Bianca Rae Messinger is a poet and
translator living in New York State. She is the author of pleasureis
amiracle (Nightboat, 2025) and the most recent chapbook “parallel bars”
(2021). She has published translations of works by mauricio gatti/comunidad del
sur, Juana Isola, and Ariel Schettini among others. Alongside poet Toby Altman
she co-edits the journal What Happens.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change
your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it
feel different?
pleasureis amiracle
is my first full length work of poetry. My first chapbook was published, very
much on a whim, for a strange art project in Switzerland; and was more of a
novella, a rip-off of Story of the Eye, compressed into the form of
couplets. I guess pleasureis amiracle sets out to do more—the work can
be seen as less “narrative” though I of course love to pull from that strange
way of dealing with event which we call narrative. pleasureis amiracle
also includes a version of my chapbook “parallel bars” (2021), which attempts
to address the structural problems of events and the feelings around them—so we
get into a bit more of the visual space in it, through textual depictions and
diagrams. The “visual space” here being a thing which Leslie Scalapino refers
to as the authoritarian space. The work attempts to push against the supremacy
of the visual field. The book is also different in that it attempts to address
philosophical or aesthetic questions more specifically, directly.
2 - How did you come to poetry first,
as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Great question! Well, I’m not quite sure if
I did come to poetry first, though it definitely was the thing I started
publishing first. I have always thought of the two (poetry and fiction) sharing
so much space. The first poem I ever published was in honor of National Donut
Day, and was put up on the wall of the local Krispy Kreme. But I’ve always been
writing what you could call fiction, a particular response to images. Poetry
came to me because of its flexibility I guess. Of course in high school I found
Ginsberg and wanted to be a beat poet, but everyone does that. But at the same
time I was writing these terrible short stories with overly elaborate
depictions of mundane things, or just baroque-like descriptions of fireplaces,
and thought there’s no way anyone will read this—so poetry seemed like a space
that made more sense. I’m not sure if it still does.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular
writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow
process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does
your work come out of copious notes?
I wouldn’t say I’m a writer who necessarily knows
how they work on a complete level. But I think I’m a writer who starts many
things and needs a lot of time to find out where everything goes—pleasureis
amiracle in particular came out of a process with many many versions. The
initial writing comes quite quickly but goes through a large revision process
to find the form I’m looking for. Poems can get chopped up or moved around
until the language I want appears, maybe it’s a bit barbaric.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for
you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a
larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very
beginning?
In terms of the beginning of pleasureis,
it’s largely a response to a serious bout with depression that began in
2018, though who knows when things really begin. But it was a moment when the
mental and physical could not be separated—I was unable to control my heart
rate—things spiraled out of control. The book begins with claustrophobia, and
“chronophobia” as Hejinian calls it, about mental illness (but also the larger colonial
order) as an inability to let time pass. So the book really became a way to
give back to time, which is also a way of giving back to memory,
and a way for me to start letting it pass, which I’m still bad at. What led to
the experience of pleasure, which is the second part of the book, was music and
masturbation, specifically Joanna Brouk and her looking for the space between
notes, some metaphysical fabric which made sound possible. I’m not sure she
necessarily found it though as she left music entirely and dedicated her life
to transcendental meditation. The book also began as I was beginning my medical
transition and having to relearn how to do a lot of things that I realized I
never knew how to do in the first place.
pleasureis amiracle
is a bit different than my past work in that it is more of a set of short
pieces that talk to each other. I might have a general sense that the works
comprise a “book” but it’s more of a loose term that generally takes the shape
of something. Many of my poems begin as letters, or as prompts that friends
have made, or specifically dedicated to an artwork or a lover or a piece of
music. For instance, Joanna Brouk and Pauline Oliveros are major influences in
this one, and Laraaji. It’s hard for me to be rooted in language, specifically
for a poem, without it being attached to a more concrete situation, even if
that means the concreteness of a finger plucking a string. I don’t know,
somehow that feels more concrete than writing about a cloud, to me at least.
Having said that many of my poems start out as dreams, but that’s because we
often talk about dreams as narratives.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to
your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I find them a nerve wracking but I write
poems with my friends in mind so reading them out loud, to people, feels like a
necessary element.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind
your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work?
What do you even think the current questions are?
Hah. This could be a long question. Well, I
think it’s part of what I’ve said before, breaking free of the supremacy of the
visual aspect, I guess specifically in a trans sense, because of how damaging
it can be. The book sees music, sound more particularly, as the tool with which
we redefine the limits of love, language and the “visual space.” I have always
been very interested in the question of what is a priori and what is a posteriori—but that’s getting bit
farther afield.
7 – What do you see the current role of the
writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the
role of the writer should be?
Hmm, I guess it would depend on what we
define as larger “culture”—and I think it means something very different
depending on the genre one writes and the place one writes. For poets, I think
it is a focus on trying to find the language you need to find—and hopefully in
that search the language you find serves as a lens or a light which can pierce
through “larger culture.”
8 - Do you find the process of working with an
outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Well it depends on the editor…My editors at
Nightboat were absolutely incredible. 10/10.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard
(not necessarily given to you directly)?
About writing? Or life? For writing, ore one
piece of advice might be something Shiv said to me once, a while ago, or to a
group I was a part of; that you need a foil, someone you are sparring with in
your writing. For instance, Catullus writes to Cornelius Nepos, disparagingly,
but it provides the emotional backdrop for what would otherwise be a rather
boring description of some rolls of papyrus. This is an example of a real foil.
But it could also be a metaphorical foil. Bernadette Mayer’s poems often contain
foils, even if the foil is herself. I guess you could also call this a sense of
intertextuality, but I think the term foil is more fun.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between
genres (poetry to translation to critical prose)? What do you see as the
appeal?
I always have at least one translation
project going. My critical prose is the thing that needs more work at the
moment. I think the two of them are modes that poets find themselves in for
whatever reason. I kind of wrote about this in my editor’s note for the Poetry
Project Newsletter, when we did the translation issue last winter. It’s a way
to keep going despite the big voice of poetry in your ear. One needs to keep
writing regardless.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to
keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Oh, I wish I had a good response for this. I
try everything, minus the Kathy Acker writing while masturbating method. But I
probably like writing in the morning best, I don’t know, some days are good and
some days are bad. I like waking up in the middle of the night and writing, but
it is usually just to jot down some dreams.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you
turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Walking. Going into the world, taking the
train to the beach alone—anything that will get me out of the apartment. But
it’s true that one does need to spend a lot of time in one place in order to
write. I mean, in a general sense. When my writing gets stalled I read also,
reading is so much of my writing process.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Hmm I don’t have a good sense of what home
smells like. I would say it smells like a person I am in love with. But I love
perfume, flowery, frutal perfume mostly. The smell of old flowers, wet roses. The
smell of moisture. There is a particular smell that you get in Northern
Virginia (where I grew up) in the summertime that is hard to find in other
places, but it’s a weird place to call home. There you get the heat of the
South but not the piney smell of North Carolina, it’s a sticky, wet, hot smell.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come
from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether
nature, music, science or visual art?
I think I’ve mentioned music above. That’s
funny he would say that because books come from trees! Specifically new age
music was what started me off on pleasureis amiracle, which I know is
embarrassing but I had to start somewhere, where the space between notes and
letters stopped having so much rigidity.
15 - What other writers or writings are important
for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
A lot of them are in the back of pleasureis
amiracle. But Judge Schreber’s Memoirs of My
Nervous Illness is a key text, Rousseau’s Confessions, in terms of
“non-fiction.” Fiction-wise Mackey’s From a Broken Bottle…which I am
always in the process of finishing. Scalapino and Hejinian are two big
influences for me, and especially in my new book. I feel as though Scalapino
isn’t as read as she should be. Simone White turned me onto her, when we read way
together—and I didn’t know anyone could write like that. I’m still
searching for what it is that she does to language which renders it novel like
that. Oh, Joey Yearous-Algozin’s A Feeling Called Heaven also had
a huge impact on this current book, another meditation on time.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't
yet done?
Visit and or live in France.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to
attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have
ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Hmm anyone who knows me would probably say
an automobile mechanic. I think that’s true. I don’t know, I love cars
unabashedly. I could also work on train engines, but they’re almost too big.
Small plane engines could be fun too. It’s a terrible business though, for cars
at least, no one can make any money fixing them anymore. I am also a teacher,
does that count as a separate occupation?
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing
something else?
It is just the thing I have always been
doing, regardless of whatever else is going on in my life. What else would I
do?
19 - What was the last great book you read? What
was the last great film?
Mark Francis Johnson, Diary of a String;
Edward Berger’s Conclave (2024)
20 - What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on a forthcoming
novella involving two lovers trapped in a penal colony, sleeping with each
other, reminiscing about their pasts, and trying to escape. It’s a kind of
Delany-inspired 18th century epistolary novel, or at least that’s
the direction it’s headed. And who knows maybe there will be some poems in
there too. Scalapino’s novels have this great lack of solidity which allows
them to be poems, to me at least. But I have a feeling this project might be
longer than novella length so I might have some major editing to do. Sometimes
it’s hard to figure out where one thing stops and the other starts. Oh, I am
also writing a collaborative fan-fiction novella of Xena Warrior Princess but
that is much farther afield. For another day.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
