pandemic you’ve been heavily involved on Twitter and Instagram with the #booklook hashtag where you and other artists post a makeup look inspired by a book on an almost daily basis (you did one for my anthology The Mythic Dream and it was amazing!). Covid-19 has been a particularly isolating experience for people, and many artists have had significant disruption to their readings, book launches, tours, and sense of engagement with their community. The response to the #booklook has been quite tremendous, with a lot of readers, book designers, artists, writers, and even publishers gleefully sharing them, engaging with them, and just expressing how much it means to have art reimagined in this way. And lately you’ve had a strong focus on the work of marginalized artists. I think it’s quite amazing that in this time of isolation, of fragmented communities, you’ve been constantly reimagining the work of your peers across another medium and creating beauty that’s helping people (including yourself) recover from various forms of breakage.
I see a lot of this community-building and engagement coming through your work with Augur as well, a magazine of speculative literature where you’re the Senior Poetry Editor. You frequently post about the state of the field, your desire to see more work from writers from marginalized backgrounds, and you’re constantly publishing new voices. I mention Augur in particular because that leads into your wonderful new chapbook, Manifest, which you’ve mentioned in an Arc Poetry Magazine interview features the kind of poetry you “might submit to Augur if [you] were not on the editorial team”.
Many of the poems from Manifest read to me as poems that “do a work.” I think in particular of a poem like “Aliens Visit the Caribbean,” which opens with “There is no leader, we take them to our women” and ends with: “When they leave, they promise / to tell their people that Earth was warm, was black, / cradles its pain in the sea.” Or the title poem, one of my favourites in the chapbook, which has this great line: “Here, freedom is its own language, / a series of swirling joints and bulbs.”
It’s great to see that a lot of the psychological complexity you brought to Surface Area is on display here too, in several intimate poems. I’ve been particularly interested by some of the conversations and interviews where you’ve discussed Manifest because you seem to set it apart in a lot of ways from Surface Area. The overt speculative elements like aliens, mermaids, and the mind-body problem are definitely a departure, but to me there's quite a bit of fascinating continuity between the two chapbooks. Take this section from the title poem in Surface Area: "I'll keep coming here / till we terraform the moon / light on the cracks / of our brains, type and token / voyeurs of each other's folds / in motion". That’s some meaty speculative stuff there in that first chapbook. In contrast, I feel like a poem like “En Masse” from Manifest could even have slipped into Surface Area with its intimate, relational focus. I mean, just look at this: “In my web, you come to me. I eat you. / I eat your ideas, you wrap yourself / in sheets with the smell of me, / chemical and waxy from the hair on / my skin.” There’s some very dreamy, intimate violence in there akin to something like “Attention” from Surface Area where the narrator has dreams of a lover accidentally stabbing them, with lines like “In the dream I forgive him but he does / not forgive himself so I don’t tell him / I thank the knife and the scar, / my lover fastened and scabbed over.”
Conversations around speculative poetry often state how narrative is a key component. In the poems in Manifest there’s definitely more of a sense of overall narratives than those in Surface Area, but some of the poems in your first chapbook would still be called narrative poetry. And interestingly, “We Watch the Sun Die,” the opening poem in Manifest, reads to me as the least traditionally narrative-driven poem in the chapbook.
So I’m curious, aside from the speculative content, how do you see Manifest as building upon or diverging from your work in Surface Area?
—Dominik
Dear Dominik,
I admit, I was a little nervous at first, at having to unite our works in this way, but I like the way you’ve contextualized this conversation. I am often at a loss at how to discuss my work, further (secretly) lament the level of scrutiny and attention of the lens the analyzer brings, which I am morally obligated to match in response. But you are such a careful editor and friend.
I often describe my work as narrative as a way to get my fiction fix. It matters to me to imbue my poetry with the same sorts of characters, plots, settings, and themes as a short story or a flash piece. I want the reader to go on some sort of journey, and arrive at a different place, or at the same place, but with a different mindset. I like to do this interpersonally, I like to write about intimacy and relationships and romance and nature—such violent, passionate, fulfilling concepts, with lots of space to swim around in. There’s just so much story there.
I see Manifest mainly as an experiment. I only started writing speculative poetry after I’d become the poetry editor of Augur. Many of the poems in the chapbook were written just last year, in 2019. I don’t think it was a matter of seeking permission, or overcoming a fear, but turning on a switch. I think a lot about obligations, what I am supposed to do, what people expect of me. I decided that, as a speculative poetry editor, I should—I ought to—write speculative poetry. Or else, why was I there? I discovered along the way that I liked writing these poems, so this chapbook was a way of asking my friends and other poetry-readers if they liked the poems as much as I did.
Your comment on continuity is interesting. It reminds me of something my spec-writer friend Benjamin Ghan said: “There is no genre, only setting.” I can ask myself, “Am I writing the same sorts of poems, but in a new setting?” If so, I believe it was something I feared. I didn’t want to be a poet who wrote about the same things all the time—I wanted range. Then I remembered the topics I chose to write about anyway—nature, romance, intimacy—and how expansive they are. But I also don’t think of continuity as synonymous with sameness. I think the former is more dynamic. I think Manifest is sort of a lateral shift, though. I am dipping my toe, once again, into something new.
I see Manifest as diverging from Surface Area in a few ways. First is form—how the poems look on the page. I love couplets (I’ve talked about this so many times in interviews), but this book is decidedly not that form. Second, is, as I said, that element of experimentation with content and narrative. I wasn’t taking risks in Surface Area. For me, in Surface Area, it was simply, is the way in which I’m writing about X good? For Manifest, it’s also, is it good to write about X at all? Is the way in which I’m writing about X good? I think the poems also explore, in some way, my own intimacy—Blackness, in some stylized sense, vulnerability—whereas in Surface Area, I could invent characters/speakers and discuss their intimacy. I care more about how these poems are received. It’s like a second debut.
I don’t always think about the ways in which my work is doing work. To be honest, I leave that for other people. At the same time, I am aware that, as someone who puts their work out into the public—the very definition of publish—I am responsible for the way it moves in the world. My work is doing a work regardless of what I do or say or feel, simply because I have put it out in the world, placed it in the hands of readers and editors. Enriching my own education in the modes of poetic consumption has really helped me to understand ways in which art can do work, specifically, the way poems can act in innovative ways. We both went to the launch for Adam Sol’s How a Poem Moves, and we know that there is so much more to engaging with a poem than whether or not we “understand” it, or whether or not we can immediately glean what work art is doing.
I don’t always think about the ways in which my work is doing work. [...] At the same time, I am aware that, as someone who puts their work out into the public [...] I am responsible for the way it moves in the world.
I think Side Effects May Include Strangers is doing work. I may be overstepping, but I think the text feels as if it must do work. A lot of your creative writing engages in disability and the body, especially pain, and many of the poems in this collection have a guiding undercurrent, gently turning and opening readers to a direction. I wonder how you see yourself in relation to the work your poetry is doing—are you doing work through your poems? Are you and your poems doing the same work? How do you think about responsibility in terms of the poetry you put into the public?
There is one thing I’d been thinking about over the days, which was the different ways our texts engage with the concept of desire. I love writing about desire, because it so smoothly falls into conflict—how to disrupt that desire, how to let it break and bleed into everything, at least in my work. Especially in the earlier parts of Side Effects May Include Strangers, I saw the speakers of your poems really reach into the vulnerability that comes with asking for what you want, or asking others to re-evaluate their perceptions of the world.
The first poem in the collection, “Let us for a moment call this pain by other words,” is nearly a series of questions about how to actively reconsider pain—to move away from decidedly negative, violent language, and into the folds of beauty.
“On a scale of anglerfish to northern lights
how bright are the flashes in your head?When I touch this, here, which constellations
light the sky behind your eyes?”
I see it as something the speaker wants, a gentle way to guide. Another poem, “Other body prayer,” takes this imploring to a different level, where the speaker seems to be asking the particles within space—bodies in their own right—to gift the ways they are uniform, somewhat tenable, like nature.
“o
let us be like you
flawed
failures”…
“o
let us be
let us be
let us be”
I took this here as a desire for stillness, the lack of cacophony and political stages that swirl around only certain kinds of bodies and lives.
In the ableist society in which we live, disabled people are made to ask for their accommodations, to possibly open themselves up to vulnerability and exposure, where non-disabled people can just assume things will be catered to them. But you already know this. I don’t speak of desire here in a cavalier or salacious way, but as a way to express or dream or think about a mode of living in which one can access what they need, a way to actively carve the future one wants. I think your work does this very well.
—Terese
Dear Terese,
I remember reading about your fiction fix regarding your poetry, I think it was in an Arc Poetry Magazine interview. You wrote about how the “I” of a poem is never you, that you need a distance to the work and you don’t want that personal connection in your own poems, which I thought was fascinating given how many of your poems have a clear first person narrator. I had a conversation with a friend a few months ago where they expressed considerable surprise at learning that the voice(s) in Surface Area were not those of Terese the person but rather personas, especially because of their impressive psychology and emotional intimacy. I think the strength and intimacy of the narrative voice is what makes readers think of the poems in a confessional vein. I imagine the I of Manifest must read differently because of the settings and the fantastical elements. Still, I wonder even there as many readers read speculative elements mainly as allegorical. I wonder in particular for a poem like “La Diablesse,” where the I of the poem relates an experience of sexual abuse. I’m curious, in your capacity as the poetry editor at Augur, do you find you react differently as a reader/editor to spec poems that are more more/less intimate in voice? Since character and psychological complexity play an important role in your work, do you find yourself more drawn to that type of poetry when reading submissions? If not, what are some of the elements that draw you in otherwise?
I’ve had a number of conversations over the last few years with readers and even poets who’ve expressed difficulty connecting with material they feel is emotionally detached or more specifically is not speaking to an intimate, personal experience. I think a lot of folks have an expectation that poetry is primarily a form of structured creative nonfiction. I like that you bring up Adam Sol’s book How a Poem Moves in this context. There’s definitely a misconception that poems are riddles to be solved, which is often how they’re taught and so how people later approach them. Matthew Zapruder has a good book on that called Why Poetry. (As an aside, and looping back to Augur, I haven’t heard so many concerns of poems as riddles from genre readers, and I wonder if it has to do with the tendency of speculative poetry to be more narrative-driven.)
Poets get the “What does this poem mean?” question all the time. My poems about pain are probably those that occasion this most for me. I’ve repeatedly had some variation of “In your poems about pain, what is it specifically that you want me to understand about pain?”
Some poems are more overtly political, but others simply state: this is an experience worthy of words and beauty and art and I will celebrate it how I choose.
You’re right that Side Effects May Include Strangers feels like it must do work. As you point out, the opening poem “Let us for a moment call this pain by other words” sets up a frame of experience: that disabled experience, that the chronically pained body, can be a place of beauty rather than simply tragedy or sorrow. Some poems are more overtly political, but others simply state: this is experience worthy of words and beauty and art and I will celebrate it how I choose.
The concern over responsibility connects well with this. I hope my poems help able-bodied readers rethink some of their conceptions or approaches to disability, but it is equally important to me to have disabled folks read the poems and recognize their own experience rendered poetically. On the other hand, the experience of disability isn’t uniform, and I’m certain poems won’t connect with some disabled readers. The idea that they must is rooted in an ableist oversimplification of disability. But, if Side Effects can help a single disabled reader disregard the ableist notion that disability is an unpoetic subject, I’ll consider the book a success. I know that for me encountering work that engages with disability—I’m thinking, among others, of the American anthology Beauty is a Verb, the work of Shane Neilson, and more recently Roxanna Bennett who also has chronic pain--was instrumental in my development as a poet.
On the other hand, the experience of disability isn’t uniform, and I’m certain poems won’t connect with some disabled readers. The idea that they must is rooted in an ableist oversimplification of disability.
That isn’t to say I didn’t have hesitations when I wrote Side Effects May Include Strangers.
For one, there’s a tendency to have A disability text become THE disability text. I don’t have enough of an ego to think mine will be defining in that way on a macro level, but I mean on a micro level. Often, someone reads one text by a marginalized person and then projects the experience of that text onto all people in that group. Fortunately, there are more and more texts being published by disabled authors, in Canada and in general, but there’s always that risk. (Plug moment for a book—for my money, the most important recent book on disability poetics in Canada is Roxanna Bennett’s Unmeaningable, which is winning all the awards). Second, when a book deals heavily with marginalized experience there’s a certain fear of being pigeonholed as a writer. If people enjoy this, will they want to read another book by me if it engages with a different subject? Or, I’m working on a collection of creative nonfiction about bodies—will readers want to read another book from me dealing with disability, even in a different genre? I can’t control those things in the market, I can only write what speaks to me, and for now it’s mainly material engaging with bodies. I’ll add, this collection is also my debut, so it’ll be read more widely (hopefully, anyway!) than my chapbook. So there are obviously some nerves there because many poems are intimate in experience.
This brings me back to my opening comment. You mention that Manifest is different from Surface Area in that it explores some of your own Blackness and stylized vulnerability, and that you care more how these poems are received than those in your previous chapbook. You wrote about considerations like “Is it good to write about X at all? Is the way in which I’m writing about X good?” Did that affect your writing process compared to Surface Area? Did mining more personal material make the process easier, more difficult, or was it mostly the same in the end? I’m thinking in particular of something like “Unbraided, Clean” in Manifest, an intergenerational poem of great intimacy where the ghost of a woman’s mother plaits her hair and the pregnant woman contemplates doing the same for her own child in time. That piece reminded me of your creative nonfiction, “The Big Comb,” with its mother-daughter intimacy and the significance of your mother working with your hair. There, like the poem, you even end on a reflection of learning to work hair for a potential daughter of your own.
—Dominik
Dear Dominik,
I have never assumed the speaker was the author, or had an authorial flavour. I don’t do it with fiction, I’ve never done it with songs, and I definitely don’t do it with poetry. I was neutral about this assumption in the past, but now I’m starting to associate that connection with some level of innocent entitlement on the part of the reader. I like to attend author interviews for that reason, to see if the author will explicitly mention that they are the I which they write about. I, as a reader, don’t want to assume I know anything personal or intimate about the writer through their work, unless they have said so. I have never experienced the violence I write about. But the fact that readers think my work is intimate is something I accept and allow, as I think it shows how convincingly I can create worlds.
I had never really thought about readers interpreting the speculative as allegorical in the context of poetry, and I don't know if this reduces or increases the vulnerability I experienced with this new chapbook. I wasn't sure what I was writing, "La Diablesse," toward—deep down—but I found the idea of speaking about violence toward women through the form of a mythical creature interesting. Either way, I am telling a story.
As an editor, I do like reading those intimate-voice poems, whether they are personas or not. But I feel those are also a little riskier, as they can very easily lose that technical poetic quality. (What do I mean by this? I'm not sure, but I know it when I see it.) I'm mostly drawn to grounded, narrative poems, and there's lots of intimacy in there that can be expressed in different ways.
You’re right in that in general genre readers might not consider poetry enigmas in their approach, but many of the genre readers I know have university degrees, and the poetry they were exposed to there seemed to have put up some barriers. I’ve seen a lot of narrative or descriptive speculative poems that could really be fiction. I don’t know what that says about me, though.
You write that, “...if Side Effects can help a single disabled reader disregard the ableist notion that disability is an unpoetic subject, I’ll consider the book a success.” How often do you think about your audience? Are they with you, as you write? Do you think you’ll always write for the same audience? Is it a conversation your editor, publicist and publisher bring up with you later on? I believe I always write with an audience in mind. In some ways, I feel like I write for an audience, rather than for myself. I don’t think this is a bad thing, however; I love to share my work.
It wasn’t so much my own personal, intimate Blackness that was on display [...], but putting Blackness in a speculative context, and in a way I had never done before. I wanted to get it ‘right.’ I wanted to do something, ‘good.’ I believe the process was the same, in the end.
The fact that I hold my audience so closely when I write causes me varying levels of anxiety when it comes to publishing my work. Both of my chapbooks are different, but neither of them were “projects,” per se. I wrote and wrote, and then collected what I had written. If I’m being honest, what really made Manifest a site of vulnerability for me was knowing that I was presenting speculative themes to a “literary” audience, and I didn’t know how it would be received. It wasn’t so much my own personal, intimate Blackness that was on display (I write personas in poems, unlike my essays), but putting Blackness in a speculative context, and in a way I had never done before. I wanted to get it “right.” I wanted to do something “good.” I believe the process was the same, in the end.
When it comes to writing something for Side Effects dips its toe into the speculative, too, especially in the section, “Metamorphosis,” in content and tone. However, I don’t think this is a departure, or even a lateral shift in the themes of your collection. I know you are wholly steeped in the speculative, but what did it mean for you to introduce this into your writing. What are you speculating?
—Terese
Dear Terese,
I guess I should divulge to our hypothetical readers that we actually had a phone conversation before this round of messaging and we briefly discussed where we wanted to end this chat. The benefits of being friends. Or cheats, if you prefer. Either way, it was our first phone chat since the pandemic started since we normally talk through text. What a joy to hear your voice!
I think your comments about audience are a good place to end, in part because it allows me to loop back to earlier comments and to connect it to your work outside of poetry. I do think about audience in relation to my own work, but I don’t believe it’s to the same extent as you. Often enough, especially with poetry, I decide to write and it’s only about the work. I don’t really consider where to submit it, or who might read it, if anyone. That’s especially the case in early drafts where I’m simply interested in working with something creatively. However, there are definitely situations in which I write with an intended audience. When I was working on Side Effects, I did write certain poems with an able-bodied audience in mind, and others for a disabled audience. Consideration of audience tends to directly affect the voice I use in my writing. However, I did at one point catch myself unconsciously writing predominantly to an able-bodied audience and I started shifting some of my process.
Interestingly, to me anyway, apparently when I did have considerations of audience they seemed to do predominately with the elements I just mentioned (able-bodied vs disabled) more than genre/speculative. I don’t believe I’ve ever considered any sort of “literary” vs “genre” divide in audience with my poetry. I’ve had poems with more overt speculative elements published in literary journals and poems with what I consider no genre elements published in genre magazines. (I don’t know if you recall, but when we were on a speculative poetry panel together in Ottawa I mentioned how many of Michael Ondaatje’s poems, especially his early work, would fit right in with a lot of genre magazines, or even somewhere like Augur.) I think the lines are so blurred with poetry in particular that I’ve never really given any thought about consciously “introducing” speculative elements in my writing. Those elements tend to sneak into my work. For example, The Fiddlehead published a very quiet piece of creative nonfiction of mine called “When you could not hear, I spoke” about being alone at my elderly friend’s funeral and at one point I imagine the surrounding urns interrogating me about her life. And I’ve written elsewhere about having a perception disorder called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (Todd’s Syndrome) and the ways in which the weird has always been a part of my life in some fashion. I guess I just see the world in that strange light, so it’s never been about specifically introducing it in the writing.
I’m very interested in your considerations about audience and genre, especially about your sense of vulnerability over presenting speculative themes to a “‘literary’ audience” as you put it. It seems to me there’s potential for personal conflict or challenge there. You mentioned in an earlier comment that you think “a lot about obligations, what [you’re] supposed to do, what people expect of you” and that you felt you ought to write specifically speculative poetry if you were going to edit it for a magazine. Earlier this year I reprinted a wonderful essay of yours called “On Seeking External Validation” in the program for The FOLD where you discussed the extent to which not only audience but external validation (from other poets especially) is a driving force for your writing.
Do you have any concerns about the potential challenge(s) of reconciling conflicting expectations for your career? You’re getting published in both literary and genre markets, but are you ever worried about having poets you admire advising you to move away from speculative poetry? Especially after following up Surface Area with Manifest? Did it help to have writers like David James Brock (who you’ve mentioned in the past was your introduction to speculative poetry), Paul Vermeersch, Rasiqra Revulva, and Nisa Malli doing well with similar speculative work? (Remember how we were supposed to read with Paul, Rasiqra, Nisa, Em Dial, and K.S.Y. Varnam at the Ephemera reading series but then Covid happened? What a fun night that would have been.) I hope this isn’t too sneaky a question for the career conflict. I just think this is a good last question for me to finish with because you’re gaining a reputation not only in “literary” and “genre” circles (yes, yes, those are arbitrary distinctions and artificial divides!) but also as an editor at Augur and I’m curious about directions your career may head.
(I was going to also ask about the challenge of reconciling a strong desire for external validation with your role as an editor where you are that source of external validation for others, but that seems even sneakier, so let’s leave that one unasked and unanswered. Unless you want to answer it. In which case, go right ahead, my friend.)
—Dominik
Dear Dominik,
I do remember that panel, because I was so emotional afterward. I think I somehow have it in my head that audiences of certain genre will only like certain things, and if I offer something that’s not within that range, then I’ll be met with—and should be met with—confusion (best case scenario) or scorn (worst case scenario). I like things to be stable and predictable, across my life, so that’s where I feel this mindset comes from. Audiences, I feel, should be somewhat predictable. But, as you said, individual people—like editors of journals—aren’t always going to think the same way. Tastes differ. I have seen this personally.
Still, that rigidity persists. Predictability naturally comes with expectations, in many realms. I expect editors of X to at least read X. In becoming a speculative poetry editor, I felt I should start reading that sort of work, and since I was a poet, I took it a step further. I didn’t think it was appropriate of me to edit a kind of work I had little experience in, so I took steps to rectify that (I like to think that’s me being responsible, holding myself accountable, maybe).
What it comes down to—the whole audience, expectation, external validation business—is a great awareness of how authority and power dynamics operate in literary community spaces. If I’m an editor—some small authority in at least the ways in which a work can be made better—then I must have experience and familiarity in the work I’m editing. In the same way, if I’m purporting to or attempting to get better at a particular genre, I’d like to receive some external validation from those experts—people with greater experience than me in that field—to know that I’m on the right track. Art is so subjective. We need to constantly discuss and deliberate with each other on how to do good work, and how to make our work better.
There is some cognitive dissonance there, holding ‘small writer Terese’ and ‘editor Terese’ on separate planes. But I also believe that if I were going to attempt to reconcile these sides, I’d have to make a lot of assumptions. I do make a lot of assumptions.
I like that question—I’d never really thought about how I reconcile my external validation with my role as a gatekeeper. There is some cognitive dissonance there, holding “small writer Terese” and “editor Terese” on separate planes. But I also believe that if I were going to attempt to reconcile these sides, I’d have to make a lot of assumptions. I do make a lot of assumptions. For example, I assume other writers are accustomed to rejection, as I am, which makes my job as an editor less painful. I’m excited about my role as an editor, not only so I can advocate for marginalized writers, especially Black writers, within speculative circles, but also so I can continue to hold myself accountable to other writers, if I want to call myself some small authority. I take it seriously. I have greater responsibility here. All “small writer Terese” has to do is write.
I’d always planned on writing both literary and genre, but I don’t think I’m at the point where I need to genuinely consider how it’ll affect me—the worry is all in my head. I guess the most frustrating thing will be if “literary” audiences take me less seriously because I write speculative work. However, I am worried about poets I admire advising me to move away from speculative poetry. Between us, I believe it has already happened. But I think this is because “speculative poetry” as it’s conceived is very broad (like speculative fiction), and I feel like more literary poets might expect a certain kind of speculative poetry from me, while genre readers might expect a different kind (Audience!). I’ve started calling Manifest “fantasy poetry” to try to avoid this potential confusion and conflict. But it does help to have other speculative poets around me, in the traditional literary scene, doing similar work. I remember reading David James Brock’s book, Ten-Headed Alien, and messaging him (a stranger at the time) on Facebook to tell him I was so happy to have found it. On another, lateral level, I’m also interested in Afrofuturism and Black speculative literature, so, regarding my own work, I think I’ll be leaning into that as time goes on. I want to explore that more, especially as someone living in the diaspora.
Whenever I mention these things—I’m anxious about external validation, I write for an audience as much as I do for myself—there’s always someone hopping in my DMs or approaching me at an event telling me I don’t need to worry, but those are never the people in my position right now. They are always people who’ve been where I was, and moved on. I, too, will move on (hopefully, eventually). I joke about longing to get to the age where I don’t care anymore. I’m so early in my “career.” But there will always be something I don’t know, always some way to be better. Always.
—Terese
Dear Terese,
I think that’s a perfect place to end, on moving on, on age, since you sent me that last part a day after your 25th birthday. What a strange time for such a milestone. I’m so excited to see where your career takes you. And who knows, perhaps someday we’ll see each other again in person. Eventually we might even read together again, with a live audience. Here’s hoping. Until then, thank you for this lovely chat and be safe.
—Dominik
Dear Dominik,
You’re aspirational, you. It’s always wonderful to talk with you, and, of course, yes, we could talk for days. I often find myself being vulnerable with people when I least expect it, when I’m boiling over and out of my mouth, and afterward, I am so tired. Thank you for guiding me, for taking care of me in this space. I look forward to the launch of Side Effects May Include Strangers, all your future projects, and when we once again can stand side-by-side.
—Terese
