kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Their Biography: an organism of relationships

Although Kevin McPherson Eckhoff has been praised as “the onanism of the literary world,” there is much we are still decoding about his possible past of villainy. A man who is as complex as an algorhythm can only be understood and analyzed through close observations of semiotics (and the endeavor of shopping for attractive shirts of the spectacle variety). It would appear that his features evoke emotional, confessional lyrics that reveal the depths of a sensitive soul… or is this mere performativity?

For his fourth book, British Columbia poet kevin mcpherson eckhoff’s Their Biography: an organism of relationships (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2015) is less a composition by the author than a selection of invited submissions on and around the author by a multitude of others. Deliberately twisting ideas around “identity or relationships or language,” the collage aspect of the collection writes “about” the author as a collaborative and deliberately contradictory “memoir.” What becomes interesting through the process of going through Their Biography: an organism of relationships is just how much the structure instead opens up a different kind of portrait: one created less out of facts than through, as the title suggests, a series of relationships. This portrait portrays a writer deeply engaged with writing, his community of friends, family and contemporaries, and the notion of “serious play,” one that a number of his “authors” reflect in their individual chapters. There is such a generosity present throughout sixty-two chapters of anecdote, illustration and pure fiction. At the end of the collection, as a “Table of Contents,” he includes a full list of “chapters” and their authors, including what appears to be family members included alongside well known Canadian poets such as Gregory Betts, Eric Zboya, Vickie Routhe Ness McPherson, Al Rempel, Amanda Earl, Laurel Eckhoff McPherson, Rob Budde, Jeremy Stewart, Jonathan Ball, Claire Donato and Marlene Martins McPherson, among others. Some pieces are incredibly playful, deliberately inventing facts around the fictional character “Kevin McPherson Echoff,” while others are a bit more straightforward, suggesting the use of a more literal narrative of facts. What becomes clear, and quite compelling, is the ways in which the portrait makes itself directly impossible through the collage, and reads akin to a biography of a character that, in the end, becomes entirely separate from the British Columbia poet. This is a highly entertaining and imaginative book, and after a while, it might no longer matter if this character is real, or has anything to do with the the author himself.

When I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff I was in a costume and he didn’t recognize me. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff coming out of the grocery store and noticing that we had both shoplifted. It was then that I knew what the word hemorrhage really meant, and how to spell it. I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff while taking dancing lessons; he was the only one to ask if I knew how to samba. At that time I didn’t know that he would one day be a U.S. congressman, and treated him like any other samba. When I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff he was carried by a circus man and in turn he carried a trapeze artist, which means we must have been at a circus. It wasn’t until later that I recognized the glimmer of terrible audacity in his buckling knees, but when I did, the realization drove me to Vancouver. When I finally meet Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff after all these years he will just be getting off the plane from the Deep South and I imagine his thick accent perfuming our cab ride to the dog food plant. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff when I was a child and he was an elderly gentleman who taught me how to read and introduced me to the wide world of daredevil listening. It was then that I became a follower Marxism-Leninism against his wild gesticulation. The day before I met Kevin I had a dream in which two jigsaw puzzles (one alive and one dead) and two glass suitcases (one clear and one frosted) told me to make a clearing in a field in which they could birth the future. I assume these were Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff and Jake Kennedy, though I could be wrong. It wasn’t until later that I realized how literal the prophecy was. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff lying naked in the middle of the highway, but when I offered him a lift he spat in my eye. At the time I didn’t realize that was just his way of speaking. When I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff it was a cold day in the spring and a deer stood in our path, casting aspersions our way. It was then that I realized what kind of metal Kevin was made from: an aluminum alloy with 5% bronze. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff while we were both in the middle of something important, but it wasn’t until later that I realized it wasn’t that important.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Claire Donato

Claire Donato [photo credit: Louie Dean Valencia-García] is the author of Burial (Tarpaulin Sky Press) and Someone Else's Body (Cannibal Books). Her fiction, poetry, and lyric essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Boston Review, Encyclopedia, Evening Will Come, LIT, Octopus, and 1913: a journal of forms.

1 - How did your first book change your life?
My first book, Burial (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2013), has expanded and deepened my sense of literary community. It's been a pleasure to get to know Christian Peet, my editor at Tarpaulin Sky, along with press mates such as David Wolach (http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/david-wolach/hospitalogy/), with whom I'll be collaborating on readings this fall. I have also connected (and reconnected) with several of the book's readers, and look forward to reading alongside writers I admire over the coming months: Amina Cain (http://aminacain.com/), Matthew Klane (http://matthewklane.blogspot.com/), and Gracie Leavitt (http://www.upne.com/1937658168.html), among others.

Additionally, Burial provides my kith and kin a tangible object to better acquaint with my work, work that sometimes comes across as nebulous without context. Along these lines, reviews about the book have proven to be helpful, as they establish a lens through which others may perceive and read. This sort of readership dynamic is new to me, although I had previously published individual pieces.

1.5 - How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I am distanced—temporally, emotionally, psychically, and physically—from both Burial and my previously published individual pieces, as well as my first chapbook, Someone Else's Body. These works emerged from specific embodied spaces, and since completing them, my neural pathways have changed; my cells are no longer the same. Of course, all of my work has contributed to this transformation: My body is part text. And these books have, in turn, taken their own consciousnesses.

Much of my work aestheticizes unpleasant subjects: grief, depression, anxiety, assault, self-mutilation, skin disease. Despite dark themes, I hope my writing engages the pleasures of being alive, and activates a sense of pleasure within the reader, however uncanny and discomforting that pleasure may be.

My recent work feels immediate and in-progress, like a jigsaw puzzle I am trying to solve. This puzzle is difficult, and pleasurable. I am working on two books: a collection of poems and a novel, Noël. While my poetry feels always already at-hand, Noël feels near—taking place in the present—and far away, taking place in the past. The novel directly engages with themes of time, memory, identity, and nothingness.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
When I was younger, I read poetry voraciously. I also read many plays. To narrativize my writing experience: I came to poetry first, not counting the short story about a teacher-vampire I wrote in elementary school.

My father recently found and reread that story. I asked him to describe it to me via email. He wrote:

The teacher killed the kids. She did not die in the end. The students noticed her teeth and [the] blood on them! This is how the story ended... with the discovery that the missing students were [missing] because the teacher was a vampire and probably killed them. The final line is something like - 'and we saw her teeth and there was blood!!! the teacher was a vampire!!!' Lots of caps and exclamation marks. Of course the story was set [at] St. Paul's Cathedral Elementary School which made it all the more interesting!

(Note: St. Paul's Cathedral Elementary School was one of two ghastly Catholic schools I attended. It closed.)

Mythologizing my writing background feels peculiar, but for the sake of context: I began formally studying creative writing in high school, which is a lie. I actually attended the Western Pennsylvania Writer’s Project (https://www.wpwp.pitt.edu/) as a wee thing, where I wrote a poem about a hummingbird: “As small as a cherry / As fast a bullet / The hummingbird swoops into action.” My high school did not have creative writing classes, so I enrolled in a night class with Philip Terman (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-terman) at the local university, where my mother teaches.

I went on to study poetry at the University of Pittsburgh, which has an incredibly lively undergraduate creative writing program. Sharon McDermott (http://www.connotationpress.com/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/2011/april-2011/810-sharon-fagan-mcdermott-poetry), Ross Gay (http://iub.edu/~mfawrite/faculty/?view=faculty&faculty_id=10), and Anthony Petrosky, three of my mentors, modeled engaged pedagogy by treating students like writers. I needed to write, so I structured my class schedules in order to maximize my free time. Also, Pitt allows its undergrads to move fluidly between genres, so that movement betwixt and between felt commonplace.

I received my MFA in Literary Arts (poetry) at Brown University, where genre defiance and fluidity is permitted, even encouraged! Aside from poetry classes, I took courses in fiction, writing for programmable media, and cultural studies. Although I have always written prose, I had never before tackled a long-form prose project like Burial.

I endeavor to create language art, which in my mind means exploring language's material possibilities, as I did while writing Burial (e.g., by transcribing the book multiple times; by placing my language in conversation with various true and false definitions and etymologies). I am particularly excited by uncanny juxtapositions, breath and embodiment, streamlining my writing word by word by word, and the narrative that takes place within abstraction. In this regard, I carry the preoccupations associated with poets, but I am foremost a writer.

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 writing practice has slowed down significantly over the past few years. I take more time per piece and am less focused on generating an abundance of work. I am maddeningly detail-oriented, and much of my practice involves obsessing over punctuation marks or the placement of an adverb that may or may not become a noun. To me, the logic of my writing only gets truly interesting when the original draft’s logic is subverted.

First drafts almost always end up looking different from their final shape. Although the first paragraph of Burial resembles the first paragraph of Burial's first draft, that's where the resemblance stops. As I write and revise, I experiment with form, letting my eyes and ears dictate the bulk of my revisions. If the language doesn't remain in and circulate around my mind after multiple readings, it usually doesn't stay on the page.

4 - Where does a poem or story 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?
Writing usually begins from scrap language I later keep or discard (either way, a trace remains). I write into this scrap language or build upon it with other scrap language. Sometimes, the scrap language comes from very specific places, e.g., page 64 of [Insert Book Title Here]. This scrap language ends up mutating radically: I am interested in working with and around what Erín Moure refers to as the poem’s seams. In the past, my poems have taken cues from various sources including judicial complaints, Cosmopolitan sex tips, and the translation of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris.

Often, I carry a concept in mind, some theoretical framework or larger question. Writing Burial, a question I kept returning to was: “What happened?” If I am writing prose, I like  working with a conceptual nugget, as in Burial: A woman grieving the loss of her father checks into a hotel, which she conflates with the morgue where his body is being kept. This conceptual nugget may or may not occur to me before language. If I am writing something that resembles a poem, I let language carry the form like a wave.

My process is hands-on; all language is material. Simultaneously, I let my work reveal itself to me. This process is as enigmatic as it sounds!

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings, especially when a reading's line-up feels aesthetically cohesive, and/or the reading’s form is destabilized in some way. One of the most enjoyable readings I’ve ever done was with Blake Butler and Mike Young at Ada Books in Providence, RI. During our individual readings, we each performed the same eight or so constraints—for example, repeating the phrase "this actually happened" before reading a piece, flirting with an audience member, checking our cell phones in the middle of a piece, and so forth. After the reading, the audience had to guess our constraints, which added an interactive element to the performance. The multiple points of focus at work during that reading felt fun and productive.

I am especially interested in performance writing that explores the interactions between texts produced in conjunction with other media, including visual art, sound art, electronic literature, installation, video, and live performance. I currently collaborate on a large-scale project, SPECIAL AMERICA (http://www.specialamerica.us), with Jeff T. Johnson. SPECIAL AMERICA is an exploration of American exceptionalism, ambiguous political speech, and what Canadian poet Rachel Zolf calls 'mad affect.' We present ourselves at college campuses and academic conferences as an analog hack or meme, a gesture toward embodied viral media. In performance, SPECIAL AMERICA combines elements of site-specific institutional critique, radical appropriation, crowdsourcing, song and dance.

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 am more concerned with writing what I don’t know than what I know. What is poetry? What is fiction? What is electronic literature? Does genre matter? How can I destabilize genre? To what extent is genre linked to stereotypes and conventions? (How) can language convey embodiment? What to read? What to write? How can we be more empathetic and considerate as writers and readers? How do we maintain a sense of critical rigor alongside empathy? Is empathy ethical? Is sympathy? Do we need books? Is writing a job? Is teaching?

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?
To be a writer, one must read. So the first role of the writer in larger culture is to be a reader, and read widely. What’s more, writers need to sense the world around them, which requires the cultivation of intuitive awareness, along with empathy (or sympathy; I am still negotiating my relationships to both concepts). Writers should think critically, and help others think critically. I am especially moved by writers such as Carolyn Zaikowski, Roxane Gay, and C.D. Wright, who engage with issues of social justice using language.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I enjoy working with outside editors and believe the process to be essential. I’ve also done a lot of editorial work and enjoy helping others edit their work.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"We are not our poems." —Ross Gay during a moderated post-reading conversation at The New School

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to poetry to the lyric essay)? What do you see as the appeal?
In terms of craft, my writing is consistently engaged with multiple genres. And this kind of cross-genre writing isn’t without precedent. Many canonical, historic texts cross genre—think of Moby Dick!

Moving between genres is linked to theoretical questions I am concerned with, particularly how genre may or may not relate to stereotypes and conventions.

In terms of publishing, moving between genres has been a bit more complicated. I am so fortunate that Burial found its home at Tarpaulin Sky, which publishes cross-genre, hybrid, and ‘lovely monstrous texts.’

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 inevitably end up writing every day, but there's currently no pattern to my making, which is fine, seeing as I’m the kind of Type A who needs to detach from routine. There is a pattern to my mornings, though, and that pattern includes breakfast, my favorite meal: coffee, a fruit bowl, and some surface for almond butter and jam. On Very Special Mornings, I eat an egg or read The New York Times, which I suppose is linked somehow to my writing practice (my partner Jeff talks about its radical juxtapositions as fodder). Is it important to my writing routine that I am writing these responses on an airplane bound from New York City to Long Beach? Other places I write or have written include receipts and scrap papers; the subway (an unoriginal but truthful NYC-dweller’s response); trains and buses; a Swedish café called Konditori; grocery store cafes; Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s desk; a vintage Singer table (AKA my desk); the Millay Colony for the Arts; the RISD Library in Providence, RI; Fordham University’s library in the Bronx; my friend Eli’s house in Burlington, VT; Airbnb rentals; the couch in my living room; my kitchen table.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn and return to the language that surrounds me. I also read.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Dive bar

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?
My (almost-daily, ideally daily) yoga practice sharpens my intuition and sense of clarity, and it has undoubtedly informed my work as much as any book.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Jeff T. Johnson, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, and my friends who write and create other forms of art here in NYC—it is good to share meals and see movies and listen to records in my living room with good-humored comrades. I am always ambiently grateful to Justin Katko, with whom I attended Brown, for feeding my brain bagfuls of books and never seeing or treating me like a young girl. My friend Adam Veal, a terrific poet, is also supportive along these lines. Many members of the Electronic Literature Organization are friends and role models who never cease to restore my faith in collaboration. Not to mention Christian Peet and all of the writers who’ve contributed to Tarpaulin Sky over the years. And this is only the beginning of the list. There are so many others.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Conceptualize and produce an oral history. Surf. Scream in a hardcore band, or sing in a noise rock band. Further advocate for queer students at the university where I teach. Live at the beach. Produce a stage play. Work as a part-time yoga instructor. Visit the Pacific Northwest. Read Ulysses. Read at Carnegie Hall.

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 would pursue an occupation related to the healing arts, like acupuncture, massage therapy, yoga instruction, or nutrition. I am also interested in owning a fish taco truck or being in a hardcore or noise rock band. I am currently an adjunct instructor, but making a living as a teacher—let alone a writer—seems less tenable all the time, so I may end up doing some or all of this work in the future.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I do lots else!  

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great film = The East by Brit Marling (I love all of her films) or Detropia, a harrowing documentary about Detroit. I did just see The Conjuring, but I’m not sure it was great!

The last great book I read was Tan Lin's Heath Course Pak. And I am currently enjoying reading this ongoing project called Forty Days of Dating: http://fortydaysofdating.com/

20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a novel called Noël and a mixed-form performance project called SPECIAL AMERICA. I am also working on a collection of poems. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

dANDelion 37.3: POETS GALORE!

Words for the House

(After Kate Hall)

The house has gone missing. It’s called a warbler.

Warbler takes paint chips from her beak, makes a dinner.

Warbler points north for the winter, the windows closed.

Warbler tight in the sheets, picking nails.

Warbler with eyes wide and hiccupping asks for spaghetti.

Warbler can’t keep the windows closed.

Warbler pantomimes a throat wound up.

Warbler sees wood paneling in the bed and makes a boat.

Warbler swallows the pillow and spits out the lint.

Warbler rips a hole through the screen and points the ship.

Warbler makes a bath of dishwater.

Warbler sheds bones from the neck down.

Warbler puts the boat in the water and screams.

Warbler finds a man’s tie a formal ending. (Jenny Sampirisi)

When British Columbia poet kevin mcpherson eckhoff was in Ottawa to read for the AB Series a few weeks ago, he did an afternoon talk that focused on some of his interest in art produced by people who don’t necessarily self-describe as artists, ranging from amateur art to folk art to the unintentionally bad. Part of what he used to discuss that interest, and the incredible possibilities that come from such, was the recent issue of dANDelion magazine that he edited with frequent co-conspirator, Jake Kennedy, the “POETS GALORE!” issue. According to eckhoff, part of the call for the issue included self-described professional artists providing work, as well as work by someone they knew, whether a family member, random friend, or the man who ran the grocery store down at the corner. As they write in their “Editor’s Note”:

The issue contains works by some writers. [When we write “writers” we mean folks.] It also contains works by some folks who are either shy writers or who don’t identify as the writer at all. [When we write “folks” we mean writers.] Please, for a moment, forget that superficial differences exist! [I suppose our hunch is that community exists prior to and just after the fact of its naming; mostly we could be acknowledging that as folks and writers and writers and folks we are sharing all the time.] Now, in this same moment, please tear through the writing throughout, forgetting that you’re a reader, but remembering that you, too, are a poet! [We are grateful to all the magical producer-contributor spirits herein; songs poems wanted / songs poems found… (big old fart sound); we bow to the realaccidents, we bow the accidentalreads!]

Some of the results are quite compelling, with contributions by Claire Donato, Elizabeth Donato, Jeff T. Johnson, Kate Mercier, Peter McDonald, Michael Vorhies, Emily Fedoruk, Debbie Bouska, Jenny Sampirisi, William Ashman, Chantal Neveu, Angela Carr, Pierrette Valois Neveu, françois luong, Alicia Escott and Dave Dyment. The mix is interesting, and the idea behind the guest-edited issue is equally interesting, both of which were covered during eckhoff’s Ottawa talk, something I hope he might eventually expand upon in print at some point. Unfortunately for the journal itself, this issue holds as the final issue of the long run and shifting history of dANDelion magazine which, since its re-boot a few years back, has emerged as one of the most compelling and engaging (if occasionally uneven, what with the slate of guest-edited theme issues these past couple of years) literary journals in the country. I don’t know if they have managed to release a long-rumoured “official statement” at all, but I mourn the passing of dANDelion. What the hell happened?

MIAMI

August 23^rd, 2011

Is there area code in heaven?

How do I

Erase you from my head

Let alone your number

In my Blackberry

Its not like its of use

Anymore

Is than a new number up there?

How can I send you

Lover texts

I will never again see you

When I need to

Be reminded that

No one prances

Better than me

On the dance floor

Until I met you. (William Ashman)

There is something really quite magical about Alicia Escott’s work in the issue, her “Love Letters Sent Sometime Before the Continents Split.” As she writes in her short introduction:

This project began in January of 2011. The letters are written for people I care about, to animals that are now extinct, and are sent through the post office without the recipient knowing. The letters approach romance in geologic time scales, collapsing the lineage of evolution.

If you feel that you may need a love letter, you may contact me direct at aliciaescott.com. Briefly tell me something about yourself and provide your mailing address.

Included as scanned, printed letters, the letters are interspersed with archival photographs, and the letters open up something marvelous and unusual. There is something hopelessly sad, haunting and lyric to these letters to the already-lost. I can only hope to see more of this series, and perhaps at some point in trade book form.

January, 20, 2011

Letter to a Thick Billed Ground Dove. Extinct 1927.

My love,

Last week I set the clock on my iphone to December, 18^th 1914.

I was hoping I would be able to find you there.

But it did no good. Everything was just the same as it is now. And you were gone. So I am sending you this letter via post because I see no other way, it is too long to send in text, if that were even an option these days.

So much has happened since you left. Where do I begin? Not long after, the stock market crashed. Then they fixed it, but it would happen again. Then after that we discovered a relationship between mass and energy, but man alive, this has some drawbacks.

Then came rock n roll. More than anything I wish I could show you rock n roll, you would love it, I’m sure.

And there was the telephone, and then answering machines and call waiting and then caller id, and now you can have that with you always. Honestly.

There would never need to be these distances anymore.

But really, that’s not what I want to say.

How do I explain; you weren’t the only one to leave…. It’s been quite a time.

We’ve tried to stem the tide now, but… well…. I read they have little hope.

I was foolish. The last time we saw you, no one thought it was goodbye forever. Did you know then? I think sometimes that you did.

We looked everywhere for you in 2004-2005. Of course that was much, much too late… I’m sorry.

The little lines under my eyes don’t seem to go away when I stop smiling anymore. What I mean is, it happens so slowly that you don’t even realize how quickly it has passed by.

There are rock doves everywhere, as those places we used to know are mostly concrete now. They remind me of you…. these pigeons.

I can never forget,

Yours always,

Alicia Bainbridge Escott