Stephanie M. Wytovich's Blog, page 4
August 17, 2022
Madhouse Author Interview: Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell by Stephanie Parent
Hello friends and fiends--
Today in The Madhouse, I'm sitting down with Stephanie Parent, author of the recently debuted poetry collection, Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell. In Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell, Stephanie Parent’s feminist, fairy-tale-inspired poetry combines the horror and the happily-ever-after of traditional fairy tales with a modern perspective. Both personal and universal, these poems are inspired by familiar and forgotten tales.
Both the collection and Parent's responses were so enjoyable to read, and I found myself adding a few books to my TBR list, too. I hope you all will enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Please be sure to pick up a book or two on your way out!
Best,
Stephanie
SMW: Hi Stephanie! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?
SP: Thank you so much for having me! I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and was a big reader throughout childhood—I was the stereotypical girl with her nose in a book, who found friends in the pages I could relate to more than the people in my real life. While I read in all genres, I wasn’t particularly drawn to poetry until I started enjoying novels in verse as a teenager. Then, while in grad school for writing, I had a wonderful teacher, the poet Amy Gerstler. I wouldn’t have read or written nearly as much poetry as I have if it wasn’t for Amy’s classes, and I wouldn’t continue to read and write as much poetry as I do if it wasn’t for the vibrant poetry community on Twitter.
SMW: What was the writing process like during Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell? I know in the foreword you mentioned you didn’t initially plan to publish or share these with anyone other than yourself, so I’m curious if your approach differed from any of your other projects, or if you found your routine consistent with this one?
SP: Writing this poetry collection was definitely a unique process for me. I began writing these poems in the first months of the pandemic, so I had a lot of emotional energy and very few in-person social interactions to channel it into. At the same time, I was working on a nonfiction project that I was convinced would be my “big break” into the publishing world (it wasn’t), so I was very conscious of trying to write for an audience and live up to publishers’ expectations. These poems came out as an antidote to that—my subconscious pouring onto the page, without worrying too much about whether people would see the work as “literary” or “accomplished,” or even like it, or whether it was in line with current trends. I wrote a poem whenever I felt like writing but didn’t want to work on the nonfiction project, and eventually, I had enough poems and ideas that I wanted to finish it as a book. I’m not sure I’ll ever again take on such a big project that starts out “just for me,” but I think it’s interesting that this collection found a publisher while the nonfiction book didn’t. Maybe fate was arranging some things for me behind the scenes!
SMW: In your poem “Into the Forest,” you write: “Fairy Tales tell us/ We all have a forest within us.” As someone who is obsessed with witches and folklore herself, I’m wondering why you think the woods became this liminal space for occult happenings throughout history. And according to classic literature—and honestly, maybe contemporary literature, too—do you think the woods hold different symbolism and dangers for men and women?
SP: What a great question! To answer this in full would probably be an essay, so I’ll keep it somewhat simple. To start with, if we go back far enough in time, in the places where fairy tales were first told, where wise women performed rituals and witches were sought out and burned, there was much more wilderness than there is today. With the lack of electricity and roads and the prevalence of wildlife, the forests were darker and deeper and more dangerous. Getting lost and encountering dangers in the woods was a very real possibility, and many stories probably evolved as cultural warnings to beware [of] these dangers. At the same time, forests could be a place to intentionally get lost or hide oneself, and thus became the best location for those who wanted to engage in occult or spiritual activities outside of cultural norms. In addition, because the woods were such a big part of people’s lives, they made an apt metaphor for our subconscious, the deepest, most hidden parts of ourselves.
As for the second part of the question, yes, woods generally have a different symbolic meaning for men and women. In fairy tales, male heroes often set off into the woods to make their own futures, plowing through the trees to come out the other side; whereas female heroines get lost and/or trapped in the forest, or are forced to hide in the woods to escape an even greater threat. In broad terms, the male journey was often conceived as active while the female was more passive—although if you dig deeper, female characters can actively fight their ways out of the woods, and/or claim a connection and power from the wilderness.
For both male and female characters, the journey into the trees is often a metaphorical step into adolescence and discovering sexuality. This seems to be emphasized more for women, in stories like Little Red Riding Hood—this makes sense when we think that female sexuality was traditionally considered dangerous when it was not controlled, just like the woods are dangerous and beyond our control.
SMW: I’m a big Disney fan, and I’ve appreciated the direction they’vebeen moving in with regard to portraying strong female characters lately. As such,admittedly, I might have cheered a bit while reading your take on Little Red Riding Hood with your poem “Red Hood in the Woods.” I love that you took that tale and made a statement about women and violence and how women aren’t “asking for it” with what they’re wearing. Can you talk a little bit about your approach to putting a feminist spin on fairy tales—something, let’s face it, we so desperately need!SP: Many years ago I read Marina Warner’s scholarly study From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in fairy tales—it’s fascinating and very readable. I was very influenced by Warner’s idea that fairy tales evolved as a way for women to take back agency through storytelling. Even the most reductive, patriarchally centered versions of fairy tales retain elements of powerful femininity: the fairy godmother in Cinderella, for instance. So my personal view is that there are many different ways for fairy tales to be feminist, just as there are many different ways for women to be strong. A modern version of Little Red Riding Hood might emphasize a woman who takes ownership of and expresses her sexuality despite the threat of violence. On the other hand, traditional versions of Cinderella depict an apparently quiet, meek young woman who allows a prince to save her. Look closer, though, and think about how few options were available to orphaned women before the modern era, and we see a heroine who defies her oppressive step-family, takes every opportunity she can to get out of a terrible situation and receives help from the strong, magical female figure of the fairy godmother.
With the variety of poems in my collection, I wanted to explore the many different ways fairy tales depict strong—but also three-dimensional, sometimes scared, weak, jealous, flawed—human women.
SMW: To build on the above, let’s chat about your poem “Poissonnier,” which I absolutely loved, and who could blame with me lines like: “Our human legs are things of violence” and “What is love,/If not a split, an opening/An offering of yourself to be/Ruptured.” I feel like we could have an entire interview about these two lines alone, but for time’s sake, let’s talk about the female body and this symbol of the “split” self. There’s so much there, whether we’re talking about the ways that women change themselves and shapeshift to fit in or protect themselves, or the subtle (okay, maybe not-so-subtle) vaginal symbolism of the open wound. How do you like to work with the female body when it comes to horror, and do you feel like subverting the treatment of the female form is important in contemporary horror? Why or why not?
SP: What a great question! As you might be able to tell from “Poissonnier” and other poems in this collection, I have a strong interest in sadomasochism—it’s something I became obsessed with at a young age, in a bit of a symbiotic relationship with fairy tales. Fairy tales are full of characters—especially women—who actively hurt themselves or accept ill treatment from others, and their suffering leads to some kind of reward in the end. In The Seven Ravens, the heroine cuts off her finger to save her brothers; in The Maiden Without Hands, the heroine allows her father to cut off her hands and ends up marrying a king who gifts her with silver hands. These acts of violence were exaggerated versions of women’s reality throughout history, in a time when many died from childbirth, where poor women might literally work themselves to death just to survive, and where there was no legal recourse against domestic violence or rape. Fairy tales could provide a sort of comfort for women who could not escape their bodies and their physical pain, but who could, through storytelling, imagine a transcendence and redemption resulting from their suffering.As a child who dealt with emotional pain for various reasons, I really clung to this idea of pain and suffering leading to some kind of reward in the end. I was also attracted to the idea of physical pain as almost a release—the emotional made into something tangible, which then allows this pain to be exorcised. That led to my interest in BDSM, and I ended up working in a commercial dungeon for six years. My first horror novel THE BRIARS, which is coming out next year from Cemetery Gates, is set in a commercial dungeon like the one I worked at. The body horror in that book comes from women struggling with their desires to receive or inflict pain, and the inevitable scars (physical and psychological) and lack of control that can result. It asks how women can take back that control, without going too far in the opposite direction and causing more destruction.
In a larger sense, and to get back to your question, I definitely think it’s important for female authors, artists, and filmmakers of horror to subvert the treatment of the female form. While fairy tales (which can be considered horror) and gothic novels are often told from the female gaze, so much of modern horror is from a male gaze that objectifies women, fetishizing their pain without allowing the viewer or reader to experience it empathetically and three-dimensionally. It is time for that to change.
SMW: In your poem “Gretel,” the little girl is faced with a difficult decision and ultimately chooses her blood family over the potential family she could have had with the witch. Again, I feel like we could talk about the witch for ages, but I’m curious why you think the archetype of the witch is so attractive to women, especially, and why you think that sometimes even if they want to walk the path with her, they turn away from her in fear?SP: The witch is the original outsider, the counter-cultural icon, the woman who, whether she originally chose to live outside of society or was cast out, has come to own her powerful identity. And it is a power that is entirely divorced from the qualities women are traditionally valued for, like beauty, youth, kindness, etc. That combination of power and freedom that the witch embodies calls to every woman on some level—even those of us who want to be accepted by society, to go to the ball and wear the pretty dress and kiss the prince, at some point we realize that role is both exhausting and precarious. From the earliest age, we are taught to control our appearance and behavior to be attractive to men—to shave and pluck hairs, to watch our weight, to be kind and gracious, to be sexually available but not promiscuous, to embody all these contradictions and perform all these behaviors that require constant maintenance. Yet still, we’re told we could be prettier, thinner, nicer. The witch doesn’t have to worry about any of that. She doesn’t even want that. In many stories, she can transform herself into a beautiful enchantress if need be, but she doesn’t choose to stay in that form.
The witch is also uniquely powerful not in spite of the fact she’s a woman, but because of it. While fairy-tale witches have imaginary abilities, they’re connected to real-life cunning women who knew how to use the natural and spiritual worlds to cast spells and treat ailments. Since these women held beliefs that challenged organized religion, and many offered birth control or performed abortions, they were branded as “witches” and ostracized or worse.
Even today, when witch trials are ancient history, I think women may instinctively turn away from the witch’s identity out of fear of being othered or rejected. Western culture has spent centuries branding the witch—the powerful woman who does not follow social norms and does not care about pleasing men—as something evil and disgusting. This kind of deep-rooted imagery is easy to internalize and hard to overcome.
SMW: Your Baba Yaga-inspired poem “The House on Chicken Legs” had a line that stopped me cold and made me smile: “The house finds you.” And it always does, doesn’t it? So much of fairy tales focus on the domestic confines that women are placed in and desperate to break out of. In some ways, it’s the house that traps them, but in others, it’s the forced obligation, the assumption that this is where they are supposed to remain, that their allegiance is to the house, the family. Baba Yaga, herself, exists as a way to subvert that mindset. Can you talk a bit about how Baba—and her house, ironically—kind of became this feminist symbol for freedom?
SP: I touched on this in my previous answer about the appeal of the witch, but Baba Yaga is a particularly memorable witch figure. Baba appears across many stories in Slavic folklore and is accompanied by many symbols that transform traditionally limiting parts of femininity into something powerful, freeing, and yes, even grotesque. The first example, as you mentioned is her house that walks on chicken legs—taking that symbol of domesticity, the home, and turning it into a way to roam free. Baba Yaga also has the power to fly on a giant mortar and pestle—tools used in traditional female tasks, but in Baba’s case, she uses the mortar and pestle to grind the bones of people she eats. Even Baba’s own body is monstrous: her teeth are strong enough to break bones and tear meat, and her limbs can expand to fill her entire house. She exists as a defiance of everything small and quiet, good-natured and motherly, and traditionally attractive that women are supposed to be.
In my poem, I wrote not from the point of view of Baba Yaga but as Vasilisa, the heroine of one of the most well-known Baba Yaga stories. In this story Baba is ostensibly the villain: Baba captures Vasilisa, who is a Cinderella-type figure mistreated by her stepmother, and threatens to kill the girl if she does not perform impossible tasks such as separating poppy seeds from soil. With the help of a magical doll gifted by her dead mother, Vasilisa completes all of Baba’s tests, and Baba gives Vasilisa a light inside a skull that kills her stepfamily when they look upon it. Vasilisa then uses her talents as a seamstress to make it to the big city and marry the Tsar. So, even though Baba is the evil witch in the story, she is also almost a fairy godmother: she tests Vasilisa, forces her to discover her inner strength, and helps her escape a terrible situation and find a better life.SMW: Out of all the folklore you worked with in this collection, which was your favorite to explore and why?
SP: My favorite was the Grimms’ story Jorinda and Joringel, which I discovered while listening to an online lecture by the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic early during the pandemic (Google them, listen to their lectures, take their classes—they’re fantastic!). I can’t remember whether I read this story as a child, but it’s eerie and chilling, full of evocative symbolism. The simple version: a young girl and boy in love, Jorinda and Joringel, venture into a forest where they find a castle inhabited by a witch who transforms girls into songbirds and keeps them in cages. The witch turns Jorinda into a nightingale and freezes Joringel where he stands, but later releases him. Joringel begs the witch to free Jorinda, but the witch refuses, so Joringel leaves and lives in a distant village for many years. Finally, he dreams of a flower that will break the witch’s enchantment, goes on a journey to find this flower, and manages to do so and return to the castle to free all the girl-birds and reunite with his love.
When I heard this story as an adult, I immediately wondered if I had read it as a young child and absorbed the imagery into my brain without remembering the story itself. From the age of preschool, I remember having a recurrent fantasy where I was kept in a giant birdcage in sort of a harem-greenhouse, where there were many other caged girls. I later realized this was the beginning of my BDSM inclinations: it was my brain’s way of trying to make sense of and romanticize the fact that I felt trapped in my life as if my body and thoughts did not belong to me. Just as fairy tales take horrible feelings and realities and turn them into magical stories, our own subconscious fantasies do the same thing.
In terms of the Jorinda and Joringel poems in the collection, I originally only had three or four, but my editor thought it would be great to do seven to go with the fact that is 700 to 7000 cages in the witch’s castle, depending on the version. This allowed me to explore the different characters’ perspectives in greater depth. For me personally, the most evocative aspect of this story is the idea that maybe a part of Jorinda wanted to become a bird; maybe that was why she wandered so close to the witch’s castle. Maybe a part of her wished to become a beautiful, precious treasure, even if that meant giving up her freedom. Maybe the cage was a kind of escape. I could go on, but the symbolism is so deep here and speaks so much to subconscious emotions that I think everyone will have their own interpretation.
SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?
SP:I’m currently reading Grace R. Reynolds’ Lady of the House and Christina Sng’s A Collection of Nightmares. There is such a wealth of speculative and horror poetry out there that I wasn’t aware of till recently—I feel I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg! I’m excited for Cynthia Pelayo’s upcoming Crime Scene since I loved her previous true crime poetry collection, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, and I’m also very intrigued by Stephanie Kaylor’s Ask a Sex Worker coming from CLASH Books in 2024.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
SP: My debut gothic horror novel, The Briars, is forthcoming from Cemetery Gates Media in May 2023. I poured my entire self and my emotions into this novel, and I really hope people will pick it up. I drew directly from my experience working for six years at a commercial dungeon, and the book includes other types of sex work as well. It makes some powerful statements about misogyny and the many different versions of female strength. It’s also fun—I mean, what better setting for a gothic ghost story than a BDSM dungeon?—and is an insider’s view into that dungeon world, with all the dirty secrets exposed. I can confidently say this book will be like nothing most people have ever read, so I hope it finds its audience.
Like The Briars, my next few books focus on sex work. In both my failed nonfiction project and my journey to finding a publisher for The Briars, I discovered the appalling amount of misconceptions about sex work(ers), the widespread belief that sex workers’ stories are not worth telling, and the downright disdain for people who have engaged in this profession. I’m working on both a short story collection and poetry collection centered around sex work and BDSM, so hopefully, I will finish and publish them at some point!Author Bio:
Stephanie Parent is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California as well as a former submissive and switch at a commercial dungeon. Her debut horror novel set in a BDSM dungeon, The Briars, is forthcoming in May 2023 from Cemetery Gates Media. Her debut poetry collection, Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell, was released in August 2022 by Querencia Press. Stephanie’s poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and Best of the Net.
Follow Stephanie on Twitter at @SC_Parent and Instagram at @SCParent for updates on her writing.
If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.
August 1, 2022
July '22 Madhouse Recap: Therapy, Poetry, and a 5-Year Plan
July ‘22 Madhouse Recap
Hello Friends and Fiends—
Another month has come and gone and with it, summer is almost over. Dennis and I have been working really hard on well…everything. I feel like we’re all starting to get into a routine together, which is great, but things will change once the semester starts and we’ll have to adjust and reframe things yet again. Flexibility is not something I tend to be great with, and the more I learn about my OCD, the more I understand how important structure and communication are to my life. Therapy has been really wonderful and I feel grateful to be paired with a therapist who really gets me and is patient and supportive; she’s been helping me to unravel a lot of trauma, and while the growing pains have been excruciating at times, they’re a necessary battle for me and they’re helping me to grow into a better version of myself, not to mention a more patient and empathic mother and partner. So yeah, between managing all of that and some other postpartum stuff, it’s become more important than ever for me to 1) assess how and with whom I’m spending/giving my time and 2) plan out time that’s just for me.
Honestly, summer is just a weird time for me in general. I know a lot of people get seasonal depression in the winter, but I get it in the summer. I hate the eternal sun, the heat, the humidity. It makes me miserable and angry, and I’m just desperately looking forward to fall and winter and darkness so I can feel alive and happy again.
I will say, though, that I had a very productive month and have been taking a lot of risks with some projects here and there. It’s been fun to push myself, and I’ve started asking myself questions about plans for the next 5-10 years of my life. Dennis and I have a lot of goals we want to accomplish together for our family, but when I sit and think about the direction of my career and my writing, I feel like I’ve gotten too comfortable–which sure, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I think I want to try some new things, maybe tackle some of the more challenging projects I’ve put on the back burner or told myself I couldn’t do until I had more experience. I don’t know. I feel like for so long I made so many decisions based on the fact that I wanted to have a child, and now that Evie’s here, I just want to tackle the world with her and make crazy, wild, beautiful things happen, and the way she looks at me makes me feel like I can do anything and everything.
I just love her so much.
On the writing/teaching front:
The cover reveal and preorder of Writing Poetry in the Dark went live and will be available everywhere on October 18th. Writing Poetry in the Dark brings together some of the most successful contemporary genre poets to discuss topics related to creating dark and fantastical poetry. While there are countless books available for the aspiring poet, there is a lack of resources specifically for and on speculative poetry, and with the market thriving, publishers who previously did not put out poetry are now adding it to their catalogs, requesting it for their anthologies, and seeking it for their magazines. Given these factors, it seemed like the perfect time to put together a guide for dark poets that addresses some of the unique challenges they face, such as creating monsters out of white space, writing the hybrid poem, or subverting folklore in the retelling of a classic tale. Included in Writing Poetry in the Dark are recommendations on how to bring fear to the page, write from the wound, let violence loose, channel the weird, and tackle the dark side of daily life. There are also practical suggestions for exploring different poetic forms and topics ranging from building worlds, writing from different points of view, and exploring gender and sexuality on the page. This book will bring something different to every speculative writer who is interested in exploring poetry with a genre twist, and it is our hope that this book will help poetry itself continue to evolve, grow, and redefine itself in the market for many years to come.My poem “To Hear the Call” was accepted to be in the HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume 9. Even more exciting, it was selected as one of the top three poems in the anthology. If you haven’t read the showcase before, there are eight volumes (so far) and I highly recommend picking them up.My poem “What the Floorboards Know to Be True” will be a featured poem in Black Spot Books newest anthology Under Her Eye. Submissions are currently open for this one, so please consider sending in some work: “This collection is open to all poets who identify as women (cis and trans) and non-binary femmes. The theme of the second collection is domestic horror. This is a broad spectrum and poets are welcome to interpret the prompt in their own vision, so long as poems support the theme of domestic horror -- the fear that we might not be safe in our own homes. [They] have partnered with The Pixel Project, a global, volunteer-run non-profit for this showcase, and will be donating a portion of proceeds to support ending violence against women.”My interview with Erin Slaughter, author of the poetry collection The Sorrow Festival is live on my blog and available to read. If you haven’t read Erin’s work, I can’t recommend it enough.
This month, I read:Brute: Poems by Emily Skaja
A Tug of Blue by Eleanor Hooker
Sacred Summer by Cassandra Rose Clarke
notsleepyyet by Alexander P. Garza
[deadname] by Halsey Hyer
Lore Olympus: Volume Two by Rachel Smythe
The Elementals by Michael McDowell
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch (this was a re-read and I still think it’s a great–albeit unconventional–craft book for writers and all artists to read).
Girls From the County by Donna Lynch (reread)
Nightmare Country, Issue #3 by James Tynion IV
On the media front:
Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), The Long Night (2022), Umma (2002)
What We Do in the Shadows: I’m loving the latest season so far, and baby Colin Robinson is killing me. I could watch this show forever, I swear. Oh, and please take me to that night market!
I finished Stranger Things (2022) Season 4. What a fucking rush. I don’t think it’s possible for me to love this show more than I do.
Ms. Marvel (2022): Dennis and I finished this together last month and I absolutely loved it (even if I did have some narrative questions). The culture was rich, the storyline was so empowering, and I loved how they portrayed family in this one. I wish I would have had stuff like this around when I was growing up, but I’m happy Evie will have it at least. She watched the entire thing with us, too!
Umbrella Academy (2022) Season 3: Klaus remains my favorite character of this series, and honestly at this point, I’m kind of just watching it for him. I enjoyed this season, and I actually really liked the cliffhanger ending, but I’m nervous for the next season. I’m really picky about my science fiction intake, and I think this could continue on as a story I really enjoy or it might go down a path that is a little too weird and out there for me. We’ll see. Either way, this particular season was a lot of fun and I continue to love how angry Five is. It makes my Aries self feel seen.
Twilight Zone (2019-2020)
“Blue Scorpion” – This was a lot of fun. I like cursed-object horror and I thought this had some interesting things to say. Honestly, when I read through the episode descriptions, this one interested me the least but it probably ended up being one of the ones I liked more.
“Blurry Man” - I’m such a sucker for stories about writers (could I be more cliche? No. Do I care? Also no). But the twist for this episode made me so incredibly happy that I practically screeched like a bat.
“Meet in the Middle”- Definitely one of my favorites. I loved how this was romantic, thrilling, trippy, and HORRIFYING.
“Downtime”--This is the type of content I think of when I think of The Twilight Zone, but I also thought this had some Black Mirror vibes to it too (which makes sense when you think about it because Black Mirror is definitely influenced by Twilight Zone). Anyways, that blank stare from everyone as they stared at the big ball in the sky? Chilling. I watched this one in black and white, so the nostalgia was beautiful here.
“The Who of You”- These types of body-switch episodes always freak me out, but I love this kind of horror, so this worked well for me. Plus the twist at the end? So devious and dark and honestly just heartbreaking.
“Ovation”--I liked this one and I thought the twist was good at the end, but it all felt a little too predictable for me. I wish there would have been some discussion about the coin itself–I think that could have added a different spin to a devil’s-deal story.
“Among the Untrodden”--Psychic girls? A boarding school? This one had Stephanie written all over it.
“8”--All I’m going to say about this is that I could watch SF shows and movies about giant squids all day long.
“A Human Face”--I’m torn between loving this one and being bored with it and wanting more. I loved the premise, but it became so straightforward, yet at the same time, that blunt nature is where the horror is so I’m kind of in the middle on this one. Honestly, I kind of just wanted to see more of the creature in his purple slimy creature body, though.
“A Small Town” – This is the type of weird, SF that I love so I was all about this one. Plus, how they incorporated grief and community and then juxtaposed that against the greed and power of politicians was fantastic.
“Try, Try”--Ah, this was probably one of my favorites out of both seasons. I love repetition stuff like this, and the way the “nice guy” trope was handled here was just perfect. Absolutely loved it!
“You Might Also Like”--This one was not for me. Like I said, with science fiction, I tend to either love it or hate it and I actually fell asleep the first time I watched this (hey, I have a 6-month-old, give me a break!) but then went back in for the rewatch, I still wasn’t taken with it.
I flew through Boo, Bitch. It was like a paranormal version of Mean Girls and I had a lot of fun with it.
I watched the first two episodes of Season 2 of American Horror Stories. Honestly, I’ve kind of given up on all things AHS, but with that said, I still give it a chance here and there; the only one I completely quit on was Death Valley. Anyways, I liked the first episode, and I appreciated that it gave us some more insight into Coven, which was a cool crossover. The second one had some Black Mirror vibes to it, and I liked it, too. We’ll see how things continue though...
I randomly decided to watch How to Build a Sex Room and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Lots of good discussions about marriage and relationships (and obviously sex), and then the design part of it was gorgeous! Oh, how I wish I were rich…
Podcasts:Talking Scared, Episode 62 Catherynne M. Valente and the Homeowners Association from Hell
Talking Scared, Episode 44 Eric LaRocca and Abominable Things You Probably Shouldn’t Be Reading
Talking Scared, Episode 3 Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Mexican Gothic, Not Romance
Talking Scared, Episode 47 Grady Hendrix and Final Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Books in the Freezer, Cult Horror with Neil McRobert
Books in the Freezer, The Women of Stephen King Stories with Jenn Adams
Books in the Freezer, More New Releases 2022
Books in the Freezer, Coming of Age Horror with Tracy Robinson
Books in the Freezer, Unreliable Narrators with Paul Tremblay
The start of this month is going to include a tattoo appointment, school supply shopping, and finalizing some details for the Writing Poetry in the Dark release this October, not to mention I’m teaching my Witch Lit workshop on August 16 (you can still sign up here!), so please send me good vibes, remember to hydrate, read one poem a day, and know that your art is valid and wonderful and the world needs your words now more than ever.
Best,
Stephanie
July 12, 2022
Madhouse Author Interview: The Sorrow Festival by Erin Slaughter
Good Morning Friends and Fiends--
Today in The Madhouse I'm thrilled to be hosting Erin Slaughter, author of the poetry collection The Sorrow Festival, which not to sound dramatic, is probably one of my new favorite books and definitely one I plan on incorporating into my classes soon. There is so much meat to this book, and while I tend to read poetry that focuses on grief and trauma quite frequently, this one hit like others haven't, and we're going to talk a little bit about why that is in the interview below.
Before we get to our chat though, I want to take a moment to say that I definitely plan on picking up more of Erin's work, too, and I hope that you'll consider adding her work to your TBR lists and shopping carts soon, as well. You can find her whole catalog here and her short fiction collection, A Manual for How to Love Us is available for preorder now. She's definitely a voice to listen to and learn from and I'm looking forward to a long, beautiful writing career from her.
Cheers to beautiful words,
Stephanie M. Wytovich
SMW: Hi Erin! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?
ES: Hi! I’m a multi-genre writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and hybrid work, but poetry has always held a special place in my reading heart and in my writing practice. At the root of everything for me is an obsession with language, especially strange, guttural, fragmented language that attempts to translate some human impulse or experience that lies beyond traditional explanation; poetry to me is the ultimate distillation of language’s power, a space to break and remake words to communicate something we have not been given words for.
SMW: What was the writing process like during
The
Sorrow Festival
? Did it differ from any of your other projects, or did you find your routine consistent with this one? ES: I’m not a very structured writer, so unless I’m on a deadline I rarely keep a consistent routine. For me, the work tends to fall together in long stretches of procrastination followed by bursts of hyper-productivity. With poetry, I often jot down lines as they come to me, then at some point every week or two I sit down and Frankenstein the lines together, filling in the connective tissue to create a cohesive poem. I find myself writing more frequently when traveling to a new place or spending time with other people. When I wrote The Sorrow Festival, these factors lined up in just the right way: I had just moved to Florida to start a PhD program, and the landscape here is profoundly different than anywhere I’ve ever lived, so I immediately became obsessed with the trees and Spanish moss and bright flowers blooming up everywhere. In Florida, I also fell into a large group of writer friends who were compelling human beings to spend time around, plus we were constantly talking about poetics and inhabiting that space of inspiration and generation together. So, I ended up writing the full manuscript in my first 7 or 8 months in Florida, because the world around me and inside me was constantly sparking with things to write about.
SMW: Writing about pain feels intrinsic to poets, and I think that we capture it in a way that fiction or even nonfiction doesn’t. To me, it’s always felt heavier, more potent, like we can describe something that you shouldn’t be able to describe. When I read your book, I was beautifully swept away by all the ways you placed that feeling of sadness and sorrow on the page. For instance, let’s look at this line from “How We Reckon:” “this/is how we fed: on the ambulance/of sorrow strobing beneath the skin.” Can you talk a little bit about how you tapped into sorrow while writing? Did it even overtake you, and if so, how did you protect yourself mentally while writing?
ES: First, thank you for your kind words about my book! More than anything, I think writers hope the emotion behind their work will be felt by readers just as poignantly as they felt it in the writing process, and it’s always meaningful to hear that a reader connected with it in that way.
To answer your question, I really did not protect myself mentally while writing this book, or while living the things I was writing through and about. The rawness of the sorrow and ecstasy that drives the book shows up there for that very reason. I’m sure there are talented writers who can manufacture emotional weight while keeping a healthy distance from the more traumatic subjects, but that’s not how poetry works for me—if there’s a noticeable distance between the raw feeling I’m trying to infuse into the poem and my internal state as I write it, the language comes out flat. I can fake my way into that space, and I can conjure up words that sound pretty when you string them together, but there’s a palpable hollowness in what’s produced. The Sorrow Festival is in many ways a record of me experiencing and processing the most visceral depths of my emotional range in real-time, bleeding out onto the page and then crafting it and shaping it up later. I’m not advocating that anyone has to dive headfirst into their trauma in order to write well, I’ve just personally never had a strategy for protecting myself when writing.
SMW: There are some notes on motherhood, creation, and birth within the book that spoke to me, especially as a new mother. Again, in the poem “How We Reckon,” you write: “& I promise to write more odes/to my uterus/it used to bring me dead things/like the neighborhood cat/laid a splayed cardinal at the foot/of my bed.” And then later on in “Hurricane Fragments”, you write: “men are not taught/in the same way to cultivate/the lingered gardens of their sorrow.” As a writer—and more specifically as a poet—what is your relationship to the word mother, and do you think there is a specific type of pain that mothers (or women) themselves have to carry? Does this differ from how men carry pain?
ES: It’s so interesting that you picked up on that theme—I didn’t set out to write about motherhood, but it kept presenting itself over and over in my examinations of grief. Looking back, I can identify a few reasons for that: in many of these poems, especially the earliest ones, I was writing about my own mother. I thought it was about examining her relationship history as a lens through which I could understand my own, but it inevitably became about how daughters internalize a performance of womanhood through their mothers, and how that extends to other types of love and caretaking—particularly a clinging, memory-hoarding, self-sacrificial strain of love that I related to immensely at the time.
My sister also comes up a lot in this collection, and in the poem you mentioned, “How We Reckon,” I was processing the news of her pregnancy in light of the complicated relationship we have as sisters, as well as my own complicated feelings about literal and metaphorical life-making. I have PCOS, and I’ve been told it could be difficult for me to become pregnant, so in the background, there’s this potential infertility that could be seen as a failure of my body, but at the same time, I’m very ambivalent about the idea of having children, and there’s a societal and familial pressure attached to becoming a mother that can also make me feel like a failure for choosing not to be one. This poem is also reckoning with a relationship that was in no way stable or conductive to any kind of permanence, especially not the kind that leads to family-making. So tied to fertility in the poem is this feeling of loss and failure coming from all angles: feeling guilt that I am not a mother and have not prioritized becoming one, feeling loss over my strained relationship with my sister as she prepares to have a child, and feeling a grief about not being able to have that experience—of pregnancy, of the whole ‘happily ever after’ women are taught to seek—even if I wanted it, while grieving the lack of possibility in this stunted romantic/sexual relationship.
Outside of the poems themselves, I’ve also spent a lot of time mentally reckoning with the political griefs attached to motherhood—it feels like I barely have a choice in deciding whether I want to be a mother, because motherhood in this country is not just about birthing and raising children: it also means signing up to be judged as if your body and life are public property, in many cases being forced to abandon your work to be the default caregiver, with very little emotional or financial support, pressure to give up your independence, autonomy, and personal identity outside of the family, and (in a heterosexual partnership) potentially putting yourself in a position of dependence on a male partner who innately wields more power. Not to mention the (now more expansive) barriers to safe abortion access that erase a person’s right to choose whether or not to give birth in the first place.
That’s a very long explanation of where I’m coming from around the topic of pregnancy and motherhood, which is definitely not to discount anyone else’s experiences of, or desires for, parenthood—these are just some of the ways in which motherhood feels complex and grief-ridden to me personally. But to answer your actual question: I do think women’s pain is exacerbated by social norms of silence that belittle them by calling them “hysterical” or “overly-sensitive” or whatever if they dare to openly express hurt and anger. I also think the way women are socially conditioned to be hyperaware of their bodies as sites to be acted upon creates an internalized pain that men don’t have to contend with (which is not to say men and people of other genders aren’t burdened by pain in equally harmful ways; patriarchy is a cult of repression, and that’s ultimately bad for everyone).
SMW: The collection is broken up into five sections: (1) Digging Teeth Out of the Garden, (2) River, (3) Land of the Rootfisted, (4) Gulf Epistolary, and (5) Sun Come Antlered. Can you talk about how you chose those title markers and what they mean/t to you thematically?
ES: My first poetry collection, I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun,was sectioned by seasons, beginning with summer and ending with spring, and there’s something about the seasonal arc that lives in this book too: beginning with burning, diving into the depths of cold bleakness, and then clawing toward hope and renewal alongside the external world. This collection takes a slightly different journey, although the natural world is often reflected in the narrative shifts between sections.
The first section is titled after a line in the final poem of that section, “Holding the Loose Bones Close,” which uses the image of burying a child’s baby teeth in the garden as a metaphor for gracefully accepting the passage of time. But in the poem, I compare myself to my mother, saying I would end up digging the teeth up and hoarding them, the way we both hoard memories and cling to idealized notions. This first section was trying to set up the themes of gender-based violence and inheritances. “River” and “Gulf Epistolary,” the second and fourth sections, are different in that they’re both self-contained pieces, interruptions between the sections of arranged poems. They both swirl around the story of my father’s murder, but take different angles, using different styles and forms. Though all these poems are very much rooted in the natural landscape of Florida, “Land of the Rootfisted” holds the poems that are more explicitly so, intimately tying the emotional core to the destruction of hurricanes, lush blooms, feral rodents, and festering loam. “Sun Come Antlered,” the final section, is the “spring” section, to go back to the arc of seasons. It’s moving toward empowerment, connection, renewal, and allowing in a fresh tenderness, but as the title suggests, it’s not an uncomplicated awakening to sunlight and happiness; it’s still thorny and carrying that old grief but starting to navigate how to repurpose it.
ES: When it comes to horror movies, I’m a huge baby—one good jump-scare and I’ll be scared of the dark for weeks—but I do LOVE a good cemetery. Since I was a teenager, I’ve always hung out in graveyards, partly for the beauty and meditative solitude, and partly out of some writerly sensibility to imagine the people buried there, wondering who they were and what their lives were like, these full and vibrant people reduced down to a few faded lines on a gravestone. And of course, there’s a selfish impulse there too: I want to believe when I’m dead and I’m just another of those faceless gravestones, someone will try to remember me.
When we seek out ghost stories and horror films, I think some part of it is coming from a place of anxiety—exposing ourselves to the most grotesque, extreme outcomes of death to desensitize ourselves to it or get more comfortable with it, in order to prepare for the inevitable deaths of ourselves and our loved ones. And just as my book views sorrow as the necessary underbelly of joy, and vice versa, there is no horror without the preexistence of empathy. We might on a surface level recognize harm as unfortunate, but our love for and identification with the victim of the harm is what generates horror. Grief is in so many ways an uncontrollable heightening of love, a love expanding to terrifying proportions in an attempt to fill the vacuum where the loved subject used to be.
SMW: There is phrase in your poem “I Hope My Salt Lamp Is a Weeping Deity” that made me smile: “Everyone has agreed/ the audience is tired of hearing about the body.” Now this made me smile because I feel like the body is something that has been under the microscope for, well forever, honestly (and especially now, *deep sigh*), and it’s so highly scrutinized that yes, I think we could say there is this collective cry for an end surrounding its constant criticization, but in the same breath, that focus on the body is the only thing advocating for it: for its equality, its freedom, its choice. This line is so perfect because it conveys all of that while working with the themes of identity, personal landscape, intimacy, and beauty that you’ve presented in your poems. So with that said, how do you think The Sorrow Festival tackles the theme of the body and why do you feel it’s important to continue highlighting it in your work?
ES: This is one of those lines that felt like a bit of a bitter joke when I wrote it, because poets I’ve workshopped with will sometimes make light of how often the word “body” or bodily imagery appears in my poetry, and in contemporary poetry in general—it’s one of those digs that rings true and that I often make light of about myself and my own work. At the same time, scrutiny not just about the body as a subject but about the impulse to write about the body seems to come from, in my experience, a position of privilege: those whose bodies are considered “the norm,” whose bodies are not legislated as government property, whose bodies are not objectified and measured as a matter of public discourse, whose bodies have been historically valued in medical and scientific study—those people may find it frivolous or cliché to write about the body because they do not have to spend a lot of time thinking about their bodies. I’m coming to this from my own experience as a white, queer, plus-size cis woman, but this idea obviously extends far beyond my own experience (and beyond simply an experience of gender) to apply to trans bodies, disabled bodies, the bodies of people of color, and anyone whose bodies have been abused, negated, or define them socially.
From a more craft-focused angle, for me the body is where language originates—although I don’t always feel in tune with my body, and have at times been quite dissociated from my body, my experience of existing and moving through the world is first felt internally and physically, so that’s where my writing begins, too.
SMW: In your poem “At the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River” you end the poem with: “ballerinas stumbling in the rust-/stained mud/&with blood/comes a sadness:/How free I remain.” First off—absolutely beautiful. I love how you’ve taken this book and conjured this immense, sweeping healing with it even while/when talking about topics that focus on death, grief, loss, etc. That’s not easy to do. Can you talk a bit about how poetry can be used as a vehicle for healing, how it can help us process individual or collective trauma?
ES: Thank you! It’s beautiful to hear you enjoyed that poem. I teach college creative writing classes, and when I teach poetry, either as a workshop or as a literature course, I often begin the semester with an excerpt from Gregory Orr’s book Poetry as Survival, which is, among other things, about how claiming an “I” through the lyric tradition can allow us to reshape the narrative of our trauma in order to survive it. Orr writes: “One of story’s primary purposes is to lay claim to experience, to assert the significance of one’s life.” Poetry can be a way to claim an unspoken truth and present your story on your own terms, which is especially powerful for those who have spent their lives being told in implicit and explicit ways that who they are and what has happened to them is unimportant.
The drive to process trauma or self-actualize has created some of our most impactful and lasting art, but the idea of personal healing as integral to the writing process is often criticized; there’s this fallacy that if you don’t claim some erudite distance between the poet and the speaker of the poem, it’s just “writing about your feelings” and can’t be considered as an intentionally crafted literary artifact. In Poetry as Survival, Orr also advocates for “honor[ing] the poet’s authentic survival project first and his or her intended effect on an audience second,” which is completely oppositional to the philosophy of most poetry workshops, at least in academic settings. I think writing as a method to examine trauma or find healing through telling one’s story, putting aside any concern for craft technique or publication, is a legitimate and valuable use of writing; I also think writers can craft a piece of writing with skill, technique, and the intent to publish, in which the mission of the piece is personal growth and cathartic expression, and that is equally valuable and legitimate.
SMW: In the fourth section of the collection, you’re writing these gorgeous letters, baring honesty and crossing out lines, which adds a certain rawness to the page. These pieces can be read as letters or as prose poems and I’m curious about what your connection is to the prose poem and how you know when a piece would be better suited for that format over another.
ES: As I mentioned, I often focus on generating material first and play around with form and shape afterward, but the series of poems you mentioned came out initially as prose blocks. Part of that is because they’re epistolary, which is a prose-based tradition, so I wanted them to retain some of that prosaic quality. Prose poems have a particular pacing and momentum that make the reader take the information in at a certain speed with a certain tone of voice, giving them a clear path to follow from the outset. That allows the writer freedom to experiment in ways that readers might be more receptive to because the form is straightforward and familiar. The same is true of other poems with line breaks and stanza groupings: those forms set the tone, momentum, and lay out the information in a certain order, creating pauses and surprises, or challenging the reader’s expectations.
SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?
ES: I tend to read books that are in the same vein as what I’m working on or preparing to work on, and right now for me that’s a lot of fiction, so I haven’t been as plugged into poetry lately. But this summer I’m teaching an Intro to Poetry literature class, and it has been a great excuse to go back and revisit the poets I most adore and want to share with my students. I am always floored anew by Morgan Parker’s work each time I revisit it.Franny Choi has a new collection coming out later this year that I’m looking forward to, because I loved her last book,
Soft Science
. When I was studying for my doctoral exams, I bought the collected works of Alice Notley, and every once in a while I’ll dip into that for a quick shot of poetry, and end up getting sucked in longer than I expected. This last one feels obvious because it’s been so widely praised already, but Kaveh Akbar’s
Pilgrim Bell
is the last book of poetry I can remember being deeply moved by—like, openly crying in a coffee shop, seeing the world differently for the rest of the day after I finished it. I think right now, as the world continues to reveal itself to be more precarious than we previously believed, a lot of us are reconsidering our relationships to spirituality, and that book taps into that space of spiritual seeking. It collages tragedy with wonder, unimaginable pain with unimaginable beauty, and I think that’s ultimately what life is: a collage of horrible and wonderful contradictions, and language is futile in the face of most of it, but language is the only real tool we have, so all we can do is employ it to record and reveal as best we’re able.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
ES: In March 2023, my debut short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us
is coming out from Harper Perennial, and I couldn’t be more ridiculously thrilled about it. My whole life for the past year has been spent reworking the book with my editor, and I really hope it finds readers who connect with it. The stories all focus on feral, sort of fucked-up women in the American South trying to cope in the aftermath of different kinds of grief, failing and loving and clawing toward hope and burning it all down. It has a bent toward strangeness and magical realism, and the visceral and bodily, so there’s some crossover with The Sorrow Festival in the themes and emotionally driven language.Bio:
Erin Slaughter is the author of two poetry collections: The Sorrow Festival (CLASH Books, 2022) and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her debut book of short fiction, A Manual for How to Love Us, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in March 2023. She is editor and co-founder of The Hunger, and her writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Originally from Texas, she lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is a Ph.D. candidate and Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University.
Social media:
Twitter: @erinslaughter23
Instagram: @erin_slaughter23
Book description for The Sorrow Festival:
Rooted in the beauty and violence of Florida’s landscape, these poems are an exploration of love, sex, martyrdom, home, and what we bring with us when we choose poetry to record the intimacies of a life.
July 1, 2022
June '22 Madhouse Recap: Horror on Screen and Off
June’22 Madhouse Recap
Hello Friends and Fiends—
Well, it’s July.
It’s hard to write from a place of happiness right now considering everything that’s going on in the country, and I’ve certainly spent my share of time crying and staring blankly at the walls these past couple of days. Collectively, I feel like we’re all just so overwhelmed and mentally tapped, and it seems like there’s something new every day to panic over (and I’m not being hyperbolic–I literally mean “to panic over”). I often wonder how we’re supposed to just get up every day and pretend this stuff isn’t happening and go to our jobs and resume a normal routine. It makes me nervous as a woman and as a woman raising a daughter, but I feel like outside of educating in my profession and remaining a safe zone space on campus, the best thing for me to do is continue to make art (radical, violent art) and act with radical kindness.
You know, unless radical kindness doesn’t work.
Then I hope my vagina just grows teeth.
Dennis and I attended Three Rivers ComicCon, Pittsburgh Pride, and the Three Rivers Art Festival, and then Jennifer came in to visit and we talked books, publishing, and future projects. We also got to check out the Monet in Bloom installation at Phipps Conservatory.
Evie got to meet her second cousins on the Wytovich side this month, and then I popped into SHU’s IYWM for a quick dinner with some friends, and even though it was only for a short bit, it felt nice to see some friends, hug them, and laugh. I’m looking forward to more of that in the future and I’m really working hard to start making that a priority. It’s something that I’ve actually been talking about in therapy a lot because I so often equate success in life with how much work I’ve accomplished, and yeah, that’s just no way to live. The laundry can wait. The email can be sent tomorrow. I need to make sure I’m nourishing my body and my brain and so much of that means doing things that might not necessarily count as “being productive.” This means sitting outside, watching the birds, and drinking my morning coffee instead of slamming coffee down while I read through my emails; this means taking some time to read poetry in bed instead of trying to read and take notes while I’m on the elliptical; this means taking time to cook and prepare a meal with my hands instead of ordering take out while I pitch just one more article. I really want to try to be kinder to myself and it’s past time I made that a priority.
I turned in my next poetry collection (fingers crossed!), but you folks are going to have to wait for a title reveal. I will say that this book was a different speed for me. It wasn’t planned and I started writing it a month postpartum and finished it three months later. There’s a lot of rage, fear, and grief in it, plus themes of identity, hauntings, disappearance….and hunger.
Writing Poetry in the Dark is currently in layout and we’re working on some marketing plans for it. If you’re a reviewer or interested in a desk copy for your class, please reach out and let me know!
My article “Five Poetry Collections to Read This Summer” was published on LitReactor
I interviewed Stephanie Ellis and Cindy O’Quinn about their collaborative poetry collection Foundlings. You can read it here.
My poem “Such Secrets, These Stones” will be published in Daughter of Sarpedon, a Medusa-themed anthology forthcoming from Brigids Gate Press.
I’ll be running my Witch Lit class again with LitReactor this August. If you’re interested in signing up or getting some more information on it, you can check out this link. As always, if there are any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me as well.
This isn’t necessarily writing or teaching-oriented, but it is student-driven! I’m taking a tea blending class right now with Herbal Academy, and I’m learning a lot. My goal is to be able to make homemade chai tea this winter. Maybe that will be my next party trick?
This month, I read:
Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
I Hope This Finds You Well by Kate Baer
The Sorrow Festival by Erin Slaughter
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Nightmare Country, Issue #2 by James Tynion IV
Refrigerator Full of Heads, Issues 1-5 by Rio Youers
Something is Killing the Children, Vol 3 by James Tynion IV
Something is Killing the Children, Vol 4 by James Tynion IV
Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker
On the media front:
Men (2022), We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2022), The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018), Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (2022), Disappearance at Clifton Hill (2020), Brahms: The Boy II (2020), Master (2022), Crimes of the Future (2022).
On the lighter side of things: A Netflix is a Joke Festival: Stand Out, an LGBTQ+ Celebration, Fortune Feimster: Sweet and Salty, The Lost City (2022).
I finished Stranger Things, Season 4. I, personally, really loved everything about this season. I’ve read here and there that some people found it repetitive, but I don’t mind that we consistently have this group of kids growing and fighting evil. It reminds me of IT a little, but just instead of getting older and coming back to fight The Mindflayer (Pennywise), they’re just doing it as kids (albeit slightly more mature kids). I appreciated the growth of the characters, the inclusion of The Satanic Panic (which I predict is going to come back strong again in real life), and I loved all the callbacks to earlier seasons and episodes; narratively, I thought this was a beautiful win, and I loved how episode 7 wrapped up. Also, can we talk about how utterly amazing Robert Englund was as Victor Creel? The references to Freddy Kruger throughout the season and then having him literally there made my horror heart so fucking happy!
Episode 2 and 3 of Obi-Wan Kenobi: I’m enjoying this but I’m painfully behind. I got distracted with other shows this month and I need to go back and finish it. Maybe that will happen in July? Maybe I’ll just end up watching Mandalorian for the third time. Who knows!
Ms.Marvel, episodes 1 and 2: Everything about this show speaks to me. I love seeing a young girl embrace her powers and grapple with them. I super love the diversity, the culture, the notes of female empowerment, and reminders to vote for our rights. It’s honestly such a breath of fresh air and I’m looking forward to watching more of it soon.
The Umbrella Academy: Okay, so I’m only five episodes in so NO SPOILERS but I adore everything about this season so far and Klaus remains my all-time favorite of the umbrellas. I literally LOL’d when they had the Footloose dance-off at the beginning of the show, and then I sobbed with Victor’s character arc. How insanely beautiful and perfect and magical was that? To see that on TV was just so long overdue and my favorite part about it all was how not a big deal it was to his family. The umbrellas were just like “cool,” “rock on,” “your hair looks great,” and then talked about how they had bigger things to tackle, and while that might seem dismissive to some, I read that as an immediate acceptance and it felt kind of amazing at how easily it all went down when he came out. Kind of like, I don’t know, that how it should be? Hmm…
Inventing Anna: I absolutely loved this, and I wish I wouldn’t have put it off for as long as I did. The entire story was insane to me, and I loved the legal ins and outs of this case, how it unfolded, and honestly, what’s happening with it now. Did you know Anna is exhibiting her artwork and is like, legitimately rich because of it? INSANE. It’s like a trainwreck I can’t look away from, and there is supposed to be a part two being made, a where-is-she-now kind of deal. Needless to say, I’ll be watching that. Something else I will also say is that seeing Vivian Kent be this badass journalist who stopped at nothing was super empowering. Pregnant? Not a problem. Dickhead boss? Fuck him. Bad reputation? BRING IT. That’s the kind of woman I want to see more of on television/in film. Unstoppable female energy. Yes, please!
I [finally] started watching the Jordan Peele remake/retake of The Twilight Zone this month. I’m going to do some short reviews of the episodes below, but overall I’m really enjoying it so far and I’m excited to check out more.
“The Comedian”: Phew, karma is a bitch. I liked the energy of this one and I’m always a fan of plots that have some sort of deal-with-the-devil vibe to them.
“Nightmare at 30,000 Feet”: I absolutely loved this one and I was so nervous the whole time…for everyone. The idea of listening to a podcast about something horrible that you’re literally experiencing in real life is just about one of the scariest things I can imagine, and the way it got all Shirley Jackson, in the end, was just perfect.
“Replay”: This one hit me right in the feels. A very timely episode and one that put my heart directly in my throat.
“A. Traveler”: Needed more alien. Meh.
“The Wunderkind”: I feel like this episode gave me political PTSD. Then again, I feel like I have that without watching The Twilight Zone so what do I know?
“Six Degrees of Freedom”: I really liked this one, but you should all know by now that altered-reality plots tend to work for me (and I’m learning this is because it’s a lived experience for me due to having OCD), but I digress. I was a fan of the ending and the suspense throughout but especially with how grief was handled. Brava!
“Not All Men”: I feel like I’ve seen the “anger virus” a lot lately, and that gives me pause for a lot of reasons. Honestly though? I’m kind of sick of seeing stuff about men getting angry and being assholes. Show me female rage and then we’ll talk.
“Point of Origin”: This one was definitely more my speed, and the commentary on immigration was heartbreaking. Plus, anything that Ginnifer Goodwin is in it is an automatic win for me. I just love her.
Them, Episodes 1 & 2. This show started off really intense for me, and with the violence against the baby and the dog, I started to get a little bit anxious and my PPD started throwing out some red and white flags; with that said, I thought the horror and the study in race, gender, and class were beyond well done and interesting, so I kept watching. Shortly after, I tweeted about how scary I was finding the show (like, who or what is Ms. Vera?), and a friend reached out to me about the graphic nature of the rest of the series, and considering my issues right now, I’ve decided to hit pause on this until I’m in a better/stronger mind frame to deal with it.
Podcasts:
Books in the Freezer, Survival Horror with Rachel
Books in the Freezer, Summer Horror Books with Quincy
The Evolution of Horror, Vampires: Pt 1- An Introduction
This Ends at Prom, Episode 67: Edward Scissorhands (1990)
This Ends at Prom, Episode 8: Casper (1995)
This Ends at Prom, Episode 82: Turning Red (2022) with Hoai-Tran Bui
Until next time,
Stephanie
June 9, 2022
Madhouse Author Interview: Foundlings by Cindy O'Quinn and Stephanie Ellis
Hello Friends and Fiends--
Today in The Madhouse we're focusing on collaboration, specifically so with Stephanie Ellis and Cindy O'Quinn and their recent poetry collection Foundlings. Now I've worked with and been published alongside Ellis and O'Quinn before, so I knew this was going to be a book of powerhouse talent, and needless to say, I was not wrong. One of the first lines that grabbed when as I started reading was: "a frozen gift of dead flowers,/broken like her neck." I was immediately taken in by the quiet, yet sometimes violent beauty that not only lived inside these pages but was created using foundations already penned by Linda D. Addison and Alessandro Manzetti, two other poets I greatly respect and admire.
I feel like we've been seeing a lot of movement in the poetry market these days that goes beyond the prose poem or free verse. We're seeing found art, blackout poetry, centos, sonnets, etc, and I'm a sucker for form and experimental work, so I hope we keep seeing it and I hope you'll give these poems a read and meditate on ways to expand and experiment with your own work, too.
Best,
Stephanie
SMW: Hi Cindy and Stephanie! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is both of your first times joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and what drew you to poetry in the first place?
Cindy: First, I’d like to thank you, Stephanie, for reading Foundlings, and inviting us to The Madhouse. It’s one more thing I can mark off my bucket list. I’ve been a fan of yours since my first publication in 2016. We shared a TOC in Sanitarium Magazine Issue 48.
I’m drawn to poetry because it’s an extension of my way of storytelling, which is in my blood. It’s one of the ways of keeping my memories, folklore, genealogy, and magic alive in Appalachia. My call to write stories began as soon as I was old enough to do so, which in my case was around age five. I was shy, so instead of playing with cousins at gatherings, I preferred to remain unnoticed among the elders, so I could be close enough to hear their stories. All these experiences, all the stories, color my writing today, and bits of my truth are woven into everything I write.
Steph: I’d like to second Cindy’s thanks for allowing us across the threshold of The Madhouse. I remember reading a poem of yours in an anthology which brought on a ‘wow’ moment and led me to The Apocalyptic Mannequin, which lurks happily on my bookshelf. Unlike Cindy, I was not an early writer – that particular drive appeared much later in my life – but I have been an avid reader, and poetry has long been part of that. When I was awarded a school prize at the age of 12, I requested
The Oxford Book of English Verse
and that was the start of my poetry journey, in the reading if not the writing. The composition side bizarrely started in an old workplace when dissatisfaction with the way I, and a few other colleagues, were being treated, led me to write verse about our situation, which I shared with my little group at work. Let’s just say we were good at our jobs but were often called in to pick up that of others who had not achieved what they had been instructed to deliver and were also paid more than us, and usually got the promotions! From there, I wrote poems for my colleagues – it was all very humorous and tongue-in-cheek – then submitted and was published in the local press and in a national daily. Then I got a bit more serious in terms of form and content but it was very much in the background until more recent times. SMW: What was the writing process like during Foundlings? Can you speak to the collaborative process you shared with one another?
Cindy: I have to say this project, working with Steph, was one of my favorites. It really did flow like magic. It shouldn’t be too surprising, considering the awesome poets who inspired us to create Foundlings. Linda D. Addison and Alessandro Manzetti are so talented and were so gracious with their forward.
Steph: Oh my, it was so easy! We are both huge fans of Linda’s and Alessandro’s work and there was no stress or strain involved at all. We would decide who would start a poem – when it was a collaborative one – and that person would write a line or two and ping it over to the other. It was back and forth and worked so smoothly. The hard part might be when one person had picked out most of the words you were going to use and you had to really work with the remnants to create the response but that always came together in the end!
SMW: These poems were created from work in Linda Addison’s collection How to Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, Alessandro Manzetti’s collection Whitechapel Rhapsody, and their collaborative work The Place of Broken Things. What about these particular collections stood out to you and called you to work with them?
Cindy: Linda and Alessandro’s work is the type of dark poetry I love, much like yours, Stephanie. These particular works were like a healing balm to my spirit.
Steph: The poets are both so gloriously dark. I had Whitechapel Rhapsody and The Place of Broken Thingsalready when I was talking to Cindy about the possibility of a project, it was all such a spooky coincidence. I chose Whitechapel Rhapsody because of its ‘pulse’ if you like. As you delve into the verses which reflect the poverty and miseries of the East End and the reign of Jack the Ripper, it’s almost as if you can feel a dark heart beating beneath the surface. The Place of Broken Things is also dark but has a more noir emphasis; dark poetry like this really calls to me.
SMW: There are repetitive themes of religious iconography and allusions throughout Foundlingsand the original pieces that birthed them. Readers will recognize and note the use of churches, rosaries, snakes, bloody angels, Lucifer, incense, gardens, etc. Now the intersection of horror and religion is a tale as old as time. What about this do you like working with best? Do you try to intentionally comment on it or send a message, or is it more about writing for visceral reactions and playing with tropes? (I love it all, to be honest!)Cindy: For years, I was hesitant about mixing the two, mostly because I worried about disappointing my family. But, in the end, what allows me to work religion into my horror writings is the fact that religion is horror. I don’t think anyone can deny that there’s some pretty horrific stuff that goes on in nearly every religious text, so it seems only natural to include the horror of religion.
Steph: I am not a religious person although I am open-minded to possibilities. What I enjoy about bringing religion into the mix is the nature of its own darkness. For something which is supposed to bring light and hope and comfort to people, it also delivers condemnation, isolation, and death (literally, historically, and in the present). I like to play with religion’s own imagery and subvert it, get that visceral reaction you mentioned – and in that subversion, I believe a message is also delivered.
SMW: While reading, I noticed a quietness at times with words like “whisper” and “disappear” being used throughout. Horror can often be fleeting, soft, still, and honestly, which describes some of my favorite works in the genre (re: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Slade House by David Mitchell). What are some of your favorite horror stories/collections/books that use this idea of echoes or hauntings to elicit fear from the reader?
Cindy: It is the quiet horror I’m most drawn to, like the works you listed above. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all up in the blood and guts, as well, when called for, but the murmurs of what’s to come in the stillness pull me into the story. I’m quite fond of Thomas Tessier’s collection, World of Hurt.
Steph:Like you and Cindy, I prefer quiet horror. The hints, the subtle dread, are so much more effective because they demand more of your imagination, your investment in a tale, and that heightens the horror. I agree with your choices which are also on my shelves! I would like to throw in Thomas Tryon’s HarvestHome, which, like much of folk horror has this appearance of an idyll but slowly you get beneath the surface and the darkness appears. This is very much why I am drawn to folk horror as a sub-genre, we are haunted by a landscape that is imprinted with echoes of the past.
SMW: Cindy, in your first portion of the book, I made a note about how you handled the subject of nightmares and memory, which I thought was just beautifully done. In your poem “What Mourning,” you wrote: “of growing secrets & teeth/ nailed fences tangled in chaos,/ she remembers endless fear.” When it comes to writing horror, especially horror that cements itself in our heads (psychologically speaking), how do you protect yourself and your mental health from these types of fears and images? Have you ever been writing or working on a project and have had to stop to just take a breath and reset?
Cindy: I’m so glad you enjoyed “What Mourning”. I love psychological horror because it feels so real. There are times when I fail to protect myself and have to come up for air, usually sobbing. Getting the traumas and real-life horrors out of my head is my attempt at catharsis. There are times I wonder if it keeps me in the darkness longer. Hopefully not. I don’t generally write nonfiction for just that reason, but this past year I went there. I wrote about the day my husband died. I needed to put it down on paper for him. One final kiss.
SMW: Stephanie, your poetry there was deliciously violent, and I adored your poem “How to Disappear.” I tend to fall in love with stories and poems about vengeful female ghosts and women portrayed as monsters because, surprise! (just kidding, no one will be surprised by this) I’m a fan of feminist horror and horror that gives power and agency back to women, even if it’s messy and grotesque, and well…violent. Can you talk a little bit about how you handle themes of the monstrous feminine and violence in your work?Steph: Thank you, Stephanie! I love that poem and when I reread it, I feel as if someone else wrote it. Being able to turn the poem from one which initially portrays the woman as a victim, to one which allows a woman’s ghost to enact her revenge is strangely joyful!
Within some recent work, most notably The Five Turns of the Wheel and its sequel, Reborn, I have been playing with the idea of Mother Nature. This figure, supposedly the bringer of life, the nurturer, is also responsible for some of the greatest cruelty. This is mirrored in some of my female characters, who display inherent violence, usually when fighting for their own survival or in the protection of those closest to them. This contrast between what the female typically regarded as generally calm and measured – and in previous times, docile – and the violence they’re capable of when roused or threatened, is an exquisite contrast and a juxtaposition that can really heighten the horror.
Also within those works is an element of bringing back the importance of the female. In many early societies, the organization was matriarchal and many a goddess was worshipped. Cue Christianity and other world religions and the women were demoted to a subservient role as the patriarchy was established.
Thinking further, you would actually see an example of the monstrous feminine in my short story, ‘Cry me a River’, in Scott Moses What One Wouldn’t Do, anthology. There you have two mothers, one sacrificing herself in order to save her child, or so she thinks, whilst the other is using this woman’s sacrifice to protect her own child. Both are mothers, one is monstrous, but would you condemn her?
And in one further instance, I have been working for some months now on a co-authored work, Revenant with Shane Douglas Keene. We are each a character in a narrative told in free verse and my particular character is Lilith. Through the telling, you hear and see the suffering of women and then discover Lilith’s retribution. We’re hoping to complete this work in the not too distant future!
SMW: The second half of the book is comprised of haikus. Haikus have always fascinated me because on one hand, they seem simple and they’re often the first bit of poetic writing we play with as children because it’s easily structured by counting syllables. However, writing haikus is anything but simple, and it’s an artform that digs deep and builds mountains out of the smallest words and phrases. Can you both speak about how you go about constructing your haikus? What about that specific form speaks to you as poets?
Cindy: I find Haikus fun, and I imagine one would get a kick by watching me count syllables on my fingers. Small poetry form that packs a punch.
Steph: Me too when it comes to counting on fingers! I love them because of the challenge they pose in trying to get an idea across in so few words. When I build the haiku, it’s usually finding a line that I love and then working around that. That first line I make isn’t necessarily the first in the poem though! I build everything else around it to fit.
SMW: What poets are you both currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR lists?Cindy: Over the past few years there have been so many excellent poetry collections released. I need to play catch up and read the ones I’ve missed, like ExposedNerves, and Strange Nests.
Steph: I’ve really enjoyed Sara Tantlinger’s work which weaves historical narratives into verse (The Devil’s Dreamland and Cradleland of Parasites so anything else by her, I’ll pick up and I also want to add more Stephanie Wytovich to my collection!
I have not long finished Avra Margariti’s The Saint of Witches, which is excellent and I’ve been re-reading Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic which is extremely poignant given the situation in the Ukraine. A recent trip to Waterstones saw me leave with The Mabinogi by Matthew Francis and A Choice of Anglo-Saxon verse, ed. Richard Hamer. I really want to build up my library of early poetry as I love the Poetic Eddas, the Icelandic sagas and so many others. Their style of metaphor, the kennings, are wonderful, and these, combined with the alliteration, make their verse sing.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
Cindy: I have several short stories I need to finish. I’m hoping to have a novel out in the next year or so I am co-authoring with a wonderful author. And there’s always the poetry I write along the way.
Steph: I have a few short stories due out this year and am working on some others. My novel, Reborn, is due out in October from Brigids Gate Press, which will also be publishing another folk horror, The Woodcutter, in January 2023. The latter is a new folk horror and not set in my Five Turns world!
I do have a new dark-found poetry collection out on June 16th. Metallurgy, Of Love and Death and Metal, has been formed from the lyrics of 200 of my favorite metal tracks. I took 2 songs per poem with some stringent checks afterward so that it was a completely original work – I do not want to be chased by lawyers! This one is my labor of love as metal is my happy place!
Apart from that, I have a gothic novella, Enough Rope, which I will be submitting as soon as I’ve finished writing that dreaded synopsis, and I do have an idea for another dark found poetry collection which I am trying not to start as I want to complete those short stories I mentioned!
And I want to start another novel ...
Author Bios:
She is an Appalachian writer from the mountains of West Virginia. Steeped in folklore at an early age. Cindy now lives in the woods of northern Maine, on the old Tessier Homestead, which makes the ideal backdrop for her dark stories and poetry.
Follow Cindy for updates: Facebook @CindyOQuinnWriter, Twitter @COQuinnWrites, and Instagram cindy.oquinn
Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, the most recent being Scott J. Moses’ What One Wouldn’t Do, Demain Publishing’s A Silent Dystopia, and Brigids Gate Press’ Were Tales. Her longer work includes the novel, The Five Turns of the Wheel and the novellas, Bottled and Paused. Her poetry has been published in the HWA Poetry Showcase Volumes VI, VII, and VII, Black Spot Books Under Her Skin, and online at Visual Verse. She can be found supporting indie authors at HorrorTree.com via the weekly Indie Bookshelf Releases. She is an active member of the HWA and can be found at https://stephanieellis.org, on Twitter at @el_stevie, Instagram stephanieellis7963, and also somewhere on Facebook.
Stephanie lives in Wrexham, North Wales with her family, where she now writes full-time. Living not far from the border with England and the county she grew up in, just the other side, she is close to the rural environment which inspired much of her folk horror.
June 2, 2022
May ’22 Madhouse Recap: Death, Ancestral Magic, and The Cycle of Life
Hello Friends and Fiends—
First off, Happy Pride!
May was a somewhat strange and beautiful month. I’m writing to you while listening to the soundtrack to Nightmare Alley and it has me more reflective than usual if I’m being honest.
Yesterday we buried , and I’ve spent a good portion of my morning today building her and my pap’s altar, doing smoke/egg cleanses, and creating a simmer pot from her funeral bouquets. The house smells Catholic right now, and I know it’s weird to say that, but if you’ve been to a Catholic service and smelled the incense, the sweetness of Nag Champa, the spice of frankincense and myrrh, then you know what I’m talking about. No matter how I feel about my religious upbringing, these scents always bring me immense comfort, and in times of stress, mourning, and blessing, I often burn them and soak in that stillness and prayer.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to my Pap Wytovich (even though we conveniently rescued a dog named Maya, his nickname, a few years later) and my Nana was a complicated situation with Alzheimer’s, but I spoke to my Grammy a few days before she got put on morphine, and while she was fading, I got to see her and say hi and I love you one more time while she was conscious. A few days later, my dad called to tell me she was slipping and that they were going to administer last rites, and I was able to make it to the home before she passed. I whispered I loved her, told her how beautiful she looked, and that she could finally rest and go see pap again. Seeing her in that state was a reminder of mortality, and while it was scary and sad, it was also such an honor to be there with her and my family in those final moments. I’m thankful for them and the memories we all shared that day and I have no doubt my pap’s spirit was there holding her hand the entire time.
On a happier note, our sweet Evie had a lot of firsts this month. We celebrated my first Mother’s Day, and she got me a gorgeous Alice in Wonderland bag that I’ll forever treasure, and then our house finally got fixed so we were able to move her into her nursery and start enjoying the space we set up for her. She slept in her crib for the first time and has been sleeping through the night for a while now, which is a serious blessing, ah. We even got to start feeding her some real food this month. She was skeptical of the texture of bananas and was a big fan of pears, but nothing could have prepared us for her immense love of sweet potatoes. She screamed and laughed and danced and ate half the jar on the first go of it. Needless to say, she definitely is a foodie just like her mom and dad.
We also took her to the zoo and aquarium with my brother and his wife and we all had a blast but seeing Eve’s eyes light up in the aquarium was truly something special. We watched the elephant seals for a while but the general color and vibes and movement of all the sea creatures were pure magic to her and her eyes just filled with such wonder! She was awake for most of the day, but she did sleep through all the monkeys, which was hysterical because they were howling like crazy when we walked in! Little Eves also started to splash around in the tub, laugh, and give big sloppy kisses. Babcia (that's Polish for grandmother) even got her a little pool to play around it, and Eves has a blast!
Outside of that, Dennis and I put in our garden and our tomato plants are outside as we speak living their best life. We also have some lavender, two types of basil, some sweet mint, a variety of peppers, and then some flowers. I told Eves our butterfly garden is starting to make an appearance, and I genuinely think she was excited because she lights up when I take her outside to look at and touch the plants. We’ve also been feeding the birds and making friends with them, and that’s a hobby that she and I have been very much enjoying together.
On my end, I made some time to build this amazing Edgar Allan Poe puzzle, bought tickets to StokerCon 2023, and signed up for a tea blending workshop this month.
On the writing/teaching front:
I wrapped up teaching two graduate courses this month, one at WCSU and the other at SNHU. I tackled speculative fiction in both, and we had a lot of great discourse throughout the weeks/months. I’m a little sad they’re over, to be honest, but I’m also excited to have the rest of the summer off to write and just focus on my full-time day job. As a side note, I was also excited to hear that I was nominated as one of the top three performers at SNHU last term. I love that my passion for horror and science fiction and fantasy and all the weird things I do and love continue to seep through and get celebrated in my teaching and it means so much to hear that’s being received well. I wrote a letter/poem to Walt Whitman for LitReactor this month titled “Song of My Postpartum Self.” This is a piece that celebrates the birth of my daughter while meditating on life and death and spirit. You can read it here.This month I brought back my Madhouse Interview Series and started off with a conversation with Adrian Ernesto Cepeda about his most recent release from Clash Books, We Are the Ones Possessed. We also chat about his book La Belle Ajar and a bit about Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. You can read it here.I published an interview with Avra Margariti on my blog about their poetry collection The Saint of Witches from Weasel Press. We chatted about queer representation, gender, women and violence, and of course, witchcraft! You can read it here.I published an interview with Stephanie Athena Valente on my blog about her poetry collection Internet Girlfriend from Clash Books. We talk about witchcraft, fashion, confessions, sexuality, and more! Read more here.I’ll have an interview with Stephanie Ellis and Cindy O’Quinn going live early in June about their collaborative poetry collection Foundlings. Be sure to keep an eye out for it, and in the meantime, you can pick up a copy of the book here.The cover reveal for Into the Forest, an upcoming anthology featuring stories surrounding Baba Yaga, went live. My poem "Dinner with Baba Yaga" will be included alongside my short story "A Trail of Feathers, a Trail of Blood.” Gingernuts of Horror did a fantastic interview with Lindy Ryan about this, too, and I highly suggest checking it out. You can read it here.This month, I read:
The Saint of Witches by Avra MargaritiFoundlings by Cindy O’Quinn and Stephanie EllisHorrorStor by Grady HendrixThe Me You Love in the Dark by Skottie YoungChildren of the Woods by Joe CianoThe Sandman Universe, Nightmare Country, #1 by James Tynion IV“Men, Women, and Chainsaws” by Stephen Graham Jones
On the media front:Free Guy (2021), Batman (2022), Scary Stories -Documentary (2019), Vicious Fun (2020), Urban Legend (1998), Night of the Demons (2009), The Stylist (2020), Hatching (2022), Disturbed Behavior (1998), Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss (2018), The Addams Family 2 (2021), Our Father-Documentary (2022), and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021).Russian Doll, Season 2. I absolutely loved this season and how trippy it was (which is saying a lot if you’ve seen the first one). The focus on accepting your past, forgiving your family, and learning to heal from ancestral trauma was so beautifully explored. I hope they do a third season where Nadia and Allan get stuck in the future, but if not, I’m satisfied with how things ended.Grace and Frankie, Season 7. This was such a great finale. I love this show and everything it represents. I’ll admit that it got me a few times (I’m sensitive, what can I say?), but absolutely beautiful. All the stars and recommendations.Ghost, Season 1. I’m obsessed with this show and I’m so happy I finally made time for it. It’s funny and charming, and duh, filled with ghosts. Thankfully, it’s been renewed for a second season and I, for one, cannot wait!Working Moms, Season 6. I have watched and rewatched this show so many times, and it hits even harder now as a new mom and someone who considers themselves a workaholic. This season was truly intense and that final episode? Fuck. How am I supposed to just sit here and wait in limbo until the next season? I literally raged (in a good way) when it was over. Great writing, and a super relatable show.Episodes 1-3 of Stranger Things, Season 4. There are no words for how happy and excited I am that the gang is back together and we’re up against Vecna. So excited to keep exploring this. I also super appreciated all the nods to A Nightmare on Elm Street and It. Episode 1 of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I hope they keep giving us all the Star Wars series. I’m here for all of it. Junji Ito Collection, Season 1 (via CrunchyRoll). Episodes 1 and 2.
Podcasts:
Books in the Freezer, Southern Gothic Horror with Lauren P. DodgeBooks in the Freezer, Trapped Horror with Max Booth IIIBooks in the Freezer, Hotel Horror with Jocelyn CodnerThis Ends at Prom, Scream (1996)I’m excited for June. I’ll finally have some time to wrap up two big projects I’ve been working on in the writing world, and I’m looking forward to doing some more flower magic and perfecting some meals. I’ve been pulling a lot of vegetarian recipes from Forest Feast (probably my favorite cookbook), and I’m hoping to try a few more this month, too. I’m also hoping to finish reading a few books I’m in the middle of now: Night Bitch, Lore: Monstrous Creatures, and Goblin, not to mention, spend some time with friends.
Until next time, be kind, but also be spooky and weird and beautifully, apologetically you.
Best,
Stephanie
May 23, 2022
Madhouse Author Interview: Internet Girlfriend by Stephanie Athena Valente
Hello friends and fiends--
Today in The Madhouse, I'm super excited to host poet Stephanie Athena Valente, whose debut collection Internet Girlfriend was recently published with Clash Books. I started reading Valente's poetry a few years ago, and I think I started with her piece "The High Priestess" in Luna Luna Magazine (which is just gorgeous). I immediately loved the lush, magic quality of her words, so when I saw that she had a book coming out, I knew I had to have it.
Now I fall in love easily with words, but with this book, it took literally no time at all for me to become absolutely captivated and obsessed. I felt like I was falling back into my young adult and teenage years, and that nostalgia hit me hard. I didn't want to put it down--so I didn't. I read through, taking brief pauses here and there, and I remembered and lived through moments in my life that were transformational, liminal. Truly, I had such a wonderful time with this book and I envy everyone who hasn't read it yet because they're going to get to experience it for the first time, and that first read? Wow.
Please consider picking up a copy of the book here and giving Valente a follow on Instagram and Twitter, too. She's a unique talent and one we're lucky to have in our community.
With diary pages and planchettes,
Stephanie M. Wytovich
SMW: Hi Stephanie! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?
SAV: My connection to poetry wasn’t immediate. I remember discovering Emily Dickinson around the sixth or seventh grade and thinking she was quite clever, but at the time I couldn’t personally fathom what a poem really meant (or was trying to express), let alone write one. I started writing poetry in high school but really disliked studying in school (it was so boring and obtuse). It wasn’t until midway through college I took a class on Surrealist art and writing that I felt kind of electrified in a way. The transgressiveness and the sublimation gave me a kind of permission to step through the portal.
SMW: What was your writing process like during Internet Girlfriend? When did the idea for the collection take shape?
SAV: I wrote a few stray poems about early internet culture and The Babysitters Club around 2018 or 2019. It was a deviation from my style at the time—the poems were much more direct and conversational. I pushed them to the side because I kept revising this collection of poems I was submitting (Spoiler alert: It’s been revised three times and it’s still unpublished), and I felt very committed to this collection, but it really was the crux to evolve and grow my voice. Then the pandemic happened. I started looking up old websites on the internet archives as a way to unplug from everything that was happening all around us and I wrote a few more poems. I ended up doing a reading with Leza for Be About It Press, and after the reading she made it a point to tell me how much she loved my poems and asked if there were any more. I said there were a few and I was thinking of calling the collection Internet Girlfriend. Long story short, Clash Books solicited me for this collection, and I ended up writing the rest of the book in a few months. I feel very fortunate.
SMW: This collection is so wonderfully nostalgic, especially for someone like me who grew up in the nineties and was a teenager in the early 2000s. Your poem “realx, kristy, it’s just the dark lord” particularly spoke to me with that opening line: “that spring, i decided to become a witch.” Same with your piece “cult classic:” when we were serpents. / we became witches.” Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like all girls go through this dark, witchy phase growing up (and some of us make it a core part of who we are, *waves to self*). Can you speak to how witchcraft and maybe magic in general spoke to you growing up and how it ultimately influenced this poem (or your poetry in general)?
SAV: Oh gosh, yes. I went through this exact phase—maybe I’m still in it—but I was in the right place at the right time. Chatrooms, instant messaging, vampire movies, witchcraft websites (also, uh, nycgoth.com), and it all became this swirling nexus for this lush dark discovery. I wanted to feel connected to something and the mystical and the mysterious was always a big draw for me as a kid. Unearthing magic alongside a love of horror books and movies seemed like a natural extension. It was intimidating, beautiful, and alluring all at once. At the exact same time, I was completely immersed in pop music and trying on a few identities like every teenager out there. I used the poems as a means to channel my curiosity about witchcraft before I mostly became a witch.
SMW: Something I noticed about the poems throughout are that they have this air of confession about them, or perhaps a better way to say that is that the poems provide a narration of someone wanting to share their secrets, their innermost desires. I know when I was younger, I wrote in my journal constantly, and during the height of AOL, my away messages were beyond cringeworthy and dramatic. But that’s teenagers for you, right? In your poem “baby’s first tarot cards” you write: “everyone would kiss me at parties, / especially at the end of the night,/ they’ll love me and love me and love me/ like ice-cold pepsi after a run.” How do themes of confession, desire, and longing play into this collection? Was that something you thought about intentionally while writing?
SAV: Oh, I love to confess. Many of my poems are confessions or liminal diary entries in a way. I’ve always approached poems—even when my style was more pastoral or academic—in this lens. Whether it’s my voice or another speaker, I love crafting a poem that opens the work as some kind of secret or confession. It’s very intentional. I’m always interested in what people don’t talk about in polite conversation whether that’s because they think it’s too mundane, too dark, or even too lovely and too private to dish out.
SMW: Your poems “blue_nails_cam.jpg” and “a/s/l?” really took me back. Wow. I remember how fascinated and addicted we all were when the internet and instant messaging slowly began to take over our lives, but these poems specifically made me remember all the times I would get online and a random chat would open on my screen saying a/s/l (age, sex, location), and it was like there was all of this untapped potential to be anyone in the world I wanted to be, and looking back that’s really scary and empowering at the same time. It kind of reminds me of an early avatar in some ways, this projection of the ideal self where anything is possible. How do you think your work in this collection explores identity, especially identity through puberty in young girls?
SAV: Much of that was my own lived experience. I mean who was I even really talking to online? And the way we introduced ourselves online, breaking ourselves into these little categories so we’d dial into some shared conversation online. My identity was really shaped by this sentiment—this safety net of the internet world and obviously, how dark and predatory it was at the same time. Because I was young, I didn’t think much about the danger, I just thought of the thrill and the power (or even just seenness) from sitting behind the screen. I just try to tap into those feelings: the rush, curiosity, longing, a desire to see and be seen.SMW: I don’t think we ever stop forming crushes in life, but it certainly becomes the center of the universe when we’re growing up. There’s this intense focus that happens, an absolute obsession as everything we are and want to be becomes consumed by the idea of this other person. How does Internet Girlfriend tackle sexuality as a running theme throughout?
SAV: Crushes are like getting a spell cast on you. They happen quickly and they feel intense. I remember that feeling well, and I don’t think they entirely go away either. Crushes are like mirrors: What we want to be, what we want to embody, and what we want to experience. I write poetry like a mirror.
The great thing about sexuality is that it never ends, there are also facets and sides to explore. The theme can change shape just as life does.
SMW: In your poem “clear lip gloss,” you write: “my lips/so sticky with clear good, like alien sex/ like too much cocaine on a tuesday night.” Your writing here, again, takes me immediately back to an era of scrunchies, shopping trips to delia*s, chokers, popped collars, and slap bracelets. If you had to describe your style as a pre-teen/teenager, what were your ultimate must-haves? Was there anything that you didn’t have fashion-wise growing up that adult you still want, especially since fashion trends seem to be circling back to a lot of those early 2000s style icons again?
SAV: It’s all popular again! Again, the beauty of the internet: All of these trends are cyclical. I find it much faster and more intense now because of the rapid pace of social media. These trends felt much slower when I was a teenager.
My style must-haves were a tattoo choker necklace, black Converse, and either super skinny pants or like, raver JNCO-style pants. I had a lot of baby tees from DeLiA*s, and zip-up hoodies in black of course. The only skinny pants I could find were at Hot Topic. I also used to wear my mom’s old bell-bottoms *a lot* and some vintage tees she had. So I was this weird mashup of popular rave culture, a diehard teen Cure and Depeche Mode fan, and like, a little hippie kid at times. I owned several tubes of Mac’s clear lip gloss (which is the product that inspired the poem).
SMW: Another theme I noticed throughout was friendship. Female friendships are so important and complicated and beautiful and magical. How did your friendships growing up influence the creation of some of these poems, particularly “pink plastic caboodle?”SAV: I really wanted a ride or die best friend at that age. I’m lucky to have a few now.
All of the tropes from television, movies, and books really affected me. I wanted the friend who made me friendship bracelets or sent letters from camp. It seemed very solid. The pieces I experienced made it into the poems, as the parts I wanted (but didn’t get).
SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?
SAV: I’m actually reading mostly mythology right now and lots of Sappho. But I desperately need some contemporary poets to dig into, so I’m saying this here to manifest it as a call to the universe. My TBR pile has mostly Anne Carson, Octavia Butler, and Angela Carter on it at the moment.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
I’m still writing poems as it’s a kind of therapeutic practice for me. But I’m working on some fairy tale and mythology retellings.
Bonus questions:
What songs would be on your mixtape? Lana Del Rey, Nick Cave, Molly Lewis, Sparks, Depeche Mode, Maye, Monogem, Nadine Shah, Yves Tumor.What tarot card do you think you are? Strength and Queen of Swords.How did the movie The Craft help shape your identity as a young woman and a witch? I feel like it was such an important film for all of us, regardless of the shortcomings it had. I wanted to be a witch, as simple as that. I wanted to get some power. The movie made me realize I could be something else. I didn’t have to be the person I was at the time, and I could get more out of this life.Author Bio:
Stephanie Athena Valente lives in New York. She is the author of Internet Girlfriend (Clash Books, 2022), Hotel Ghost, waiting for the end of the world, Little Fang (Bottlecap Press), and Spell Work (2021). Her work is featured in Witch Craft Magazine, Maudlin House, and Hobart. She is an editor at Yes, Poetry. Stephanievalente.com
Praise for Internet Girlfriend
Stephanie Valente’s Internet Girlfriend oozes with style. In an age of Y2K nostalgia, this collection of poems somehow makes the dial-up days feel glamorous while also experimenting with form in such a way that makes me excited for the future, assuming it will contain more poetry like this. These poems are a mystical time warp, a sequined occult ritual, and a lip gloss kiss stain emoji all at once. Valente writes: “please make / everything feel / opalescent // now and / forever” & that is exactly what every single poem in this collection does. — Kailey Tedesco, author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton, Lizzie, Speak, and FOREVERHAUS
In Valente’s debut book, Internet Girlfriend, we go on enchanting dates with poems. They envelop us in a simultaneously glossy and sinister sheen, turning us on—maybe even to our meta-reality. As words, glitching pixels, codes, and messaging accumulate, we peer into the sheer magic of a loose language, a reckoning with our inner teenager, and wherein the internet as our lover; Meaning develops past the screens. We become engaged to our witch hood.—Katherine Factor, author of A Sybil Society, winner of the Interim Test Site Poetry prize
Stephanie Valente's, Internet Girlfriend serves up a vivid nostalgia for a time when the newness of the internet intersected with the newness of sexuality for a generation of teen girls; those who dealt with the impossibility of their cultural irrelevance with ouija boards, witchcraft and fantasy, and eventually, and finally, by embracing a form of empowerment in the many variations of sexual attention their youth afforded them. The reader travels back to the days when we would consult the magic 8-ball "if i could love/ myself,/ it says:/ keep dreaming/ keep dreaming" but is also granted several visions of the future. "Here is how our great romance ends" begins one of my favorite of these poems, "oracle" which shows battle scars, but also wisdom; and in "palmistry" the speaker predicts, among other things, how despite or maybe because of these numerous difficult experiences "in the future, you'll learn to love yourself and it feels strange". —Carrie Nassif, author of lithopaedion (forthcoming with Finishing Line Press)
May 16, 2022
Madhouse Author Interview: The Saint of Witches by Avra Margariti
Hello and Good Afternoon, Friends and Fiends:
Today in The Madhouse, I'm thrilled to welcome and host Avra Margariti as we talk about their recent poetry collection, The Saint of Witches from Weasel Press. Margariti writes: "In this dark poetry collection, witches escape stakes, wells, and other prisons with the help of their arcane saint. Girls dream of queer ghosts and carnivorous angels. Ghouls visit their lovers beyond the grave, while medical experiments seek a forever home. Bodies are dismantled and remade, despised and celebrated. Anti-heroines bare their blood-dripping teeth. In The Saint of Witches, there’s no telling who will sink, or swim."
Now I first saw Margariti post about this a few months ago, and the title alone (hello? Witches!) immediately grabbed my interest, but when they told me it was a queer exploration of witchcraft, gender norms, and sexuality, well is it any surprise you folks are here with us today? I don't think I could have asked for a more me collection to grace my shelves, and I was thrilled to talk to Margariti more about their process, inspirations, and themes some more.
For those of you who have taken my Witch Lit course, please definitely consider picking up a copy of this book, and if you haven't taken the course but love discourse about history, fairy tales, folklore, and gender, then absolutely consider this book for you. Margariti does a wonderfully haunting job exploring the intersection of the beautiful and the grotesque, and their themes focusing on the body, identity, death, and violence spoke directly to me on more than one occasion as they provided an interdisciplinary approach that sent me thinking about artwork, history, theology, thanatology and more.
Yeah, that's my long-winded and somewhat-academic way of saying you need to read this book.
It's magic, much like Margaritti themselves.
Channeling that Dark Goddess Energy,
Stephanie
SMW: Hi Avra! Welcome to The Madhouse. Can you tell us a little about yourself and what brought you to poetry and who inspires you?
AM: Hi, Stephanie! So happy to be here! I’m a queer dark fabulist author from Greece, and although I’ve been writing poetry since I was sixteen, it’s only these last couple of years that I started calling myself a poet! Besides writing in English as a second language, I’m also an autodidact when it comes to fiction and poetry.
I adore the medium of horror poetry as a way of conveying bite-sized stories full of atmosphere and sensory detail. Some of my early inspirations of dark poems include Poe’s “Annabel Lee” and Blake’s “A Poison Tree”. My current obsessions are Sara Tantlinger’s “Cradleland of Parasites” and Octavia Cade’s “Mary Shelley Makes a Monster”.
SMW: What about the witch speaks to you the most? How do/did you connect with her while writing this collection? AM: Most of those accused of witchcraft throughout history have been gender non-conforming, in one way or another. They take Christian patriarchal ideals of propriety and spit in their face. I like the idea of Witch as a metaphor for Queerness, for Otherness. A feminist perspective is essential when examining the accounts of various witch hunts and exterminations. At the same time, while writing this collection, I enjoyed delving deeper into the mind of the witch for a more intersectional approach, especially in matters of gender expression and sexuality. I thought about witches’ desires, their motives; how they have been victimized and vilified; how they themselves have embraced the thrill of revenge, the necessity of survival at all costs, but also the need to shield and protect members of their coven from those who seek to punish them for their non-conformity.
SMW: I absolutely loved your poem “21st-Century Girl” and it reminded me a lot of M. Ricket’s flash fiction piece "True Crime." When we talk about witches, the subject of violence inevitably comes up, especially when we talk about women’s rights, the MeToo movement, etc. How does this poem speak to how women and other minority groups are portrayed in the media?
AM: Whenever I read the various headlines written every day around the world, I’m always enraged by journalistic patterns of pure sensationalism when discussing gender-based crimes. Events that are true and devastating become just another narrative or plot point; the women involved (as well as the individuals mistakenly called female and misgendered by the public) become a final girl to cheer on, or a beauty queen to mourn. The public eye quickly--and callously--morphs into the horror gaze, a concept that I further explored in different poems of the collection (“Blessed Is the Final Girl”, “The Brides of Dracula Ponder the Manson Murders”, and “A Flame, Snuffed”).
SMW: Your poem “River-Mud Rose” really spoke to me. I tend to write a lot about burials as a theme in my work as well, and I connected a lot with your lines: “I am adulterated sand, dying before I can/ become a freshwater pearl/ A votive supplication to the gods of chaos./ My standard-casket prison smells of sewage/ and turpentine trickling down my legs.” With witches, we often talk about resurrection, hauntings, and curses as metaphors for generational pain. Can you talk a little bit about how you explore that in your work?AM: I came up with the premise for “River-Mud Rose” while being inside an MRI machine for a scan. I’m not claustrophobic, so I could focus on all the sounds and other sensations inside the machine and draw inspiration from them for my poem. If you concentrate enough on the rumble of an MRI, it sounds just like arcane chanting, and words start to emerge amid other auditory patterns. It was a very surreal, though not [an] entirely unpleasant experience.
As for generational pain, I tend to borrow details from anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination throughout history, which become reworked into my horror poetry as feelings of urgency, oppression, and asphyxiation. Those details are terrifying even before literary embellishment. The trauma endured by the past generations isn’t all that distant, and unfortunately, it’s far from over even in the 21stcentury.
SMW: One of my favorite pieces of art is Willem De Kooning's "Woman 1" and I think what I love about it most is that it’s a woman portrayed as a monstrous creature, which arguably should make me mad right (it does, but that’s a discussion for another time). A different part of my brain really loves this though because when I look at her, I see strength, beauty, intensity, and power. She’s one of my favorite women to look at, and despite de Kooning trying to make her grotesque or Frankenstein her body together, I think she’s one of the most marvelous, beautiful figures. Your poem “Sunflower, With Skull” evokes similar feelings (as well as reminds me of this painting by Frida Kahlo ) in how it honors the beautiful grotesque. What draws you to that binary?
AM: I adore grotesque imagery! The truth is I have always related to the Monstrous, and to most unwanted, unpalatable, and disrespectable monsters in all art forms. Occasionally I enjoy thinking of myself as a creature--a cadavre exquis--as well. Over the years I’ve found myself moving away from traditional beauty standards, both consciously and subconsciously. (One of my poems dealing with the rejection of enforced beauty and desirability is “Maiden, Muse, Crone”).
I think part of the reason I love monsters so much stems from the way my identity, my attraction, has been called monstrous by society. Embracing the grotesque has become my personal and professional journey of reclamation. For me, the sublime and the grotesque are both parts of a vast spectrum of expression, but they are also infinite nesting dolls stacked one inside the other. I believe there is beauty woven through monstrosity’s core. Strength and power in shedding one’s skin or stitching it together with whatever misshapen material [are] available, to build a new ineffable whole.
SMW: Poems like “Milk and Black Spiders” and “Pity-Party Fairy” remind me of nursery rhymes or fairytales that I would read as I kid. Do you find yourself inspired by folklore and fairytales? If so, why, and what are some of your favorites?
AM: I have a soft spot for "The Girl Without Hands" collected by the Brothers Grimm, a story which is gruesome even by fairytale standards. It features a mutilated woman, devils, and angels.
As for folklore, I’ve always been obsessed with a Greek murder ballad called "The Bridge of Arta" (<<Το Γιοφύρι της Άρτας>>). In it, a woman is buried [in] the foundation of a stone bridge to keep it from collapsing. Her husband and his team of builders trick her, using her sacrifice as a way to complete the cursed construction. The ballad includes talking birds as messengers and prophets, leading the murdered wife to her doom.
SMW: Poems like “The Moths, The Rabbits” and the “My Anatomy” series play into the body horror subgenre. Why do you think horror, as a genre, puts so much emphasis on the body?
AM: The human body is without a doubt a marvel of nature and ecstatic engineering--it’s also an inherently horrifying prison of flesh and electricity. For a lot of us, the corpus can be a source of anguish, either because of our own perception of it, or other people’s. This is one of the reasons body horror and body bizarre speak to me and to so many other writers and readers on such a personal level. Chronic pain and gender apathy/dysphoria coalesce into an indistinguishable undercurrent of unease, which can sometimes result in an explosive, transcendental metamorphosis. I find that very cathartic.
SMW: There’s an exploration of rage and the enraged in your collection, particularly when we look at poems such as “Volcanic.” How do you think the enraged woman has been reinterpreted and subverted over the last several years, and why do you think it’s important to see this iteration of her?
AM: Tales of pure rage are hard to come by in the current literary landscape and difficult to stomach for some readers unless that rage is mellowed by feelings of grief or sadness. I find myself attracted to the enraged, the unfettered bursts of righteous fury. I feel seen by such depictions in fiction. I also really enjoy how lethal the anger of female figures is in ancient Greek myths and tragedies. Some might call such depictions problematic and stereotypical, and maybe they are, but I also think they reflect a truth from which we have tried to distance ourselves in modern works of fiction.
As marginalized people, we are often shamed for our rage even when it’s warranted, so I enjoy exploring such themes in the safe space provided by the horror genre.
SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?
AM: I can’t wait to dive into “Under Her Skin”. As a fan of body horror, I know I will love the inaugural Women in Horror Poetry Showcase.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
AM: I recently completed a collection of folk horror poetry after pledging to write a poem per day during 2021. I’m also working on a dark short story collection on the theme of vore--the desire to consume and to be consumed. A few of those stories are forthcoming from various horror anthologies and should be available to read very soon!
Author Bio:
Avra Margariti is a queer author, Greek sea monster, and Rhysling-nominated poet with a fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Vastarien, Asimov’s, Liminality, Arsenika, The Future Fire, Space and Time, Eye to the Telescope, and Glittership. “The Saint of Witches”, Avra’s debut collection of horror poetry, is available from Weasel Press. You can find Avra on Twitter (@avramargariti).
May 5, 2022
Madhouse Author Interview: We Are The Ones Possessed by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
Hello Friends and Friends, Today in the Madhouse, I'm chatting with poet Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, whose work I first read when I picked up a copy of his collection La Belle Ajar from Clash Books a year or so ago. Followers of this blog know that I'm pretty much obsessed with Sylvia Plath, so there was no way I wasn't going to read that collection, and I'm happy I did because it introduced me to one of my favorite contemporary poets, a poet whose most recent release We Are the Ones Possessed also took my breath away. As such, I wanted to chat with him a bit about his process, his inspirations, and just generally see what makes him tick when it comes to form, style, and voice in the poem.
SMW: Hi Adrian! Welcome to The Madhouse. I’ve been a fan of your work since I read your collection La Belle Ajar two years ago, but for those readers who might be unfamiliar with your poetry, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?
AEC: My name is Adrian Ernesto Cepeda and I am a LatinX poet living in Los Angeles. Although I have been writing poetry for over twenty years, it’s been in recent years that my poems have begun flourishing, catching lyrical fire. 2018 has been the most successful year of my career as a poet. My first poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time was published by Red Mare Press, and my first full-length poetry collection Flashes & Verses... Becoming Attraction was published by Unsolicited Press. 2019 saw the publication of Between the Spine, a collection of erotic love poems published with Picture Show Press. This year, La Belle Ajar a collection of cento poems inspired by Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel by CLASH Books. Alegría Publishing published Speaking con su Sombra in 2021 and CLASH Books published my latest poetry collection We Are the Ones Possessed in 2022.
My first introduction to poetry was in sixth grade at Thurston Elementary School in Mr. Babcock’s class. Every week he would have us memorize a famous poem and each of us would have to recite it in front of the whole class. This was when I first learned about Robert Frost and “The Road Not Taken.” Well, I was very ill one week and when I came back to school, I thought since I was sick, I didn’t have to recite my poem. Poetry doesn’t take a day off from anyone, is what I remember Mr. Babcock telling me. So, I had to stand there as he fed me lines, and this experience left a trauma that would trigger me for years afterward when anyone even mentioned a poem or Poet.
This lasted until college, specifically during my undergrad years at the University of Texas at San Antonio. At UTSA, because I wrote many romantic poems, an older female classmate introduced me to Pablo Neruda. She told me if you want to seduce a woman read their poems from 100 Love Sonnets. She was right because I used Neruda’s book as inspiration, and I seduced her later that year.
Poetry has saved me. Given me strengthen when I felt embarrassed by my speech impediment. I have a stutter and writing poems empowered me. I found my voice on and off the page when I rediscovered my love of la poesía.
SMW: Your most recent collection, We Are the Ones Possessed, still features a heavy influence on Sylvia Plath, and you start the collection off with the following quote by her: “Death must be so beautiful.” Can you talk a little about your connection to/with Plath and her work? What about her continues to be a muse for you?AEC: My wife is the Plath scholar in our family yet, after mi Mami passed away in 2017 and we arrived home from her memorial service in San Antonio, I became sick and very depressed. I was in my office, sitting on my chair when I turned to our bookshelf and saw a copy of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar glaring back at me. I picked it up, I turned the pages to Chapter 1, and I started culling words and crafting cento poems. I was trying to channel my energies to something creative and I felt an instant connection with Plath. At times, I felt like she was there guiding me while I was writing these poems that became La Belle Ajar. Because mi Mami had died, I was looking for a mother figure, and Sylvia because this inspirational figure for me. I went and purchased all her books, so many bios and literary critical theory that wrote about her work. For a year afterward, Plath’s presence was with me, and she helped me so much. I owe her so much, for she was there for me when I was mourning and inspired so much of my work, and she still does to this day.
What I learned about Plath, while writing, La Belle Ajar, was that Sylvia would write with a dictionary open. She was so meticulous with her word choices. She was a Maestra of words and her books and poems reflect this. To this day, she inspires me to be as meticulous as she was on the page.
SMW: This collection has themes of death, loss, grief, and trauma, all of which are wrapped up in this idea of memory and possession, things we can’t forget or run away from. In your poem “A Ghost Can Be a Lot of Things” you write: “A daydream memory, /secret guilt, most times, /in grief, we wish to see/a ghost.” How do you think your poetry tackles ghosts?
AEC: For me, and my last two poetry books, Speaking con su Sombra, a collection of bilingual poems, published by Alegría Publishing in 2017, was written for and inspired by my mother and her death. And my latest We Are the Ones Possessed, published with CLASH Books, and both of these books tackle this issue. I feel like Sombra most of these verses I am speaking to the spirit of mi Mami. And in Possessed, I am having conversations with ghosts in my Poems. Especially in “Two Americans Estranged in A London Kitchen, February 11, 1963” and “Her Garage Emotes” where I am speaking to Plath and Sexton on the moments before their death.
Poetry has helped me heal and face the trauma of missing my mother. I feel like Poetry is the best medium to connect with ghosts. Often, we write to future paramours, former lovers, heroes we admire, our odes are ways to weave through time as we attempt to connect with them on the page.
SMW: Anne Sexton has always spoken to me as a poet, and I have such a complicated relationship with her, but nevertheless, I can’t deny that I’m attached strongly to her poems. You have a piece in this collection that I absolutely loved: “Her Garage Emotes.” This poem is heartbreaking for so many reasons, and there are pieces of this piece specifically that I think will stay with me forever such as: “Anne wants to make/ out with poems/in between breaths” and “Anne loves idling/eternally inside my mouth.” What draws you to Anne Sexton? Since she and Sylvia were contemporaries and even taught together on occasion, I’m curious if your relationship with her is similar to what you have with Sylvia or if you contextualize her work differently in the scope of your own writing.
AEC: I was actually into Anne Sexton before I Plath came into my life. Sexton was such a spark of inspiration. I would write so many love poems to her. Here, this unpublished poem is an example of how Sexton inspired me:
How Sexton Slays MeSometimes I swear seeing
her reaching through her
softback tinging my own
spine, nuzzling with this
goddess, I feel her whispered
couplets undressing title,
pages, her words definitely
recline, reigniting rolls from
my tongue as I read her free
verse reflecting our lips,
our skins intone as she
unfastens and intricately
interlocks our lips together
far away, some nights she
feels even closer. Forget
risqué—I love the form of
Anne's body of poetry, how
her verses nakedly swim,
splashing me as she entrancingly
intertwines with my longing,
flickering redefined with pauses
of desire—teasing me with her
dangling stanza break kisses,
Anne’s rhymes always
swallowing me initiating
another little death within
her seductive exhales—
Sexton always eternally
gripping me with her
softest end rhyme.
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, 2022
She empowered me to craft some of the most erotic love poems which led to my second book Between the Spine published with Picture Show Press in 2019. Sexton encouraged me to embrace the art of the erotic love poem. And I love her and I am eternally indebted to Anne for her inspiration.
SMW: I recently listened to an episode about Assia Wevill via The History of Literature podcast, and it opened my mind to see her as a person rather than simply as Sylvia Plath’s rival. In your poem, “Assia’s Feet Almost Touched the Door,” you write: “she joined Sylvia/ Plath instead, on the other/side of the stove.” There’s always such a strong focus on women and tragedy in your work—one of the many reasons I adore your poetry—and I’m wondering if you can speak to your attachment to that topic and how if feels to write to and about that experience from a male point of view.
AEC: When I was in a poetry workshop in college, our instructor Heather Sellers, gave us an assignment where each of us would write a poem and she would read it aloud and the class had to guess which classmate had written the poem. The poem I wrote was called “Lonely as an Eyesore” and the speaker was a spurned wife. I challenged myself to write from a viewpoint that was not my own male experience. It was a success because they did not guess I had written it. Years after, I became enamored of discovering writers like Anais Nin, Anne Sexton, and Kim Addonizio, and I wanted to write poems that would honor them and make them proud. I also found out that Debbie Harry of Blondie always wrote in an omnisexual voice. Most of her songs were written from a male point of view. Along with reading writers like Nin, Sexton, and Addonizio, Harry inspired me to write in a female voice.
SMW: In your poem “She Eats Men for Breakfast” you write: “Using teeth, it’s the only/ morning after bed/and breakfast meal/ that satisfies her carnal/cravings.” First off, that phrase “morning after bead and breakfast meal?”—absolute perfection! Admiration aside, I love how you weave themes of death and sex throughout this collection. There’s this forever nod to la petite mort hovering throughout. What made you want to work with those specific themes this time around, and how do you think they speak to or inform your goals as a poet in general?
AEC: Ironically enough, the original title of We Are the Ones Possessed was la petite mort. I’ve always loved the term little death and it was this idea that sparked some of my favorite poems in Possessed. But my publisher wanted to change the title because not all the poems had this theme, and they were right. I prefer the new title.
As for the themes, it’s the continuation of the erotic love themes I had loved writing about for years. I just added a new layer of death along with female empowerment which made the poems more universal and carnal in the same breath.
SMW: There are a lot of attributions throughout the collection: Edvard Munch’s “Death of Marat I,” Nicolas Francois Octave Tassert’s “La Femme Damnee (The Cursed Woman),” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” lyrics from Tom Waits, etc. How did you go about selecting these pieces to write to in this collection? I often get a lot of questions about how to organize a poetry manuscript, so I’d love to hear more about the connection these artists have for you and how you went about using them and their work to create new art.
AEC: Writing every day, years ago, before I was published, to challenge myself I would find artworks and photographs and craft ekphrastic poems. Along with erotic love poems, the ekphrastic form was my forte. Later on, I discovered the art of the cento poem along with the footnote poems. Taking words and lines from other famous works, and culling them together is one of my creative outlets that has inspired some of my favorite poems.
The art pieces in the book, choose me, they called out to me, and since I love the ekphrastic form I wanted to honor the artist and the paintings I chose with my poems. That’s the goal, to take a famous piece of art, or even a song lyric, or a story like “The Lottery” and pay homage with my own ode in poetic form. It is a challenge but challenging myself is how I have grown as an artist through my five poetry books and one chapbook.
SMW: I like that you explore poetry through centos. For those who might be unfamiliar with that format, can you talk a little bit about what a cento poem is, as well as what your writing process for them looks like?
AEC: A cento poem is a work that is comprised of lines from another poem or literary work. Like the art piece of my ekphrastic poems, the cento verses call out to me. I found whenever I try to force it, they come out weak and uninspired. My best centos, from La Bella Ajar and in my new horror poetry collection, possessed me and inspired me to craft the poems. Centos are not easy to create. They are a challenge and the best ones take days, weeks, and months to complete.
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SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list? AEC: Natalie Sierra’s brilliant book Charlie Forever and Ever from Flower Song Press. Clara Olivo’s bilingual poetry collection The Whisper, The Storm, and The Light In Between was published with Alegría Publishing. Dorianne Laux and Leila Chatti collaborated on a Poems in Conversation & a Conversation called The Mothers from Slapering Hol Press. Briana Muñoz Loose Lips from Prickly Pear Publishing. Dylan Krieger’s chapbook Hideous Compass from Underground Press. Cry Howl from Edward Vidaurre was published by Prickly Pear Publishing. Nadine: Love Songs for Demented Housewives by Natalie Sierra. This Poem Might Save You (Me) by Jesenia Chávez, from Alegría Publishing.
I am looking forward to Jenn Givhan’s Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan Poetry Series); Erika L. Sánchez, Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir; Lidia Yuknavitch's Thrust: A Novel, and new poetry collections from Alegría Publishing’s poetas Solany Lara and Virginia Bulacio.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
AEC: I am working on a follow-up to Speaking con su Sombra. La Lengua Inside me is my most personal project to date, it’s a journey of rediscovering my bilingual voice. I just hired a manuscript consultant, and I will be sending my sixth book out to publishers in June.
I also am looking for a publisher to publish When Her Lips Spread Simpatico, a collection of erotic love poems written for and inspired by my wife.
PRAISE FOR ADRIAN ERNESTO CEPEDA
Cepeda’s atmospheric poems evoke an image of death that’s horrific and lovely, which I believe is fundamentally an optimism. We Are the Ones Possessed is not only an honor to many literary women; it’s an image of death as something more beautiful than it is—a death beyond death, its redemption.— CHARLENE ELSBY, AUTHOR OF PSYCHROS & HEXIS
The "little death" of orgasm isn't so small after all in Adrian Ernesto Cepeda's We Are the Ones Possessed. With the historical awareness of a cento and the contemporality of a soundbite, Cepeda explores the knotted entanglement of poetry's two age-old obsessions--sex and death-- with an eye toward tying the knot tighter rather than separating terror from pleasure. "Waiting under the mistletoe with a knife," this book rubs romance against bare mortality until the two fuse inextricably--a marriage too often relegated to the realms of erotica and gore. Cepeda reminds us, such a union is the home of poets, where horror and desire cuddle up together, swap spit, and let the boundary between them blur.— DYLAN KRIEGER, AUTHOR OF SOFT-FOCUS SLAUGHTERHOUSE
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda's poems always leave me breathless; We Are the Ones Possessed is no different. The lines can be mistakenly simple but say so much—like watching snowfall over a lake. Lines like “I suggest we roll down/the windows, reverse/our front seat” create gorgeous images while also narrating the mundane yet poignant moments in our lives. This book tells us how we possess ourselves and others—and how no one gets away unscathed.— JOANNA C. VALENTE, AUTHOR OF A LOVE STORY, NO(BODY), SEXTING GHOSTS, AND SIRS & MADAMS
Haunting, unnerving, and sexy, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda’s We Are the Ones Possessed makes a case for dark poetry with his collection of passionate calamities, smearing his poems with feverish pleasures, cursed confessions, and death shadows lusting for Blood.— JEAN-PIERRE RUEDA, AUTHOR OF HERENCIAS FROM ALEGRÍA PUBLISHING
Few poets know sex and death as well as Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, whose verse relishes in the escape, release, and transformation that both pleasure and the cessation of life have to offer. Each piece in We Are the Ones Possessed is a petite mort—a potent and intoxicating little death that scares us titillated—and through these poems, we may learn how to live and die deliciously.— KIM VODICKA, AUTHOR OF DEAR TED AND THE ELVIS MACHINEWe Are the Ones Possessed marries the corporeal horror of a Cronenberg film with the gauzy, creeping uneasiness of a midnight ghost tour in Salem, Massachusetts. A must-read for fans of the ethereal and sublime.— KOLLEEN CARNEY HOEPFNER, EIC, DRUNK MONKEY
Spellbinding, sensual, and sinister, Cepeda's We Are the Ones Possessed is a powerhouse collection of sex & death that excites the senses with every line. This is wedding-in-a-graveyard poetry. This is strip-naked-&-worship-the-moon poetry. This is wash-down-your-ex's-heart-with- champagne poetry. Decadent, deadly, & as consumptive as Possessed is compelling.— JESSICA MCHUGH, BRAM STOKER AWARD-NOMINATED AUTHOR OF A COMPLEX ACCIDENT OF LIFE
With nods to various icons of art, music, and literature, these pieces are so beautiful and stunning. Gilded in twilight and darkness, We Are the Ones Possessed is a collection of poetry that guides us along fragments of moments, with the tortured and the torturer. Scenes in dark rooms, across environments and situations, pulsate with bloody ecstasy, attraction, and betrayal. We Are the Ones Possessed shows us not only what we’ve had done to us, but what we have done.— CYNTHIA PELAYO, BRAM STOKER AWARD-NOMINATED AUTHOR OF CHILDREN OF CHICAGO
We Are the Ones Possessed is a vivid, heartbreaking, and tragic collection of poems that drips from the pages with the viscosity of blood. Cepeda is a Latinx talent you should be reading as a horror and poetry fan. I highly recommend this beautiful book that reaches out and grabs you by the heart and throat. I adored Night Stalker Tattoo on Her Back.— V. CASTRO, AUTHOR OF THE QUEEN OF THE CICADAS
Cepeda’s haunting poems, inspired by existing written work and visuals, are a medley of daydreams & nightmares, floating in the middle of a fateful dance of death and sex. The winged beauty in the shadows of love/revenge painted by his exceptional verse in We Are the Ones Possessed will take your breath away.— LINDA D. ADDISON, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, HWA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD RECIPIENT, AND SFPA GRAND MASTER
We Are the Ones Possessed brings poems that read like a movie you just don’t want to end. Cepeda’s brand of horror opens portals into worlds, immersing you into a collection of work that will leave you wondering if there’s anything more horrific than the human condition itself, and his brand of poetry is like a breath of fresh winter air — addictive and piercing. Cepeda’s work will sink its teeth into you and play on loop in your subconscious for years to come. A beautifully haunting piece of art.— JEAN-MARIE BUB, AUTHOR OF MANEATER
ADRIAN ERNESTO CEPEDA BIO:
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, author of La Belle Ajar, brings you a horror-death-themed collection with mortality, murder, and muerte oozing from every one of these terrifying verses.
Inspired by NightWorms, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties & Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads, get ready to be haunted by serial killers, fatal femmes, and poisoners, as these premeditated murderesses slay you in terrifying poems. One step inside these grave-inspired verses, you will want to re-experience We Are the Ones until the very end.
Embrace the terror and prepare to be Possessed, Cepeda’s poems will mesmerize you with his bone-chilling death rhymes from the other side.
May 2, 2022
April ’22 Madhouse Recap: True Crime, National Poetry Month, Comics, and Jack White
Hello Friends and Fiends—
Blessed and belated Beltane and Walpurgisnacht! We’re all recovering from this weekend’s bonfire (Evie’s first!) and rallying after a comic event Dennis and I vended at. It was Dennis’s first time going to an event as an independent bookseller, so I’m really excited to share this with him and celebrate all of his hard work—which has included a lot of all-nighters, endless amounts of cataloging, and more comic book boxes in our house than I care to admit. Sass aside though, it was a lovely event and everyone was really nice and welcoming to both of us. I’m looking forward to going to some more events with him and co-selling some of my stuff as well. We have big plans on the horizon, so I’ll be sure to keep all my horror fans updated. In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram, me @theHauntedBookshelf, and Dennis @WanderingComics.
April was a pretty great month overall. I went back to work in the middle of the month, and honestly, I handled it better than I thought I would. It feels good to get that part of myself and my routine back, and it’s helped my mental health a lot. I will say that the days feel even more of a whirlwind now, so it’s going to take a minute for me to readjust to yet another schedule, but we’re all doing well with it, which is what’s most important.
Lots of other cool things also happened this month. I fell down the true crime rabbit hole pretty obsessively (this happens every couple of months, but admittedly, it’s been a while) and I watched and read crime stories pretty much exclusively, and it was a lot. I think between the two of us, I’ve had my fill for a while, but it did encourage me to sign up for two classes in the fall: Theories of Personalities and Critical Perspectives in Psychopathology. I’m really looking forward to them both and I think they’ll help me with my writing and teaching a lot, which is always a plus. For those who don’t know, I’ve been low-key studying psychology and philosophy over the past year or so in an effort to learn more about criminology and the science of evil, so you know, normal stuff that people do when they have free time…
Outside of that, I grabbed some cool merch from Fright Rag and Fangoria this month, and then Dennis and I went to see Jack White, which was phenomenal. It was my second time seeing him and he always delivers an amazing show, but this time I was excited to hear him play some songs from his Raconteurs days. It “takes me back” to some of my favorite moments and memories in my 20s.
I also attended a ritual workshop led by Pam Grossman and Janaka Stucky: Hecate’s Dark Moon. It was my first longer ritual/meditation since having Evie, and everything about this class was just such a gift. I felt so relaxed and connected and my body felt liminal and light and it was just marvelous. I’m so happy that they were my introduction back into the deeper parts of my practice. Both of them are pure magic and I’m always happy to support and/or be a part of anything and everything they do.
On the writing/teaching front:
I woke up to a poem acceptance the other morning that I’m really, really excited about. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more with you folks soon. Finished teaching Writing the Vampire. This was my first time teaching this class, and I’ll admit, I was a bit worried with doing it so soon after having Evie, but I had such a blast, and it was something I looked forward to participating in every day when I woke up. I learned so much from the students and I greatly enjoyed reading everyone’s creative takes on the assignments and the artwork and stories we discussed. Cheers to the vampire and thank you to everyone who took the class. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.Under Her Skin went live! This is a powerhouse poetry anthology from Black Spot Books, and I remain so honored to be a part of this piece of magic. If you haven’t treated yourself to a copy yet, please consider it! It’s a great example of the work women in horror are doing, and if you’re a poet, specifically, you’ll be introduced to a cast of diverse and inclusive voices, some that are familiar, and some that are just emerging. I did an interview with Cassie Daley from The Ladies of Horror Fiction for National Poetry Month and in celebration of my forthcoming nonfiction book from RDSP Writing Poetry in the Dark. You can read the full interview here.My poetry collection, The Apocalyptic Mannequin, got a wonderful shout out in The Ladies of Horror Fictions article: Team Favorites, Dark Poetry Collections We’ve Loved.” You can read the full piece here.My poem “Family Offerings”—which was previously published in Southwest Review, Vol 106.3–was awarded The Elizabeth Matchett Stover Memorial Award. This award is given annually to authors of the best poems published in the Southwest Review.My poem “In the Gallery of Queens” was published in issue 44 of Eye to the Telescope. You can read it here.
This month I read:Fledgling by Octavia E. ButlerDrunks and Other Poems of Recovery by Jack McCarthyInternet Girlfriend by Stephanie Valente (author interview coming soon!)Under Her Skin edited by Lindy Ryan and Toni MillerThe Last Victim by Jason Moss (short review up on Goodreads)The Science of Women in Horror: The Special Effects, Stunts, and True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fright Films by Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence (short review up on Goodreads)Something is Killing the Children, Vol 1 by James TynionSomething is Killing the Children, Vol 2 by James TynionSlumber, Issue #1by Tyler Burton Smith (Image Comics)I started reading a short story collection by Karen Russell (Vampires in the Lemon Grove), and I read the title story “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” and “Reeling for the Empire,” both of which I’d read before, but wow did they hit harder than the time before. “Reeling for the Empire” might be one of my favorite stories…ever. It’s so intensely feminist and the body horror is both beautiful and grotesque. If you haven’t read it, please do!
On the media front:
Cleaner (2007), I Love You, Now Die (2019), Charlie Says (2018), Puppet Master (1989), Summer of ’84 (2018), You Are Not My Mother (2021), Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes (2021).I rewatched Candyman this month. It had been years since I’ve watched the original and I feel like I loved and appreciated it so much more now. What a beautiful horror film. I’ve never read “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker though, so I finally ordered it and am really looking forward to fixing that soon.I rewatched Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. I didn't realize that this was based on the book The Phantom Prince, My Life with Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Kendall, so since this has been on my TBR since it came out, I finally decided to pick up a copy of it. Hoping to read it this month.I rewatched the first season of Russian Doll. I love Natasha Lyonee and she is just so incredible in this series. I remembered it being emotional, but I had forgotten just how deep the storyline really was. I’m looking forward to starting season 2 here soon. The Girl from Plainville (2022). Still watching, still disturbed.Confessions with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes. I watched this while I was reading The Last Victim by Jason Moss, and it was a lot. I feel like I have a good understanding of the case and the timeline now, but honestly, I never want to read or watch anything about Gacy again. It’s too much and I’ve had my fill. I finished watching The Thing About Pam (2022), which side note, WTF? An absolute sociopath, that woman. Renee Zellweger did a fantastic job in that role though. That reminds me: my new BFF at Barnes and Noble (the manager is a big True Crime buff and we talked for like 45 minutes the other day, ha!) let me know that there was a recent book release about the Betsy Faria case and I definitely want to pick it up soon. It’s titled: Bone Deep: Untangling the Betsy Faria Murder Case by Charles Bosworth Jr.I also started season 2 of Cursed Films (2022) with The Wizard of Oz and the Rosemary’s Baby episode. Rosemary’s Baby was especially interesting. I have a feeling I’ll be rewatching that one again in the future. Human Resources (2022). This was hysterical and moving and important, and I loved every moment of it. Big Mouth is one of my favorite shows and I’m just here for everything and anything this world and its extensions do.
Podcasts:Books in the Freezer Podcast, From the Vault, Home Sweet Haunted HouseBooks in the Freezer Podcast, Books like Yellowjackets with Kristen AndersonThis Ends at Prom, Twilight (2008)The History of Literature, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (with Heather Clark)The History of Literature, Plath, Hughes, and the “Other Woman”- Assia Wevill and Her Writings (with Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter Steinberg)The History of Literature, Sylvia PlathThe History of Literature, Mary Wollstonecraft (with Samantha Silva)The Evolution of Horror, In the Earth (2021) with Ben Wheatley
May starts my summer schedule, so I’m hoping to dive into some side projects here soon. I have two editing projects I need to finish up, not to mention some of my own personal writing that I need to jump back into, so I’m hoping that the creativity is planning on flowing this month because I’ll need and happily take any and all help I can get to write “the end” on a few manuscripts.
Oh, and I bought another pair of Crocs and I will not be shamed for it. Those shoes are comfy AF, and I love living in them. I’ve also gotten really into birdwatching in the morning…so maybe I have some more cottagecore tendencies to my personality than I was aware of? Either way, I’m fine if life slows down a bit. I feel like I’ve been running a marathon for 33 years and I’m ready to take a break and enjoy a slower pace for a while.
Best,
Stephanie
