12 or 20 (second series) questions with Eve Luckring

Eve Luckring is a writer and visual artist living in Los Angeles on the unceded lands of Tovaangar. Her work questions the assumptions, and experiments with the boundaries, defining place, body, and habit. She is the author of Signal to Noise and The Tender Between, both published by Ornithopter Press.

Ig: @thetenderbetween / BlueSky: @thetenderbetween.bsky.social

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Both my current book, Signal to Noise, and the first, The Tender Between, are accumulations of the fragmentary, contemplations on the incomprehensibility of an elusive whole. The writing approach however is formally quite different in each book.

Probably the biggest way The Tender Between changed my life was that I stepped out of the ever-faster-changing-technological-whir of lens-based media and instead spend more creative energy in words. For years, I integrated text into my artwork; over time, the poetry took on a trajectory of its own and kept going. I still make imagery; however, I love that I only need pencil, paper, and a simple laptop for the writing.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Poetry is a good fit for my non-linear visual thinking, comfortable shoes on a dance floor where words shimmy between thought and sound and image, the body fully engaged. Poetry taps readily into the gap between language’s power and its failings; I enjoy playing in this gap.

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?

The speed of development ranges from molasses to lightning for any given writing session. Every now and then a first draft holds its final shape, not too often. So far, the making of each book has been a slow process that involves many make-overs.

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?

Signal to Noise was conceived as a book from the get-go, whereas the poems in The Tender Between preceded any conception of a book. For me, poems begin from anywhere and everywhere. For example, in Part 1 of Signal to Noise I construct a refrain out of the word list format used in standardized audiological testing. Additionally, rhyme and sing-song rhythms seeped into the writing from years of nightly reading sessions with my aging mother. After her sight and cognitive abilities declined to the point where even children’s stories were too frustrating for her to follow, I turned to the nursery rhymes she read us when we were little and she enjoyed reciting them along with me. At that time I was struck by something poet and psychologist, Claire Wills, wrote regarding rhyme in relation to loss for an essay on Denise Riley’s “A Part Song” in the New York Review of Books : “Rhyme is substitution: something returns that is not quite the same, but that inhabits and holds open the place of the same.”

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Reading aloud is crucial to my writing process and public readings allow me to share the music of the work as I hear it.

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?

Yes, there are general theoretical underpinnings to my writing (see question 15), as well as more specific musings that come with the undertaking and structuring of a book.

Signal to Noise uses mishearing to show how our interactions with others land inside us as a perception, an impression, an energy field that’s no longer contained by the other and becomes part of us because of how we take it in. I foreground the kaleidoscopic way experiences can radiate deep into our psyches, beyond the discreet boundaries of other selves, beyond the way we might frame one relationship versus another due to preconceived social convention. My aim is to re-create this locus rather than describe it. For this reason, I keep the various interpersonal relationships and “shes” undefined, partly for sound purposes, partly in an effort to plunge the reader into the unmoored emotional space of an overwhelmed nervous system— the “shes” blur and refract out of empathy, anxiety, exhaustion, and grief in order to activate an experiential tension in that slippage. I am trying to hold open for the reader the feeling space of not-being-able-to-fully-understand, not being able to 100% grasp what's in front of us. It is something most of us have personally encountered, uncomfortable as we are with it, and it seems all the more relevant to the times we are in (especially here in the U.S.)

With The Tender Between, the collating of individual pieces was an effort to answer a question: “What do all these short poems I’ve been scribbling over the years tell me about who I am?”— “poetry as the revelation of the self to the self” as Seamus Heaney put it.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I don’t think prescriptively about this. I do think writers can model quality attention and from there offer a myriad of meaningful perspectives back to the larger culture.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Working with an editor feels like a gift; I am grateful to have worked with Mark Harris at Ornithopter Press on both my books. Just as importantly, friends and colleagues assist as careful readers at different stages of a manuscript’s process.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

The oft mentioned dictum that the best way to develop as a writer is to read, read, read and write, write, write.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to video to sound to photography to installation)? What do you see as the appeal?

The space of the in-between is endlessly captivating and generative for me. Examining the specificities of one genre usually offers illuminating perspectives on others. I spent many years reinterpreting traditional Japanese poetic forms into my visual art practice. One example, still available for online viewing, is The Juincho Video-Renku Book. By way of historical precedent (as some may already know) the Russian film-maker and theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, was influenced by Japanese haikai and tanka (as well as the ideograms used in writing it) when he developed his “montage” strategies for film editing. Later in his career when he started working with sound, he took inspiration from the techniques used in Kabuki theater. There is so much to say in response to this question; I will stop here. Suffice it to say, I live in the borderlands.

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?

I don’t have a rigid routine of when or where I write. I prefer to write early in the day whenever possible. I like writing outside and I try to break up my desk/computer time with walks that include a stop to sit with a notebook. How writing fits into my schedule becomes seasonally dependent due to the high heat of LA’s late summer/early fall and the varying amounts of daylight through the year which determines my time outdoors.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

It usually takes a mix of quietude and new stimuli to get me back on track— I read. I go to the ocean, the forest, the mountains; I sit and stare into their environs. I walk. I look at art and film; go out for live music and theatre. I make images. I talk to friends about their work, or artwork and books we have both encountered. I visit new places locally; travel if possible. I research ideas that interest me in fields outside of writing. I listen.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Though this might sound cliché, a pot of chicken or vegetable stock simmering on the stove.

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 am influenced by all forms of art, especially the syntax of visual imagery and music from many different genres. Various realms of science, like botany and physics, offer structural models that fascinate me in their potential for adaptation to writing. I am someone who needs to spend regular time outdoors and the non-human languages I have observed there are inspirational to me.

And yes, of course, books. In the case of Signal to Noise, here’s some of what I believe informed the writing in crucial ways (beyond what is noted in the book itself and question 19 below): Louise Glück’s Faithful and Virtuous Night, Myriam Moscona’s Negro Marfil/Ivory Black (translated by Jen Hofer), C.D. Wright’s Deepstep Come Shining, Lyn Hejinian & Leslie Scalapino’s Hearing, Diane Seuss’ frank: sonnets, Fannie Howe’s Love and I, Jake Skeets’ Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, Paul Celan’s Breathturn (translated by Pierre Joris), Brenda Hillman’s In a Few Minutes Before Later. I was also re-reading classic novels narrated through stream of consciousness, such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Yūko Tsushima’s Territory of Light (translated by Geraldine Harcourt) and Samuel Beckett’s plays, e.g. Not I, as well as Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and Hotel World, Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Read the Air, Clarice Lispector’s An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures (translated by Stefan Tobler) and Han Kang’s Greek Lessons.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I have spent many years studying traditional Japanese poetic forms (in translation.) I am particularly shaped by the blossoming of renku through Bashō’s innovations to the courtly renga form. Also, the 20^th century haiku poets writing jiyūritsu (free-form). Beyond that there is an eclectic range of writers, too numerous to list. This eclecticism itself I believe is important to my work.

The writing of third-wave feminists is foundational to my world view. I am deeply indebted to the work of philosopher and activist, María Lugones, with whom I had the chance to study while in grad school at UCLA. Also during my MFA years, post-modern theory was in its hey-day; I got a good dosing. Later, when working on various projects, I found resonance with the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and D.W. Winnicott.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

To be able to converse fluently in ASL.

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?

I taught photography for 32 years. Now I am focused more on how I live rather than what I do.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I have always been a reader and, as a kid, that made me want to write. In my large Catholic family where almost everything (including books) was shared, writing was a private space to escape the fray, a chance to adventure unconstrained by the needs of the group. It was exhilarating. I actually also do the “something else” of visual art— working with the visual space of the page or a book is crucial to my writing process.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Poetry: Annelyse Gelman’s Vexations; Victoria Chang’s Obit

Fiction: Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over; Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous

Film: Christiane Jatahy’s part film/part theater: What If They Went to Moscow?; Director Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am beginning an ode to the understory of a redwood grove which will be presented as a reading accompanying a friend’s film screening about the same.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;