Gabriel Ojeda-Sague is a Miami <-> Philly gay, Latino Leo living in
Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of the poetry books Jazzercise is a Language (The Operating
System, 2018), about the exercise craze of the 1980s, and Oil and Candle (Timeless, Infinite
Light, 2016), on ritual and racism. He is also the author of chapbooks on gay
sex, Cher, the Legend of Zelda, and anxious bilingualism. His third book Losing Miami, on the potential
sinking of Miami due to climate change and sea level rise, is forthcoming from
Civil Coping Mechanisms.
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?
I’ve said
before that my first chapbook JOGS taught
me how to write. It was an experiment in using the same words as are in the
1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex to
create poems. Though I have some regrets about how I did it, the writing taught
me a lot and my language today is very similar to what that book is like. I
still revel in the kind of campiness beside darkness that is found there.
Nowadays, my work is less guided by conceptual constraint, which motivated much
of my early work, and I am less afraid of talking about myself. Whether that’s
good or bad, I’m not quite sure yet. I’m still interested, however, in taking
on close analysis of media people find unworthy, as I do in Jazzercise is a Language.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as
opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Actually, I
didn’t come to poetry first! In fact, my reading and writing both started in
fiction. As a teen, I read a lot of Faulkner, Joyce, and Woolf. I basically had
a big thing for the modernist titans. I tried writing stories for a bit, even
did a few in college, but I could never stick with the practice. If I blame it
on a personal flaw, it might be that I just struggle to write narrative. I
guess I’m not very interested in telling a story. I’m interested in trickery
more so. I started reading poetry when I was exposed to poets. Other than a
few, I really didn’t read poetry until college. And it took reading poetry to
feel like I could and should write poetry. And it stuck.
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?
When it comes
to book length projects, it tends to start at an idea, or even a phrase. And I
try to write thinking of this idea to see where it might take me. For example, Jazzercise is a Language started with
exactly that phrase, said after watching a compilation of Judi Sheppard Missett
and commenting on the specific words she was using. And I thought it was a nice
phrase and could mean something in practice on the page. So, I started working
from that idea: what is the language of Jazzercise and how can you play with
it. And I started to write out based on these ideas. What I had I thought was
pretty convincing, so I decided to embark on it and see how far it took me. And
then I had a book. I basically think the best way to know if a project is viable
is to start writing it. This is also why I end up trashing a lot of projects. Once
the thing is done, I tend to edit little. Not because I’m against it, I just
find nothing inspiring in the process, personally.
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?
A poem almost
always starts as a phrase I think of. I usually write these phrases in a note
on my phone and when I make time to write I see where they might take me. For
example, the phrase “a beehive is someone’s backdrop” came to me in the shower,
randomly, and for while I couldn’t figure out where to go with it. One day I
was writing a poem, one that began because I decided I wanted a poem that
started with the words “Simply put” (which, because I’m me, I thought was
really funny) and I came to part where I described never being alone, and I
thought hey! it’s like living in a scene that is a beehive! And so, I switched
the phrase to “this backdrop is someone’s beehive” and stuck it in the poem
where it works quite well. So, the poems come like that, as if from a room in
my brain that occasionally lets out odd phrases.
I don’t tend to
collect poems into books. When I am writing a book, a mode I feel very
comfortable with, I am thinking of it as a book the entire time. Very rarely am
I surprised to find that I have a book. Individual poems, or page poems, I see
almost as a test field for me. Where I am doing my most serious and committed
work is in a book. An individual poem is like a short test for ideas of mine,
and will likely never be collected into a book.
5 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
Oh, they’re
hugely part of it! I don’t know if it’s clear to a reader, but I focus a lot on
the sounds of words and often will put in lines only because of the sounds of
them. I’m working always on sound. So I love to read the poems aloud. I’ve said
before that I find the reading to be an instance of the poem, and not
necessarily a truer or falser version of the poem. Implicit in that is that the
written version is also just an instance of the poem.
But the bigger
reason readings are important to me is because my work is only possible because
of the community of poets in Philadelphia, where I live now. The community
meets in readings and similar events and we grow together. It’s amazing what my
peers do. And I’m really blessed any time I can read for them and any time I
get to see them read.
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? / 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?
If you don’t
mind, I’m combining two of your questions because I think they are related. I
have held for a long time that writing does not “do” anything. I do not believe
in an “activist poetics” as such. Instead, I think writing does something
quieter. I think that the book creates a climate in the mind, for a question to
be warmed, an anxiety cooled, or an apparatus bothered. In other words, I see
poetry as the making of a simulation of thinking and experience, so that others
can tune into the simulation in whatever way they deem right for themselves.
This is what I believe the writer can do, ask others to interface. When it
comes to me, I choose to write on issues of gayness, Latinidad, exilism and
marginalized media. This is because my mind comes to these issues often. I find
it interesting to consider the media we take in and how we can analyze it. I
find my life to be composed of and enriched by these sister identities (gay,
Latino, child of Cuban exiles) so I write in relation to them. My overarching
question is how does the gay Latino subject read the world. But my poetry on
this, with its specific edge, does the same work as somebody else’s poetry on a
different subject, which is to simulate the mind on record.
8 - Do you find the process of working
with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I hope that I’m
an easy writer to work with! I try to recognize the work editors are putting
in, especially in the small press world, especially when nobody is being paid,
and when I do recognize that, a lot of the decisions and changes they suggest
are easier to swallow. I can usually take the small changes that come with
editing a manuscript, and I’m lucky to have never had an editor who truly
wanted to take a knife to my work. You’ve always got to give a little room and
recognize that your poem draft is not the end-all-be-all text of the poem, and
that it can change in the publishing process, but you also can’t accept being
stepped on. I just want to make sure every change is a conversation.
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The best advice
I’ve heard is the way CA Conrad talks about imaginary careers. I don’t have an
exact quote off hand, but he has said before that there is no reason a poet
should step on others to defend or build up their imaginary career. Like
Ashbery says, there is no such thing as a famous poet. And almost none of us,
at least in the small press world, are making money off of this stuff. So
better to be generous and help others grow in writing than to stomp forward
until you have—what? the nothing career of poets. Nobody should be writing for
fame. When I choose that I want fame more than other things, I’ll become a Youtuber.
10 - How easy has it been for you to
move between genres (poetry to essays to short stories)? What do you see as the
appeal?
When I was
young I wanted to write in every genre, as I mentioned above, but as I’ve
gotten older I’ve committed full heartedly to poetry. I see my essay practice
as a critical one, not as a “creative nonfiction” practice, so it’s easier to separate
mentally. As in, here is my creative practice (poetry), here is my critical
(nonfiction). It’s a very reductive binary, but sometimes setting that binary
up can help you clear your thoughts. It’s been a long time since I’ve written
anything that wasn’t a poem or an essay. Maybe one day I’ll return to it.
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?
My typical day
doesn’t include writing, I’m ashamed to say. My typical day goes like this:
wake up, go to work, come home, work second job remote, make dinner (unless
it’s my partner’s turn), play a video game, read, go to bed. I know a lot of
people who write every day, but it’s just never been my thing. So, what I
typically end up doing is, if I don’t have a current project in progress,
saying to myself “jeez, I should try to write something today” and I’ll
dedicate a bit of time to doing that and see what comes out. But if I have a
current project, I’m like an animal. I write fast and edit very little. Oil and Candle took me 2 weeks to write,
Jazzercise is a Language took me a
semester. When I’ve got a good idea going, I can really hammer into it. It’s
the “off season” that is a little tough.
12 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
The text in the
room around me is the best immediate remedy. My apartment is full of prints and
posters with text on them. And of course, every home has a lot of objects with
text on them: food containers, clothing, toiletries. If I am stumped in the
middle of a line, looking for a good word, I scan around me and see what I can
find. If it’s a more serious stump, that is a tougher question to answer.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Humidity.
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’d say my
biggest non-book-artist influences are Stephen Sondheim, drag queens, and
certain musical ladies like Björk, Cher, Bernadette Peters, and Joni Mitchell.
I also get a lot of my tender heartedness from gay visual artists, with a big
focus on Cy Twombly, Tom of Finland, and David Hockney.
15 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Oh, I could
fill a lot of pages here. Let me be brief, but divide this into two categories.
The authors I tend to read the most and who affect my work from that reading
are: CA Conrad, Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Sawako Nakayasu,
Caroline Bergvall, Samuel Delany, Yoko Ono, David Melnick, Brandon Shimoda, and
Rosmarie Waldrop. The writers who are my big in-person influences and who help
me in the lived experience of being a writer: Raquel Salas-Rivera, Emji Spero,
Julia Bloch, Alina Pleskova, Roberto Harrison, Emma Sanders, Andy Emitt, and
Frank Sherlock. And you can really throw in the whole Philly poetry scene as
influences on me and my work.
16 - What would you like to do that you
haven't yet done?
I’d like to
write a song and sing it in a public setting. It has long been a dream, but
there are lots of barriers to entry there, many of which are only
psychological.
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?
The boys of my
immediate family are/were musicians, so that feels like the natural step. I
used to play oboe (the details for why I stopped are for another time) and I
really loved it. I miss playing oboe and somewhere in me there’s a symphony
member. Every time I hear the sound of it, I feel like I have a sun lamp
shining on my collarbone.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to
doing something else?
What made me
write was how many good books I was reading and seeing in the world. I needed
to put myself there.
19 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
The last great
book I read was Ann Lauterbach’s Clamor.
But that is an old book. The last great book I read from this year was Mark Johnson’s Can of Human Heat. And that’s one too
many people are sleeping on. The most recent great film I watched happened to
be Death Becomes Her. Somehow, as a gay man, I hadn’t seen that movie until
Halloween 2017. But the last great film I saw in the theaters was easily The Witch.
20 - What are you currently working on?
For the first
time in a while, I actually don’t have any current committed book length
projects. I’m testing out many ideas right now and letting myself be a free
spirit. But one thing I am trying to put energy into is a series of love poems.
I know, an experimentalist doing a love poem, sounds romantic, but hey, they’re
pretty good I think.
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