Underpainting the Poem: A Conversation with stephanie roberts

UNMET, the second collection by poet stephanie roberts, is a work which spans across Canada, from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia to Québec. The poems are both singular and vast, wading through moments, objects, and places with visceral clarity while guiding the reader through the thrashing waves of its overarching themes: loneliness, pandemic, domestic violence, ecological crisis, police brutality, and more. The work is grounded and groundbreaking, pointed and sprawled. roberts tackles the idea of being “unmet” from multiple approaches—what happens when our expectations fall flat? What happens when there is something yet to be known, someone yet to be discovered?

I write to stephanie from my apartment in Montréal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood. My home for over eight years, which shares a history with stephanie and is featured prominently in UNMET. We talk about our experiences in Montréal and love of Dianne Seuss, and the themes of heat, COVID, desire, philosophy, and Cardi B which pervade throughout the text. It was a joy to get to talk to stephanie about her gorgeous new collection, forthcoming from Biblioasis this spring.

Olive Andrews: Firstly, I want to say what a pleasure it is to get the chance to speak with you, stephanie. UNMET is such a stunning book. I was entranced by the fluidity of each poem into the next, the specificity of objects and place: the highball glass, the twill jacket, the provinces and burroughs, in tandem with these larger ideas of almost prophetic instinct: knowing someone or something is yet to be met. How did this work come about?

stephanie roberts: Aw, thank you so much! You're lovely! UNMET is the first collection that I've written toward a theme. My previous collection rushes from the river disappointment was a curation of previously published work. I'm fascinated by the human mind and philosophy. These two things combine to a kind of obsession with the cause, nature, and function of desire. My thoughts on desire have been influenced by the Welsh psychotherapist Adam Phillips, who said in The Paris Review that we learn what we desire through conversation. In writing UNMET I entered into a conversation of my own thoughts and the philosophies of others, Socrates and the apostle Paul, as examples. By publishing it I'm inviting the reader to enter into that conversation.

Conventional understanding of desire is often reduced to lust or greed like the pull of Tolkien's ring, but, rather, I have come to see desire as an engine that is essentially morally neutral. It is the impetus whereby effective or ineffective decisions are rendered moral or immoral decisions. For years I was confused by the distance between what people would say and what they would actually do. It is my nature to accept people at face value so I was very confused.

As I understood desire, it became clear to me that if people were self-deceptive in terms of their motivations, then they couldn't help being seemingly deceptive to me, because they were unclear about their own desire. I was further encouraged in my thinking by something else Adam Phillips said: “We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.” In UNMET I dive into my appetite. These verses are my unabashed swim through desire. What we say contrasted by what we do. What we say is the story that makes us able to live with ourselves. It's clothing. You can take it off at night but desire is a tattoo, it's in your skin and it's undeniable, because the evidence of it is what you are doing, not what you say.

Olive Andrews: UNMET begins with a passage from Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s Third-Millennium Heart: “I can imagine you, even though I haven’t seen you yet.” I love this conceptualization of not knowing, or not yet having met, as an active state. Can you speak to how being “unmet” became pervasive in this text?

stephanie roberts: I endeavour to be a pragmatic person. I tend not to worry by nature and intentionally because I don't find it useful. It's to be obsessed with the future instead of enjoying the now. Now is where we spend all of our time and I would like to enjoy every minute of it if I can. In other words, unmet is where we live. My friend Harold Hoefle asked me if I looked through the book for typos and I said, “Fuck no! Why would I do that? To what end?” It's a run to the past. I don't look for trouble and rework the earth for pain. I insert joyful imaginings in the gap between where I am now and the future—that is why that quote from Third-Millennium Heart, translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen by the way, felt important to me.

What we say is the story that makes us able to live with ourselves. It's clothing. You can take it off at night but desire is a tattoo, it's in your skin and it's undeniable, because the evidence of it is what you are doing, not what you say.

OA: There are so many women who appear in your poetry, from Cardi B to Marilyn Monroe to Beyoncé. How do these figures influence your writing?

sr: These women are archetypes. I wouldn't say they influence the writing as much as they are compressed representations of ideals that are useful for me. Cardi and Beyoncé are opposing archetypes. Beyoncé seems private and soft-spoken while Cardi does not. That they both appear speaks to my resistance to stereotype. I want to write from a place of being both. I am leaning into being multitudes.

Marilyn Monroe is a fascinating figure in American history. She was born into poverty, abused by the systems that were supposed to protect her, like child services and the police. She was admirably ambitious. She understood the power of her face and body and she wasn't afraid to use what others saw as her strength to get what she wanted, which was really respect. At different times of writing this work I returned to how much she was motivated by the desire to redress the injuries of her past. All of this knowledge of power and desire would lift her to the heights of iconic fame and destroy her. That's the American nightmare in the closet of the real American dream. That is caveat emptor.

OA: I love your play with space throughout this text. The first and final poems both anchor themselves to the bottom of the page, playing with emptiness. The formatting of “Fetter” reminds me especially of Diane Seuss’s famous foldout poem in frank: sonnets. How did arranging the poems impact the work?

sr: I loved that foldout moment in frank. It shows so much affection for the reader. I adore Seuss.

Poetry ought to engage the reader on multiple levels. Having the reader fold out a page (Diane Seuss), make a scroll (Tyehimba Jess), or turn the book sideways is to be able to deliver an additional interaction to the reading experience. It was important to me that the opening and closing poems of this collection require the reader to scan to the bottom of their page. The first poem says buckle your seatbelts and the final poem lands the plane.

OA: In your poetics statement you describe your writing practice as “chaos,” can you speak to how that applied to the writing of UNMET?

sr: Chaos. Yeah, that's mostly true but I'm embarrassed by that truth. At that link to Poetry in Canada I elaborate on my process, and it is the way that I wrote UNMET. Further to that, I am trying to be more organized. That process is effective. It got the job done twice, but now I think I've created my work in spite of this way, not because of it. I used to say the only non-variable in my day is my espresso with breakfast, but I think I actually get more done if I keep to a schedule which includes a regular wake-up, brekkie, lunch, and dinner then bed by 10:00. I'm battling my nature for the good of a more disciplined output.

OA: Heat is such a pervading theme throughout this work: the magma in “I WORRY how low,” the flamethrower in “Establishing an Airway,” arson, lava, volcanic beach. In “EINIGE KREISE (Several Circles)” the heat breaks: “I imagine it had to be cold.” Can you speak a bit to how temperature plays a role in your work?

sr: Is it? Your comment makes me think of that Frost poem, "Fire and Ice."

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

We're Canadians. We talk about the weather. The second poem opens with wildfires in BC, which probably all Canadians have experienced the effects of—including my relatives in New York City who bought HEPA filters and kept their windows closed a couple summers back. The world is heating up literally and figuratively. It's interesting. I need to think about it longer than this interview permits. I'm not being evasive. Thinking about it has my gears turning. Heat. Desire. Our end. Have you ever seen red? I got really angry once and literally saw red. It felt like my whole head was on fire. So perhaps, I try to occupy that space in writing, the space of being overcome with almost becoming an outside observer of my actions. We barricade ourselves against the cold, but in the height of our summers we have to get out of the car, leave our abodes; we have to surrender to the heat.

OA: The COVID pandemic is a constant presence throughout these poems. Could you speak to how writing during lockdowns influenced the book? How has the text’s relationship to the pandemic shifted throughout the process?

sr: Introverts will understand how energizing it was to have the world turn more slowly however briefly that occurs. Someone, probably on Bluesky, said, “I don't know how to explain to someone without empathy why we should be compassionate.” I think we forget how many people died. I remember in the earliest days watching what was happening in Italy. A doctor was crying on camera saying we lost a generation. I believe that man was felled by that virus as many doctors were in the early days. It is sad that the speed with which that vaccine was created and dispersed isn't universally considered a modern miracle.

The only sane course left to us as a society is a compassionate society. Compassion as our agreed upon mode of operation. I have a line in the pandemic poem "May Progress" that “compassion is good for the economy.” I believe that. Every man for themselves leads to the futility of The Walking Dead. The US has begun a diabolical experiment to the contrary of a compassionate society. The economy isn't markets, and year-end bottom lines. It's in the lives of the people. The US is about to find out that ignorance and cruelty will hurt everyone who doesn't have the wealth to go off in their own rocket ships. It takes courage to prioritize compassion.

The only sane course left to us as a society is a compassionate society. Compassion as our agreed upon mode of operation. I have a line in the pandemic poem 'May Progress' that 'compassion is good for the economy.' I believe that.

I often think of the story in Genesis where God questions Cain, after Cain has killed his brother Abel out of jealousy. God asks him, "Where is your brother Abel?” and Cain says he doesn't know, then he further answers with the question, “Am I my brother's keeper?” Listen, if your religion doesn't teach that the correct answer is yes, they are lying to you.

OA: I’m writing to you from Montréal’s NDG borough, which is featured prominently in UNMET. I loved the references to “swankass Sherbrooke West” and “the hallway chaos of NDG.” I’d love to hear more about your relationship to the neighbourhood and the role it plays in your poetry.

sr: This is my favourite question. Shout out to NDG. I think it was Richard Hugo in The Triggering Town who encouraged me not to worry if the reader didn't know what NDG was or where Girouard Street was located. The specificity of these places invigorate the work rather than subtracting from any notion of universality. It's why I'm excited by the work of writers from marginalized communities. I don't need to keep rereading my own reality. The Black diaspora is varied. I want to hear and experience other places and other viewpoints. The more different from my own, the better. I tell the writers I critique, every Canadian thinks their poem about sitting by a campfire drinking beer is interesting. It isn't. It's how that experience differs in the specificity of the poet that makes a poem worthwhile.

I moved to NDG from New York City to get married, and my now ex-husband rented a place facing Sherbrooke Street West. I was sick of what I felt was the dog-eat-dog tempo of NYC. Our apartment neighbours on Sherbrooke turned out to be volatile and our move to Girouard Street moreso. But it didn't disturb me because the situations lacked the menace and desperation I experienced growing up in the city. Eventually we moved to the suburbs, which is harder to write about because of the beigeness of it.

The specificity of these places invigorate the work rather than subtracting from any notion of universality. It's why I'm excited by the work of writers from marginalized communities. I don't need to keep rereading my own reality.

OA: What influences you as a writer outside of literature?

sr: Everything! Olive, I am curious about other cultures, languages, nature, and animals. I'm curious about how other people live. If I visit Tucson, I check the housing market. I did the same thing in Italy. The strength of metaphor making is seeing how one thing is like something else. The more distant the connection, the stronger the metaphor. Robert Haas put it this way: don't think salt/pepper, think salt/wound.

I'm impressionable. Watching cooking shows makes me cook. Cooking and making poetry are the same. I went to an exhibit that included the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker and I noticed in her landscapes that she did this coloured underpainting. She began her canvases by painting the whole thing, pink or red or whatever. I saw how letting the unlikely colour show through the finished work enlivened the result. I used that technique in my own painting, but it's transferrable to poetry.

In UNMET, from the beginning, I knew I was going to "underpaint" the collection with titular poems that would run throughout, poems that would remind the reader of the unfinished nature of journey. Destinations are cool, but most of our time is spent in pursuit if we are lucky.

OA: What questions are you hoping to be asked about UNMET that I haven’t asked?

sr: To answer this question is to confess to staring at myself in the mirror, which I'm unwilling to confess.