Grace Nissan, The Utopians

 

bring any country     to a standstill
take the same form    with everyone 

say it’s hard to find
it’s hard to find 

hold up their hands
their hands 

start thinking up arguments
and that’s farming (“The Utopians”)

I’m intrigued by this title by New York-based poet and translator Grace Nissan, The Utopians (Brooklyn NY: ugly duckling presse, 2025), a book that but hints at the structure of the constraint used, through blurbs offered by Hannah Black, Kay Gabriel and Ted Rees. As Black offers: “Using mostly the para-colonial language of Thomas More’s Utopia, Grace Nissan has made an almost shockingly compelling book out of a formal constraint as sharp and absurd as the limitations of living in these trivial, awful, genocidal, yearning times.” Gabriel, also: “Rewriting Utopia using, mostly, Thomas More’s own language, Grace Nissan poses in a different way a classic organizer’s question: how do we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want?” It is only through the publisher’s website that one might find this (arguably offering little more than what the blurbs provide, and not assisting to spell out Nissan’s specific constraints through this project): “Built around a sequence written entirely with language from Thomas More’s Utopia, The Utopians invents a new world, from the pieces of the old one, to formally explore the contradictions of liberation. A series of letters to Thomas More, and a poem called ‘THE WORLD’ about Utopia’s vexed escape, encircle the remixed no-place as they elaborate Utopia’s double edge.” Or, one can seek through the text itself to hear Nissan’s own thoughts, set close to the end: “that the dead mix freely / in a spirit of reverence // this translation is based on / death / terribly well, I must admit // they cremate the / discussion / to accept it [.]”

Nissan is also the author of The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press), as well as the translator of kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books) and War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions / isolarii), and their translations of Yevgenia Belorusets were exhibited in the 59th Venice Biennale.

“I feel almost ashamed to send you this little book about the Utopian Republic.” (That’s how you started Utopia—with a letter, to introduce Utopia through its messenger, Raphael.) “Some people say that he has died somewhere on his travels. Others that he has gone back to his own country. Others again that he has returned to Utopia, partly because he felt nostalgic about it, and partly because he couldn’t stand the way Europeans behaved.”

The bulk of the collection exists as “The Utopians,” with two further sections—“THE WORLD” and “Passages 1, 2, 3”—interestingly enough, are interspersed throughout the collection, held as fading text (something Ellen Chang-Richardson recently played with as well, through their recent above/ground press title) and even text set backwards. The interplay, the interlay, feels akin to less a series of interruptions than a layering, held as a critique of where we currently are, but through the translated and transposed language of English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, statesman, theologian and writer Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), and their infamous book originally composed in Latin, and published in 1516. “Utopia / wasn’t retailing,” Nissan writes, “like a talented   author / had seen absolutely    nothing // to get an even clearer picture / died somewhere    on his travels / and whispered / More [.]” There are few poetry titles, one would think, responding to texts by one simultaneously held as Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII and venerated by the Catholic Church as a Saint. If More’s Utopia offered a fictional, perfect, island republic or commonwealth, Nissan’s The Utopians writes of a population set within a bubble, offering an articulation of and counterpoint to contemporary western society. How does any utopia turn in on itself, and twist its own impulses? How can any society find its way out of such dark? Held as critique and counterpoint, The Utopians occasionally write directly to More, writing out his limitations, his declarations, through lyric fragment, layering and narrative interplay, and into what More could never have imagined. Or, as Nissan writes:

What I mean is, transmission hurts. Utopia was not always an island, you wrote, it was a peninsula first. Because your new world is dripping with passage, territorial lust and imperial phantoms, as well as all that could not come into being. Thrilling call for the abolition of private property. But you are sullied by the name of one (yours), puppeting as total social structure. You are sullied by personage itself.

Sometimes it helps to think like a child. More: there is no point outside the world, there is only mouth.

Let me enter the picture. Notice me like a low and constant breeze. When it stops.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ted Rees

Ted Rees is a poet, essayist, and editor who lives and works in Philadelphia. His most recent book of poetry is Dog Day Economy, published by Roof Books in February 2022. Thanksgiving: a Poem, published by Golias Books in April 2020, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His first book of poetry, In Brazen Fontanelle Aflame, was published by Timeless, Infinite Light in 2018. Chapbooks include Dear Hole, Big Dearth in Whir, the soft abyss, and Outlaws Drift in Every Vehicle of Thought. Recent essays have been published in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Libertines in the Ante-Room of Love: Poets on Punk, Full Stop Quarterly, and ON Contemporary Practice’s monograph on New Narrative. He is editor-at-large for The Elephants, as well as founder and co-editor of Asterion Projects with Levi Bentley. Since summer of 2020, he has been running Overflowing Poetry Workshops, an extrainstitutional online workshop space.

1 - How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My most recent book, Dog Day Economy, is indebted to the prior book, Thanksgiving: a Poem, in that the latter is a book-length poem written entirely in haiku, and probably marks the first time where I really wrestled with "the line," so to speak. Previously, much of my work had relied on the rhythms and sonic textures of the longer line, but the syllabic restraint of the haiku forced me to reckon with the way shorter lines can allow more ambiguity and uncanniness into a poem. Dog Day Economy takes up many of the same issues that my previous work has addressed— nihilism, personhood, autonomy, the third landscape, drugs, violence, queerness— but does so in a way that hopefully feels less didactic and more about being a person within those concerns rather than person describing those concerns. It's also important to note that the book was written over the course of about nine months, six of which were the first six of the pandemic, so that references to surveillance, exposure, and catastrophe are much more present than in previous poems, in which these themes played no small part.  

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Honestly, these sorts of even broader genre boundaries don't mean much to me, because everything is poetry in one way or another.

Also honestly, when I was younger, I was told that my poems were more interesting than my fiction, so I focused my attention on poetry. I've always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I'm not sure I have the patience or discipline for it.

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?
I have no idea how to answer this question— poems come how they come, and each has its own demands and constraints that can be broken depending on mood and whim. I do usually conceive of some sort of general idea for some poems in my head, but that's more to keep me on track whilst writing them, as I glide away from that general idea all the time when I'm actually writing.

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?
Like some of my favorite poets, I tend to arrive at a loose subject or constraint as I begin a project— that is, I will often be writing a poem and think to myself, "You could keep writing poems within these sorts of boundaries" and things go from there. That said, I began Thanksgiving with a book-length poem in mind.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
The poet Evan Kennedy described Thanksgiving as a book of "honky ventriloquism"— that is, me utilizing the cadences and gestural utterances of white people as a way of getting at the soul death at the heart of whiteness. Doing public readings for that book allowed me to really push the idea that I never want to sublimate these voices into my own, but rather have them work as spoken gestures that are meant to be read and heard as other than my own. Almost like interruptions, or bad impressions.

I love giving readings, and I love attending them, too.

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?
The theoretical concerns of my recent writings have much to do with the boredom of suffering, but that's not really what you asked. In one of her essays on closed and open poems, Lyn Hejinian writes about the space between lines, phrases, the leaps in logic of parataxis that marks so much Language writing. I like to think that my writing is concerned with the space of those leaps, the unsaid elements of those spaces in language that are often elided. Instability.

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?
The larger culture is mind detergent and soul rot, so I'm mostly interested in writing that works against it.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have loved working with every editor I've had, and also love sharing work with others who are not necessarily the publishers of my work, but the readers and supporters of my work. Eric Sneathen has been particularly helpful in this latter regard— perhaps someday we will work together in a more formal capacity!

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait."

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find any prose writing to be torturous, and I agonize when I'm writing essays and reviews.

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 write every day, though sometimes more actively working toward a goal in mind. I do have a very active reading practice which begins in the morning, when I make sure to wake up early enough to read for about 30 minutes while drinking coffee and eating breakfast. This practice is essential to my mental and emotional well-being, and I become angry when it is interrupted.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Music with lyrics is a big one for me— dumb pop music, Guided by Voices, nasty lines from obscure R'n'B songs. I also listen to a lot of instrumental music, particularly jazz, but have recently been inspired by the band Crazy Doberman, a midwestern group that plays truly out there freeform music.

In terms of writing, I am always inspired by Hejinian, Jean Day, Prynne, Lisa Robertson, Clark Coolidge, Norma Cole, and recently, James Purdy.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My parents are also book fanatics, so their house has a sort of musty smell of books and old carpets. I like that.

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 don't really think I can answer this question in any sort of sufficient way, partly because I don't think of my work as separate from any other forms.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I don't really think of an inside or outside of my work, but the writing of my friends is immensely important to my life, even if that is rarely evidenced in my work.

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

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?
If I'm being real, I'd probably be a lawyer. I hate the legal system, grounded as it is on a field of pain and death, but I've done legal research and paralegal work, and I have a knack for understanding its machinations.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I love reading more than most activities, so that's a big part of it, probably.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently finished Far Out West by Clark Coolidge, which I enjoyed quite a lot. I admit to having a pretty lazy and uninspired film-watching practice at present, but we've been doing horror movies since the month began, and I loved Basket Case— so much of a world that no longer exists contained in a single film, kind of incredible.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I just finished a newish manuscript on cancer and counter-narrative, so at the moment, I'm mostly prepping for a commissioned essay on the cult gay filmmaker Curt McDowell, and searching for my next poems.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ted Rees, Dog Day Economy

 
 

He would sniff Ajax just to feel the burn
asynchronous to my youth in ditches
the grey matter of free will crunching
its way through the forest of worship
shame of clashing melodic intervals
self on screen not always so synched
but fun for a while ‘til a fanatic walked,
they all walk.

It’s why our scrambled intention to learn
how to trache the horizon was initiated.
Sadly, its execution was tragicomic,
deeply compressed yet histrionic, accurate yet
subject to the whims of the board
on which we all opened fire. Damn Ambien,
fucked five ways to Friday keep it down down,
landed into a house that ain’t mine,
baton gauntlet psychic scan
and where are my contours, my slop?

Did you reel in the sandtrap rubbing slamming
against illusive green? (“Economy, a Reshaped Spit”)

From Philadelphia poet, essayist and editor Ted Rees comes Dog Day Economy (New York NY: Roof Books, 2022), a suite of paired suites: from the sixty-odd page sequence “Economy, a Reshaped Spit” to the triptych “Dog Day Scrolls”: “I: Dog,” “II: Day” and “III: Scrolls.” There are curious echoes of Kootenay School of Writing language gymnastics in Rees’ articulations, one that has rippled across multiple writers in the interim, including Jeff Derksen, Colin Smith, Louis Cabri (who studied in Philadelphia in the 1990s), Colin Smith and even Philadelphia poet ryan eckes, blending a collage of sound and meaning across critiques of politics and policy, social justice and late capitalism. Rees composes collage-poems of despair and shifting foundations, poems that articulate a deep uncertainty and urgency, each of which feed off the other, writing savage, slant and skant across the body of a culture infused with its own sense of self-annihilation. “One day we’ll tickle again,” he writes, towards the end of the opening section, “but cold gin, / automatic rifles, discerning smiles / beneath masks, my binky.” His poems articulate simultaneously a savage, pessimistic critique and a hopeless, even desperate, optimism. As he offers in his “Notes on the Poems” at the back of the collection:

The poems of Economy, a Reshaped Spit were composed by writing with and around language that was physically cut and pasted from issues of The Economist magazine and Wikipedia articles on people who have disappeared mysteriously, with special attention given to those who seem to have disappeared voluntarily. They were written in Philadelphia between November 2019 and May 2020.

The poems of Dog Day Scrolls were first composed on large sheets of butcher paper utilizing luggage markers, permanent markers, packing tape, scraps of paper, and pens, in a rather physical process. They were written in Philadelphia between 2020’s summer solstice and autumnal equinox.