Brandi Bird, Pitiful

 

HUNGER AS FIRE SEASON

I have wet eyes & want so badly to be loved a wall between
contrasts orange & blue sun & sky keep me comfortable
& don’t ask questions blush red girlish in light a choice to
stay in a house burning fire season white pills caught in my
throat I am a woman maybe dissolve fast currents no wisdom
just chemicals the flames say nothing I say nothing back try to
speak to flood no sound except thunder no lightning strikes
but new heat surrounds me fires distance made closer

The second full-length collection from Surrey, British Columbia-based poet Brandi Bird [reading in Ottawa this weekend as part of VERSeFest; see their 2023 “12 or 20 questions” interview here], following The All + Flesh (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2023), is Pitiful (Anansi, 2026), a collection composed as a singular and unsectioned assemblage of first-person lyric narratives and meditations around family story and history, and physical and emotional health, amid threads of pop culture stitched in for good measure. As Bird writes in the acknowledgments at the back of the collection: “Pitiful’s entire skeleton was written in only two delirious months. For the first time in my writing career, the poems that filled out and arose from me were unconcerned with anyone’s approval or understanding but my own. This method of writing feels dangerous to me. I felt and still feel immense responsibility to my community. But I’ve decided to trust myself and my desire. I’ve chosen to allow these poems to form the flesh, gross and imperfect shape of feeling.” They go on to offer: “I write in conversation with history, theory, pop-culture, and other writers and orators through time. Pitiful is a form of relationality done with the dirt inside me. Everything and everyone is alive.” Bird’s opening salvo is the poem “AUTOBIORAPHY,” a poem that sets the foundation for the collection: “This is the beginning of what’s certain. // Fullness is inevitability. No way out // of this pit where the sun shatters // into shards,” the poem begins, “tongued between feeds.” As the poem continues, further on: “To be sick // in this way is to reject without recourse. Orbit // the sun in a body that is // just a body.”

There is an open vulnerability to the poems that make up Pitiful, offering both process and declaration of meditative threads, whether musing on past events or extended hospital stays. “too much // of a good thing in bad times // means my father has // a story.” Bird writes, as part of the ebb and flow of the extended lyric “MAGICAL THINKING.” “tells me // to never eat rabbit // even if I’m lost // with nothing but tree bark // & snow.” Bird writes of psych wards and family stories, pop culture notes referencing Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Degrassi, threading process notes on holding and being and collecting the self, how one gets there from here; through the swirls of surrounding articulate and inarticulate chaos. “Time / is still so cruel to children.” Bird writes, as part of “CONTINUUM.” “I grow & grow / & never get closer to my beginning.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Brandi Bird

Brandi Bird [photo credit: Heather Saluti] is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis writer and editor from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on the land of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. Bird’s poems have been published in Catapult, The Puritan, Room Magazine, and others. They are a fourth year BFA student at the University of British Columbia, but their heart is always yearning for the prairies. 

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?

My first chapbook, I Am Still Too Much, published with Rahila’s Ghost Press in 2019, changed my life in so many beautiful ways. When I first signed the contract for my chapbook, I only had about five pages of usable work. I had to build the chapbook from the ground up and I learned so much about myself and my process. I also met some of my best friends through the editing process including my poet twin, Selina Boan (who edited the chapbook). We still edit each other’s work with a kindness and an honesty that I value with my whole heart. She wasn’t afraid to push me and still isn’t. My writing and editing process for my first full-length book, The All + Flesh, was different from my chapbook because I feel like my voice is more fully honed and isn’t concerned with what’s expected of me. I wrote what I wanted and for who I wanted.

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

I started writing poetry in 2016 after a very long break from it. I wrote as a child and adolescent and suddenly stopped at fifteen because I was more concerned with survival than creation. I picked poetry up again as an adult after getting my mind blown by reading Liz Howard’s The Infinite Citizen of The Shaking Tent. I decided to go back to school and took poetry classes at Douglas College where my instructor Liz Bachinsky told me I was a poet. One of the first poems I wrote is actually in The All + Flesh (2023). I think poetry makes sense to me because it is something that takes me places I can’t go with fiction or non-fiction (at least right now). It feels small and then explodes. It changes me.  

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?

My first book of poems is full of the work I’ve done over 3 years. I wrote a manuscript I shelved before The All + Flesh and I doubt it’ll see the light of day. My writing comes quickly when I’m in a routine and I don’t wait for inspiration to strike. I do take breaks from writing though because I find I get my best work done when I’m living too. I find restorative time to gather my thoughts essential but I have to remember that I have a return to routine to too. It’s a constant cycle of trying to measure my capacity especially since writing makes me feel alive when I can get it done. 

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?

The All + Flesh is a cumulative work. My next book is a “book” with a theme I’m very cognizant of. Even within a theme, a poem usually begins with an idea/prompt or maybe even just a word. I will often recycle metaphors and images in multiple places just to figure out where they best fit and then figure out how to untangle the mess I’ve made in the revision process. I have a lot of fun with first drafts and I’m not afraid to share first drafts with people because I truly believe they are something to be celebrated. 

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

I shake when I do readings. But I find them fun too. Like a horror movie. 

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?

I’m very concerned with health and “wellness” cultures right now. We use health and wellness as punishing forces in society and they get tangled in the larger systems at play. They seem like structures we have to scale and I’m so tired of it. I touched on this theme a little in The All + Flesh but that book was more focused on physical pain as I wrote it when I was suffering from extreme nausea almost every day. My next project is a book concerned with the grief that comes with sickness/illness. 

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 think being a writer is being a storyteller. Having a storyteller around is great fun but I don’t think a storyteller is as useful as say a plumber or a midwife or a dishwasher. Stories teach us a great many things and maybe they teach us to be better people but I’m struggling with language and it’s limitations in the midst of the terrible grief I have felt recently.

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

Having an editor is essential for me. My editors made my book better than I ever could’ve imagined. Working on my own turns everything I have written into salt. I stare at it too long and I lose it.  

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

Write what’s true, not what’s beautiful. 

10 - 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 am a morning writer. Not every day of course but I try to write at least two days a week. I revise more often than I write. Revision is great fun!

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

I go to my therapist because I’m usually afraid of something in my writing or in my life that is making it hard to write. I will also just let myself take a break sometimes and just live without the expectation of writing. That usually shakes it out of me. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lilacs. My grandma and grandpa had lilacs on their property in East Selkirk, Manitoba and it’s my favourite smell in the world. 

13 - 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’m inspired by the land of course, especially the land I grew up on in Manitoba. But music is another big inspiration for me. I write exclusively to music with lyrics, usually the same song on repeat, until I tune it out and vibrate out of my body. I’m writing this interview to a song right now (MGMT’s “One Thing Left To Try”). 

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

Other Indigenous writers’ work is so important to me. Liz Howard and Jordan Abel are why I write today. I can’t express how much their books changed my life. 

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

I want to write a novel! 

16 - 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?

Once upon a time, I wanted to go to medical school and was pursuing a science degree. I wasn’t any good at it. I’m getting a Master of Fine Arts degree a.k.a delaying adulthood so I’ll let you know what I actually get up to when I finish!

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

Anger. 

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

Swan Feast by Natalie Eilbert. It’s research for my next book. And I saw Hot Rod recently and it’s possibly the best comedy I’ve ever seen. 

19 - What are you currently working on?

I have sixty pages of a new manuscript about eating disorders. They’re rough pages but I’m happy to have written them. I wrote them during a literal manic episode when I was sleeping between two and four hours a night and writing the rest of the time. I wouldn’t recommend this process but the words poured out of me. If I could’ve chosen between not having the pages and being well, I would’ve chosen that though!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Rahila’s Ghost Press: Emma Tilley, Kyla Jamieson + Brandi Bird

THIS CHRISTMAS CARD IS PHOTOSHOPPED

I inherited my green hair from my mother. She’s a quarter cup salt and a soupçon of blue food colouring. Dad left his genes at Old Navy, came home with wool socks pulled up to his knees. The family tree is rooted at Fourth and Main: one hundred years of pity, bar fights, and the occasional vegetarian. I smash the fine china and rearrange it into snowy mountains. None of us cry at concerts, micromanage, or hug longer than the sell-by-date. We send each other e-cards on the wrong birthdays. Dad adds extra sugar to Mom’s brussel sprouts for texture. The magic skipped a generation. Mom likes to fly kites on days there is no wind.

The third season of Vancouver’s Rahila’s Ghost Press chapbooks [see my review of the first season here; the second season here] include Emma Tilley’s Carp Dime (2019), Kyla Jamieson’s Kind of Animal (2019) and Brandi Bird’s I Am Still Too Much (2019). I’m enjoying these small collections, although I’ll admit I’m not sure why such short titles require tables of contents (my own quirk, I suppose). And why are there no author biographies included in these collections? Either way, Rahila’s Ghost has, through nine published chapbooks-to-date, established themselves as a press with a preference for the local, publishing emerging poets (all but one title so far, Meghan Harrison’s third chapbook, Amateur Hours, last fall, have been debuts) with a focus on the narrative lyric. Given their website offering that they are a publisher of emerging and established poets, I am curious to see if and when a more established writer might appear on their roster (this isn’t a complaint, merely a curiosity; there is nothing wrong with preferring the emerging, and perhaps there aren’t any established writers sending them manuscripts that excite the editors enough for publication).

These are chapbooks by poets who, on the whole, seem to very much be writing themselves into being. Vancouver Island poet and flash fiction writer Emma Tilley, who has a BA in Creative Writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, is the author of the debut chapbook Carp Dime, an assemblage of short prose poems. “I am a poet in a prose body.” she writes, in the opening poem, “SELF-INTRODUCTION,” a poem that closes with: “I stumble to make sense of the world through similes and metaphors. Tape the word writer to my skin and re-apply as needed.” I find her collection of first-person narratives rather curious, and I’m taken with the cadence of her prose poems. The poems here that are strong are quite strong, and I look forward to seeing where else she might go with the form.

Vancouver poet, reading series curator and editor Kyla Jamieson, who seems to have published in a variety of journals to date, is the author of the debut chapbook Kind of Animal, an assortment of lyrics around survival and recovering from a concussion. I’ve been enjoying the understatedness of her poems, striking just as one might not expect, and allowing the wisdoms to quietly unfold. There are parts of this collection that are extremely sharp, as her title poem opens: “sometimes it’s exhausting / to be awake and alive // at the same time. with my / concussion comes tunnel vision // this is not a metaphor. / the periphery disappears.”

I NEED A POEM

Can we talk about the moon

tonight low and full

in the baby blue sky. Brigitte

at my door, the sound

of her laugh and well-loved

heart. I want to be held

up like that. I need a poem

about happiness that I haven’t

written yet, an ode

to the ducks in my neighbours’

pool, another for the pink

magnolias of spring—some trees

make it look so easy: yes,

I can hold all this beauty up

Originally from Winnipeg, Brandi Bird is a Two-Spirit Saulteaux and Cree poet who has published in a small handful of journals, including Poetry is Dead and PRISM International. Bird's debut chapbook is I Am Still Too Much (2019), a collection of first-person lyrics that focus on navigating and negotiating the immediate of family, culture, tradition and belonging, as well as a deep sense of loss. As Bird writes in the poem “Manitoba”: “This is the Red / in springtime. It thaws slowly / and then faster. A father / in an ice floe. A father as water, / faceless in the riverbed. Melting / like a body into another / body and coursing north / like all rivers here.”

19

I triage the landscape. The prairies

are numb today and so am I.

I am too thin. Built

like I won’t explode on hot

afternoons, a mirror

to the sky. My body is a hurt

where tall grasses grow, where

clouds pass, where rain sinks. It
aches where I touch

the ground. The prairies are split

into farmland locked in the control

of continuity and destruction. A plaque

of canola on my arm itches and

I want to scratch. Someday I will move

to where the land cradles me, swallows

me whole, erodes flesh from my body

in the surf. I can’t explain how I feel today

except: the wish for winter. Every season

an emergency, distinct but repeating

like the bones of my ribcage

or prairie highways in blowing snow.

I am the outline of a person

on the shoulder heading west, formed

into black plastic garbage bags. I am still

too heavy for the wind to take me

anywhere fast. I am still too much.