Jos Charles is author of Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). They are
founding-editor of THEM: a trans literary journal. They have writing published
(and/or publications forthcoming) with POETRY, Denver Quarterly, Washington
Square Review, PEN America, Action Yes, GLAAD, LAMBDA Literary, and elsewhere.
In 2016 they were awarded a Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg
Fellowship through the Poetry Foundation. Jos Charles received their MFA from
the University of Arizona. They reside in Long Beach, CA.
1 - How did your first book change your
life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel
different?
My
first book was something I had to write, for me. Of course, I considered
audience, whether it was worth sharing, the histories I was giving it unto. I
was however firmly its first audience. I understand that, sympathize with who I
was, and have no regrets in writing or seeking publication, but my writing has
shifted increasingly to considering form first and foremost, that the most
important audience for me to first commit to and consider is ‘poetry’, its
histories, how I both am and am not implicated or intelligible within it, and
this messy matter of aesthetics. Naturally, aesthetics is not something outside
identity, obstruction, power. So, there is also that consistency of being aware
or trying to make aware where one is, the things around oneself, one’s people.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as
opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
The
first poem I remember writing was 2 or 3 pages long, I was 7, I believe. It was
a detailed semi-fictionalized elegy on the crucifixion of Jesus. It was very
bad, but I liked trying to make this ugly and, what I considered bad, event
beautiful, or show what I considered to be beautiful about it. I think in many
ways I haven’t changed in that regard.
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? and 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?
I usually
begin with something simple and affective, an abstraction like say (opening my
phone now to see what was last written in my notes) “an empire / no way to run
/ an empire [action/something],” the lone word “national,” and “in front of
everyone [ending?].” When those “[somethings]” become apparent to me, which
they don’t always, I begin constructing something that convinces me the lines are
worth a poem. Often the original lines don’t take to it or make it. I work
outward from there to something like a poem, typically in a burst of energy
over a day or two. I’m usually fine-tuning a handful at any given time. Once
edited I consider them “done” though they may receive more editing depending on
what work they want to sit alongside. I assemble something like a book or
project around that and I’d guess about 15-20% get scrapped. Another 15-20% get
rewritten significantly and maybe another 15-20% get minor edits (I notice too
heavy a reliance on a certain image, gesture, turn, and so on). My first book
is maybe 10% of the poems I wrote in that period, but I think I’m getting more
concise, realizing what poems, for me, aren’t worth writing.
5 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
I used to
dislike readings. I felt like they were too formal for a get together and too
casual for a performance, like going to the symphony and getting a house party
or going to a punk show and getting a rough sight-read performance. I’ve been
learning to like house parties and rough sight-reading. Readings seem neither
part or not part of my creating process, just this other thing, like a
sleepover. It can be very fun if you like the people who are staying over.
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 don’t
think a poem can ask or answer the Big Questions, but then again I’m suspect of
Big Questions. I have no problem with a poem trying to answer or posit a
question, I enjoy the trying, but I doubt a poem will, for example, dismantle
structural power all by itself, i.e. a State, white supremacy, violence against
trans people. I think people work towards dismantling power and that work might
include writing a poem or reacting with or to a poem. Many of the great
revolutionaries were poets after all. But what I mean is the work includes much
that isn’t on the page. I say this not to dismiss identity or political poetry,
but the opposite, to point to how much work surrounds a poem, how much poetry
is in the work. The work within and around the poem is the theoretic, poetic,
through and through.
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?
I
tend to think, rather than in terms of ought or necessity, in terms of trust. The
writer makes themself trustworthy to their audience, and respectively an
audience has a varying degree of trust or distrust they lend towards a writer.
As with the previous question, this includes not just the writers work—though,
as a reader, it certainly will be a big factor—but also the author’s life work.
I don’t think I could ever “blame” someone for distrusting an author, or for an
author to commit to something that will incur distrust. People will do a lot in
their life that incurs trust with one group over and against another. But then
one has to reckon with that distrust.
In
my work, for instance, as a white trans writer, I try to make myself
trustworthy to trans people and/or other marginalized identities, and, given my
identity and life, that might demand a fair amount from a cis reader. I’m fine
with that. I am also always already writing my white American-ness too, so I
try to do that without alienating people of color and/or inter/transnational
people, to be critical of whiteness as supremacist while being wholly white.
This is to say there is much in my work that could bring on distrust, whether genuine
critique or ideological reaction. I don’t think people owe me or my work trust.
If someone responds with distrust, vocalized or not, I then get to listen or
reflect and decide if I’m ok with continuing that distrust, which distrust to
commit to. I try to then commit to making myself trustworthy to the people
whose trust I want, who I consider to be “the good people,” to make myself into
a good person. It’s not always clear what is good, but it often is. I think,
ultimately, writers ought to be good people.
8 - Do you find the process of working
with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Working
with an outside editor seems no different than working with a boss. Maybe they
aren’t an owner of the means of production, maybe they’re a wonderful person,
maybe they’re poor. They’re also still a boss. This is a typical kind of
difficulty.
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Saeed Jones once said at an AWP panel something to the effect of writers, people trying to make it as writers, don’t earn money; if someone is a writer it means they got
money from somewhere else. I think writers should be transparent about when
they have money, to not affect poorness when they aren’t poor. I don’t like
secretly rich people, having to accommodate that. If you have money that’s
great, I wish everyone did. I’ve been fortunate enough to get money here and
there through a grant or school funding, and I am nothing but grateful, amazed.
But surely it can’t fall to aspiring poor writers to accommodate wealthy
writer’s shame about their wealth. It’s especially annoying when the ashamed
rich think they have something to say, and there are a lot of those in the
arts. Knowing that, that I don’t have to accommodate that, could’ve saved a
young Jos some heartache.
10 - How easy has it been for you to
move between genres (poetry to critical prose/non-fiction)? What do you see as
the appeal?
It’s all
just different form, differently historically situated commitments. You arrive
at a different kind of truth, a different kind of speaking, when using
different conventions. The limits of their truths are the limits of their
history (until suddenly they aren’t, until there are other, new limits). I’m
more interested in committing to poetry than those others forms, but I get
their appeal. I like how in prose for instance the idea of the never-ending
line break, the never taken breath, emerged by this technological innovation,
typeset and justification. It seems very appealing, being contingent on the
‘idea’ as machine-like, silent. It’s very romantic. I think of St. Augustine
being scandalized by St. Ambrose’s ability to read without moving his lips, without
mouthing the words. I have a very hard time not moving my lips when reading
though. I feel stuck with poetry. I like music, mouths, too much.
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?
See 3 &
4.
12 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
As
far as poets, I read Paul Celan most of all, he’s my saint, but Hoa Nguyen or
Fred Moten are in the pantheon. I’ve returned to Ariana Reines’ The Cow a lot; it’s what first led me to
become a poet. I think I’m often writing alongside and against the modernist
tradition of the grand American poetic work, with its various relations to
distancing from or embracing fascism (Oppen, Tolson, Pound, Olson, Williams,
etc). Sometimes I’ll dip into that, but it’s depressing, like an autopsy. I
respond to a lot, I feel, but some other recurring things seem to be Medieval
Christian texts, neorealist film, dodecaphonic composition, second-wave
abstract expressionism, and midcentury liberation movements.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Peppermint
oil.
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?
See 12.
15 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
See 12.
16 - What would you like to do that you
haven't yet done?
I
have an anti-memoir I’ve worked at and scrapped and worked at for a while. It
variously has been an autobiography except set in a modernized Tolkien
universe, a werewolf memoir, typical lyric memoir that ends with me blowing up
an Opera house, and the journal of Frankenstein’s monster. I have the idea of
it, the form, but just keep going the wrong way about it. I’ll get it right one
of these days.
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 studied
music composition in undergrad, my first love was film, and I’ve made visual
art from a very young age. I don’t imagine—and I mean this with no
hyperbole—that I would be alive without art. I’ve done different jobs to
support my art-making throughout my life of course, and I can imagine a world, very
likely this one now, where I go on doing that. I think most any work is
beautiful, so I’m content with anything as long as it affords me a place to
live, food, healthcare, time to make my art, agitate the things that need
agitation, and so on. Of course, this is a rarity. But I have no pretense
towards surviving financially on poetry, I just want to survive financially,
and then poetry.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to
doing something else?
I
didn’t think my music was good enough.
19 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
20 - What are you currently working on?
Tiny
little winding fugal things, the closest I’ll get to late Celan.
