Saturday

An Interview with Stephanie Christie (2019)





Jack Ross, ed.: Poetry NZ Yearbook 2019 (March 2019)

An Interview with Stephanie Christie
[via email – 8 August-12 September, 2018]



Stephanie Christie

Stephanie Christie


‘I’ve been publishing and performing poetry for twenty years, while living in a lot of different places in Aotearoa. Ten years ago I changed my active name, Will, back to my birth name, Stephanie. I live in Hamilton in the Waikato with my partner and an elegant hound. I work as a creative coach, and also teach adult literacy skills, run community art classes, and edit instructional materials.

The selection in this issue combines new material with (recent) classic hits, to share a sense of my work with you. The pieces show the range of forms I use, along with the voice and vision that run through everything I create.

My creative practice has always been a space in which I can challenge myself to go outside of what I know. This has led me into collaborations, poetry in theatre, sound poetry, visual poetry, songs, installations and video poetry. On a good day, I have no idea what I’m doing and am a hundred percent committed to doing it. This is exactly where I need to be.’


Select Bibliography:

Poetry Books:
  • [as Will Joy Christie]. luce cannon. Auckland: Titus Books, 2007.
  • The Facts of Light. deciBel Series 001. Ed. Pam Brown. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2014.
  • Carbon Shapes and Dark Matter. Pokeno: Titus Books, 2015.

Zines:
  • Ravel (2001)
  • Urbane Mysts (2001)
  • Orientalisman (2002)
  • WA.N/S.TED (2003)
  • Femme fatality (2005)
  • self [help/harm] (2005)
  • Re:[play]er (2006)
  • My findings (2008)
  • crzy (2009)
  • Art-icu-late (2009)
  • W.inter (2010)
  • So light and so fair (2010)
  • The calling (2011)
  • Bloom (2014)
  • Wingettes (2014)
  • First the wheel then the revolution (2014)
  • I like the idea I have of you so much (2014)
  • Freak out! (2015)
  • Nix (2015)
  • Runt (2017)
  • Fakelore (2018)

Multimedia Projects:
  • ‘Arcadia’, collaboration with choreographer Alexa Wilson at Soliton, Auckland, 2003.
  • 'Husk', collaboration with composer Alex Taylor, Auckland University, 2012.
  • 'Home Heart Land', poetry in devised theatre, Hamilton Fringe Festival, 2012.
  • Two video poems with videographer Paul Bradley, featured in HUFF, 2012/2013.
  • 'Aubade', installation at Hamilton Museum, Intraspace Project, 2013.
  • 'Clean as you go', installation with artist Paul Bradley, Hamilton Arts Festival, 2014.
  • ‘Storm Warning’, poetry in collaborative performance, Hamilton Fringe Festival, 2015.
  • ‘Why So Normal?’ collaboration in Hamilton City of the Future, 2015.
  • ‘True True’ art exhibition, visual poetry installation, Calder and Lawson Gallery, 2017.

Secondary Sources:
Online Resources:
Some of the poems in this selection have already appeared in the following publications: ‘Felt Calculus’ in Atlanta Review (US); ‘Mag[net]ic’ in The Capilano Review (Canada); ‘Unfinished Objects’ in Cordite (Australia); ‘Poverty Mentality’ and ‘Mall Song’ in Landfall (NZ). Thanks are due to the editors of these journals for permission to reproduce them here.



Stephanie Christie: Aubade (2016)


  • When did you start writing poetry? The first poems of yours I saw were, I think, in A Brief Description of the Whole World in the early 2000s. Was that the beginning, or was there a long prehistory to those pieces?

    • I’ve always written poetry, from when I was tiny. I would catch a flicker and then work on it in my head and then on paper until it turned into something. I remember asking my mum to write down for me what I’d created. Then it started rhyming and became very ‘poetic’. I entered a poem about a foal to a Listener children’s poetry page and was rejected because they thought it had been written by an adult. It was very earnest and used words that probably haven’t made it into this century. Then as a teenager it got very dark and I’d write them on my desk at school.

    When I was 25 I finally wrote a piece that I considered to be an actual completed poem that could be shared. After that I made my first zine and left it at various bus stops. But my poetry was never like the poetry that I was able to get my hands on. A few years later I was shown L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E. poetry, and realised that there was a huge space available to me. This was my most abstract phase, and it was amazing to me when John Geraets of Brief published some poems.

  • You already seemed to have a very individual way of writing (and performing) at that stage. Could you say a little about the thinking behind your characteristic word-breaks and lineation innovations?

    • Although I’m very analytical and logical in my purposeful thinking, my writing is something I feel. It has a physical presence for me. The breaking is a form of liberation from the effects that language and discourse in general has on me. I’m super-sensitive to words, so being able to play with them is important for both my enjoyment of life and my ability to breathe freely. I would love to have theory around it but my mind refuses to engage. I feel poetry and sometimes get instructions, but that’s it. Of course, I have editing processes and hundreds of rules – just no theory.

    The clash between the shape of words and their sounds fascinates me. So I’m magnetised towards words that are impossible to say, where the meaning multiplies and gets out of control, or where line breaks show a voice taking the stated phrase in more than one direction, mimicking the true ambivalence of the sure statements we shelter behind.

  • I’ve always thought of you as a very political poet – or, at any rate, with a strong ideological bent behind your work. Is that accurate, would you say?

    • Yes, to the extent that the world is political already and we engage with this or consent to the status quo by accident. Poetry isn’t a form that makes it easy to explore the stuff that I often find myself asking questions or feeling strongly about. I get the sense that for a lot of poets it’s one of their rules – don’t say it directly, use the object as a mirror. But for me, any part of language itself is an available object. And I need to think and feel more deeply about the world, especially because I’m privileged enough to not be forced to do it that much. I want to lead myself through these journeys, and poetry provides a safe process and a way to share the results.

    Slam or spoken word poetry is a form that allows the political in, in a way that what you might call ‘high’ poetry doesn’t. Although I like to perform, the spoken word genre has its own rules that tend to conflict with my interests, which are largely oriented not towards my identity but to what I see around me.

  • Tell me a little bit about Hamilton as a place to write in. Do you find it hospitable to poets and artists generally?

    • Hamilton is amazing because it supports you to create what you want; there’s stimulation but also space. I’ve made the effort to find other poets, which is magic. Writers tend to self-isolate compared to people working in other creative mediums, so most of my creative communities are made up of non-writers. This works for me because thinking about other art forms feeds into my thoughts about writing.

    One of the most useful things I get out of living in Hamilton has actually been meeting more people who are way different from me. We’re all mixed in together. This brings me language, story, psychic and detail influences that are invaluable to my practice.

  • I know that you’ve done a lot of work in various multimedia forms: painting, design, zines, and so on. Is poetry just one of your media of expression, or is it central for you?

    • Poetry is everything. Or maybe my experience of the world is poetic, and so whatever I make ends up that way. It’s that crystallisation, the way that the vision edits itself down and then inserts that gaps that let us inhabit it.

    I like to play around, which is how I’ve ended up doing different stuff. Also it’s a way to keep having that crucial finished object when you struggle to get your work published. I return to page poetry mainly because it won’t let go of me. It’s the fastest surface, the purest, the most ridiculous, and brutal. It makes other things seem easy. Having said that, I’m transforming my ways of making page poetry, so that it can be playful for me.

  • How, in fact, would you define the term “poetry?"

    • The mapping of psychic dance routines through patterns of presence and nothingness.

  • I notice that your work – your recent Tinfish chapbook, for instance – often receives a better response overseas than here in New Zealand. Do you feel there’s a certain innate conservatism to the poetry scene here?

    • I struggle to recognise the response to my work. I haven’t carried the flag for my work in the way that would have made it accessible to any wider audience – I was too self-conscious. And it doesn’t serve me to make decisions about the nature of the local scene that might protect my ego but close me off from connecting.

    I can see logically that the difficulty in getting less conventional poetry published in the bigger journals must limit the development of the New Zealand poetry scene. There was a period where I tried to write in a more ‘normal’ way to be able to be published. The effects were awful – I hated my work, it was mediocre and I lost my confidence. Then I started to get positive responses to my first (wildly experimental) book, which taught me the meaning of the word ‘bittersweet’.

    Finally I thought, “I’m still here, still writing, so now I’m going to do whatever I want and stand by it.” Learning how to do this has been a crazy journey that’s changed my sense of myself and the world. I’ve had to go right to the foundations and teach myself skills around self-esteem, and build structures to support my practice.

    I’m incredibly grateful for the help and encouragement I’ve gotten from particular people – Jack, you’re one of them – because when you need to write to feel like a person and you have to write what is calling you but you don’t know how to share that work, people clearly articulating that they like your work makes a huge difference.

    I’m excited to know people here now who are writing experimentally, and sharing it in a bunch of ways. It motivates me to make the work I want to make and to get it to the people who hunger for it, whoever and wherever they may be.

  • There’s a narrative expansiveness in poems such as “Bode” (included in the group chosen for your Poetry New Zealand feature) which I, for one, find very exciting. Is that a new direction for you, or would you say that’s been part of your poetry from the first?

    • Sometimes I see poetry as music, with or without lyrics. So a poem with a narrative element is like music with lyrics, and a poem without a narrative element is like music without lyrics. It brings a world and makes its own sense. I’ve always made both. They don’t feel different to me but I can see that they could be very different to experience. In narrative poems we ask: ‘Who speaks and what is the relationship between their words and the truth of their world?’ In non-narrative poems something else is going on, and it’s useful to abandon that question and give over to whatever happens as you encounter the poem.

    I have more options than page poetry as a medium now, and perhaps that makes me take less joy in the pure destruction of the form. I don’t feel constricted and like I need to lash out. I want my poems to do something else.

    Sometimes the amount of narrative comes from how the poem is created. “Bode” was generated out of fragments created from directing attention towards one big thing while writing over a long period. Other poems are resonant pieces thrown into a room together to see what happens in the editing process – more like a party than an expedition into a specific question.

    I’m glad that you’re excited about it. Sometimes I want a crystalline moment and sometimes I want to explodify. I need both and the tensions and webs between them.

  • Are there any writers – local or international – you feel have been particularly important for you, or influential on your work?

    • I take my poetry where I find it. Phantom Billstickers have a poster of a poem by Sue Wootton that I just read – amazing. And right on the street!

    I’ve often found it hard to read poetry – like I can’t generate the right kind of attention – but when I can it all sticks to my brain and reappears later. I’ve had phases of reading Tusiata Avia, Ian Wedde, Baxter, Czeslaw Milosz, Gertrude Stein, Rilke, Adrienne Rich, Raymond Carver … I can’t see how these poets influence my work, but they all share a capacity for devastating accuracy. The poets I know personally have a big influence on me, because I think about their work and imagine what it’s like to be them writing poetry, and I think about what they say to me about poetry. My favourite thing is that if I read enough then I get the poet’s voice narrating my world for a week or two.

    In the last few years certain poets have inspired me by giving me hope that I can make the work that interests me and find the people who want it. Ya-wen Ho, Lisa Samuels and Essa Ranapiri all have an attitude to sharing their unconventional work that is engaging and open, in contrast to my traditional approach of choosing to give so few fucks that you risk spiralling into a black hole of nihilism. And their work makes my poetry brain happy.

  • What other sources of inspiration do you find particularly valuable to you as a poet and an artist in general?

    • Lyrics. Theory. Other creative forms. Conversation. Errors. Questions.

    I love science, psychology, all languages, listening, and wondering about reality. And mainly people – their battles for meaningfulness. These things pour into my work.

  • What drives your interest in abstraction?

    • In the more abstracted poems, there is no single entity standing in a stable ground and narrating emotional shapes through lines and line breaks. The poem itself is the flesh and blood, the whole entity, built out of swarming words. This reminds me of the strangeness of the experience of consciousness, and the beauty of broken forms is that the seeping in of unconscious elements can be made visual.

    Poetry that lets go of narrative and narrator is challenging to make. On the one hand, you are free to do whatever you want, when we know that restrictions can be creatively motivating. On the other, it’s hard to make something that comes alive. It’s easy to end up like a frustrated Dr. Frankenstein, with phrases lying round in heaps. You work and work towards internal coherence, agile tension, and movement. When the heart starts to pump on its own, it’s a form of magic.

    An important part of abstract poetry is that it can be a relief from the manipulation of narrative that saturates our linguistic encounters. Play is a delight and refreshes us. Meaning is something we make, so let’s investigate the guts of the machinery.

  • What influences the style of your work?

    • There are two things that consistently guide my work. The first is the question I’m carrying around. It may be philosophical, social, psychological, political, or emotional, and I’ll be holding on to it while I live my life and looking at the tiny moments through its lens. This then bubbles up into my writing. The second is something I don’t have a word for (so if you know the word please tell me). It’s that thing that poetry zones in on - a thought feeling or a felt thought, an atmosphere, an emotional environment. Every poem I make has its own and this guides the editing process.

    I realise that sometimes my poetry can seem cold or harsh. Part of this is my aesthetic. In other people’s work, I’m often drawn to intense, challenging work with a strong flavour. It’s unexamined emotional cliches that offend me, not the work that someone else has generously done to lead me out of my normal world into spaces where I receive new visions. I also love the dirty aesthetic, things that are wrong and awkward and imperfect and still full of force.

    My work is often anti-heroic; I actively resist the heroism that is so common in poetry. I change the pronouns to give the ‘I’ the damning judgements that began as ‘you’, because we are all raging messes on the inside. I generate conflicted pauses instead of happy endings, because I align to the mad complexity of reality, and believe that meaning needs to be constantly adapted to be useful, and that the arts are one manifestation of the human urge towards that.







(6/8-12/9/18)

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2019. ISBN 978-0-9951029-6-5 (March 2019): 22-25; 68-74.

[2407 wds]


Poetry NZ Yearbook 2019


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