12 or 20 (second series) questions with Cedar Sigo

Cedar Sigo is a poet and member of the Suquamish Nation. He studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of endless books and pamphlets of poetry, including All This Time (Wave Books, 2021), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005) and most recently Siren of Atlantis (Wave Books, 2025). In 2022 he received a grants to artist’s award from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He has taught all over the country including The University of Washington, Bard College, Washington University, Naropa University and The Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Lofall, Washington.

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 Good Night Nurse (2001) changed my life because I was called upon to design it with a friend of mine, Noel Black. We had to settle on an arresting cover and figure out the dimensions of the paper and get it printed, and we didn't trim the edges so then it also became an example of what not to do. A reminder to trim down the edges from then on. Most importantly it taught me that I could make books with friends that looked way better than the books that you were offered in a library for instance or books that placed a premium on having a spine.

My most recent book Siren of Atlantis relates to my earlier work because it's still my pile of poems asking to be collected and printed but I had a stroke almost 3 years ago and so a lot of the poetry is reflective of getting back up onto the horse and learning to organize my existence into poetry once again.

It feels different because now I seem to write long notebook poems of individual numbered parts, and they can be fairly different stylistically from section to section but all still contained under one open air roof.  I think Philip Whalen's longer poems like Minor Moralia and Monday in the Evening space made this space possible for my voice. A poem that 'covers' the space of several days as opposed to the expected sort of tightly fitted box of poetry.

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

I was always more taken with the stories of the poets’ lives. When I was  younger, I thought of writing prose as having a financial advantage certainly and it was obviously a more popular form of writing. It felt similar to being jealous of friends that were in bands, and they could express themselves in an atmosphere that was fun. Nonfiction is something every poet should try in order to pass down their own highly specific takes on which writers will last and why and how invested they can get you in tracking the particulars of composition. I also think engaging in essay writing helps open the possibility of writing a poem with material others might designate for expository prose. So maybe we learn these different forms of address in order to mix them all up in the end or to use them differently. 

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?

Books of poems tend to take 3 to 4 years. I just let them pile up and then I'm very ruthless in terms of what actually goes into the manuscript.  After the first draft of a poem, I tend to savor it and write a few more drafts in long hand in my notebook. I tend to allow myself to enjoy this initial period as I am more familiar with the way material becomes dictated, escaping my body. I do keep one notebook, so drafts of poems sit next to failed blurbs and new short stories and lists and fragmented outlines for classes.

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?

They usually begin by chuckling to myself for hearing someone say something that I admire or could even make sharper. Their thought then leads into the innermost chamber, and I fashion my own edition of what they're saying. 

Once I set out on a poem I am scribing beyond immediate knowing but then the mortars of syntax come lumbering in along to make the whole thing solid. I like to take things out to see how much I can cut the machine down and still allow it to run. 

My books mark definitive periods of my life. I don't have old manuscripts laying around gathering dust. 

If a poem arrives in fragments over time and somewhat consistently then I tend to draw it up as a numbered serial poem.

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

I don't know that I look forward to it but I'm often excited about it on the day of the actual reading. I think because I don't necessarily need to read my work out loud that when I do read it feels like I'm somewhat pent-up emotionally. That energy can come off as revelatory sometimes. I think the public likes a poet who is not dying to read. It puts them at ease.

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 do have a lot of theoretical concerns, but these are played out more often in the manner of an essay, sometimes in a single poem but not often as that's not something I can make happen. 

Guard the Mysteries is a book full of theoretical concerns. But I hid this fact well by making it extremely readable. 

"It's not what you say as a poet, it's how you live as a poet."

I keep mulling over that statement lately. It is attributed to the poet Tom Clark and was shared with me by Joanne Kyger. Who had seemingly borne these words out over time

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 poetry is helpful for its scope of vision and its innately conceptual nature. I do think it helps to become adept in the syntax of prose. I am definitely attracted to the concept of having a large armory of voices and to be able to speak about politics from an almost untenable position. 

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

I think of it as an absolute privilege and usually end up taking their advice, having already subjected my voice to the settings of several arrangers. It helps when the editor is a poet as well. I always love farming out the arrangement of my work. Each separate piece having already been overly considered. I feel somewhat open about order of the individual poems at that point. It feels like surrendering your paintings to a gallerist/dealer. Some may end up getting cut from the show or some get held in the back room for the absolute addicts when everything else has been sold.

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

"Just write what's going on around you. Outside and inside."

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 usually head upstairs to my office around 930 and read something or listen to a reading or watch a short piece of a video or interview that sparks some level of speculation that then moves outward to music and I'm always trying to track or think back to when that impulse turns from listening to making the poem or story or blurb or that ever the form or raft may be.

I usually try and rid myself of the poem or the story or personal essay before I embark on the business of writing poetry meaning the blurbs, the contracts, the invoices and the true maintenance and drudgery of having a career. 

I am usually done for the day around 4 pm

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

Sometimes I turn to artists that seem to naturally contain a spiritual dimension. Anne Waldman, Margaret Randall, dg okpik. Or I turn to glamourous visual  artists until I am sufficiently jealous and ready to lash out in verse

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The scent of ripe blackberries in August

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?

All of the above actually. I feel like moving into curation is (in part) the next step for me. 

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

Recently Sid Ghosh, Terrence Arjoon, Laura Da', Mohammed Zenia, Will Fesperman and Anelise Chen

Always Eileen Myles, Simone White, Prageeta Sharma, CAConrad and Barbara Guest

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

I would like to be a guest on a good podcast

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?

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

The fact that I didn't need any special equipment beyond a notebook and pen to write.  Once I read the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, I realized you could write about things that other people considered dark, and these poets just considered part of consciousness and that you could publish with smaller presses and were well designed. Blurring that line between editor and poet. I wanted to get involved with writing specifically at that level. The fact of having to self-publish the first chapbook was attractive. Finding the right cover artist is still a pleasure for me as is securing the right lettering. Secretly I'm a book collector and sometimes printer who lives to write poetry and now sometimes stories. Lately, I've been reserving the writing of stories for when I am away on a residency.

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

Book: Emily Dickinson Face to Face by Martha Dickinson Bianchi

Film: American Promise by Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster

19 - What are you currently working on?

Fiddling with a memoirish essay titled Early History of a Writer. Pulling together a book of collaborations with a variety of writers and artists. Preparing for a talk about Joanne Kyger's house. Gathering up all of my fledgling essays and art writing to make a book. Continuing work on my  ever-expanding scroll of poetry.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Cedar Sigo, Siren of Atlantis

 

Ode to The Hi-way House

OK calm down, let’s also say
there is no need to write anything down for a while,
Let’s think back on all the poets that may have flirted in this room
or fucked or tried to or met often, in semi secrecy several times a week.
For now, I feel silenced by the everyday I have already told you,
diseased and purposely kept form new love and old.
And then Margaret dreamt that she and Barbara
drove back-up through the desert 900 miles
to leave cooked food in front of room 217. I call Lydia to say that Kazim
is teaching a whole Naropa summer course on Yoko Ono.
I hope this means a retelling of the Chambers Street
concert series with Jackson Mac Low.
This constructed attempt at poverty so chic I can forgive.
Especially if real poets were there as specimens taking part.
Any other poets that may have collapsed halfway down the hallway
of the archive? The ones that barely made it.
They make the rest of us smell so sweet; it becomes unreal.

The latest from Lofall, Washington-based poet and member of the Suquamish nation, Cedar Sigo, following titles such as Stranger in Town (San Francisco CA: City Lights, 2010), Language Arts (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2014), Royals (Wave Books, 2017), All This Time (Wave Books, 2021) [see my review of such here] and Guard the Mysteries (Wave Books, 2021), is Siren of Atlantis (Wave Books, 2025), a collection assembled as an ongoing accumulation, akin to a day-book of lyrics held together across a particular stretch of attention. “I toss my stencils / to the neon fire and begin to build, / stacking obsidian dust,” he writes, to open the poem “STRANGER (FULL TEXT) #2,” “a text that betrays the shape of a tone, / a semblance of pitch, / the opposite of rubbing down / onto a headstone.” Referencing poets such as Bernadette Mayer, Clark Coolidge, Wanda Coleman, Joanne Kyger (Sigo edited Kyger’s There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera for Wave Books back in 2017, don’t you know) and Kazim Ali, Sigo composes a book of echoes and of the everyday, keeping a regular writing practice of his immediate, from his reading and recollections of mentors and the immediacy of his peers, dystopian peril and climate crises, and a very present and particular sense of time. “Lay my figures bare / and give them no rest,” offers the short poem “THE LIFE OF SUN RA,” “I can relate to his premise, that he was born on Saturn // and must be getting back soon, // that the earth is a failed planet, // that rehearsal itself / becomes a ceremony.”

Part-way through the collection, Sigo introduces the following pages with a note that begins: “I suffered a stroke in late July of 2022. As I was reentering my body, I decided to try writing poetry again (I was still endlessly flipping fragments in my head and reorganizing them.) The following poems seemed to come out as a series of exhibits, a naïve garden that I forced myself to connect into something larger. It is a gift to be reintroduced to your practice.” It is interesting to think of the journey, the distance, the author travelled to compose these pieces, held in similar foundations to what I’m already aware of his work. One might suspect that the experience, as he suggested in his note, forced a return to the foundations of how he approaches writing, and approaches the poem, something that perhaps someone far more familiar with his ongoing writing should probably delve into with more detail. Either way, these poems are remarkable, and deeply grounded, held in the hand as a bird might trust to light, while able to take wing at any moment. As one of the poems that follows his short note, “MEMORIZATION SONNET,” begins: “The common vernacular is our movement / and should never be reduced to echoes of voice.”

 

Cedar Sigo, All This Time

 

Like Someone in Love

Presenting—Star Time—David Meltzer
and the Famous Flames, lovely healer and
hologram, avenger of the blood who could
read for hours, when the children’s faces
                        followed him upstairs, the dog would bark
The fire spit funerary songs
                        A smoke of tiny feathers
that we know nothing and gladly say so (smiling)
that a prince is sometimes left to trace and dig and paste
asking after my poems, qualities of transmission
                        and who had I been listening to? I might say
Lady or The Misty Miss Christy
Carmen meaning McCrae or Leontyne
                        Price, either way, he was always
right there and shot through, 

                        Wide wreath in flames

The latest from Lofall, Washington poet, critic and editor Cedar Sigo is the poetry title All This Time (Wave Books, 2021), following close on the heels of the remarkable collection of essays (that I’m still working through) Guard the Mysteries (Wave Books, 2021). Sigo’s poems are first person examinations and explorations on living, thinking, reading and being. The press release compares Sigo to a contemporary Frank O’Hara (via a quote by Ron Silliman), composing an “I did this, I did that” kind of first-person lyric, one that engages with the writers and artists within his immediate circle, and there is certainly that, but Sigo’s poetic is one that engages deeper with those poets he references. The references aren’t set simply as references or simple interactions, but composed as deep, and even foundational, engagements with the work of those he cites, including Diane di Prima, Larry Eigner, Tom Clark, Amiri Baraka, Charles Olson and Joanne Kyger. “Larry Eigner’s words,” he writes, to open the poem “Surface Waves,” “Like golden / flies / stuck in / a loom—made / to fall / with sudden / strumming / they sound, separate / distinct [.]” These are poets clearly important to his reading and ongoing poetic. Sigo edited Joanne Kyger’s There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera (Wave Books, 2017), after all, so the repeated instances of her name throughout are hardly one of name-dropping, but in openly engaging with the work of his mentors, forebears and influences, and there is very much the sense of both engagement and homage through these references. I would even argue there’s far more of a Joanne Kyger influence, and even Larry Eigner influence, throughout this collection than anything out of Frank O’Hara, especially through the accumulation of staggered, first-person journal-entry short lines. Not that one needs to know of the source material to enjoy these poems; Sigo’s offerings are truly his own, although it does open a window into his thoughts on these other writers. Paired with this, as well, are poems composed as dedications to some of his contemporaries (including Joy Harjo, John Godfrey, Ed Berrigan and Julien Poirier); any writer’s work exists in conversation, or at least response, to the works of those around, so I’m simply pleased to see Sigo’s engagements acknowledged so directly. He is, as any good writer is, writing from within a particular and uniquely blended melange of books, writers and community interactions.

Mind control takes hold after four poems.

Elaine should be the poet in a cage (booth) at the LA art-book fair
or better yet, bill her as a prizefighting Jean Harlow

in a slightly bloodied V-neck blouse
and green-gold pyramid cuff.

*

Rereading the first Joanne interview in our new book (There You Are)

“Just write what’s going on around you. Outside and inside.”

I think of this as a statement on sustaining a viable rhythm within the poem.

The poem is the only hem (the only field?) that Joanne has to land upon. (“Six Lines Missing”)

There are times these poems read akin to journal entries or quick sketches, almost Creeleyesque, perhaps, but clearly worked and thought carefully through. There are some sharp insights caught in Sigo’s lyric (and I would highly recommend his collection of essays, the first title of his I’d actually seen; a book I clearly haven’t dealt with properly yet via review), one paired with, and even strengthened through, a lovely, easygoing craft that engages clearly and thoughtfully through the prose sentence and lyric form. And yet, this book refuses any consideration of showy or performative, allowing itself, akin to the work of his fellow Wave-poet, Joshua Beckman, a clarity of pure ease of meditative thinking: a poetry that simply and beautifully is.