ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com
Poetic Profile
Brenda Iijima
General Questions
1) Where were you Born and what was your Formation?
I grew up in North Adams, Massachusetts—an industrial mill town that was a buzzing seat of production until the end of WW11. Now it is economically bereft and has lost much of its population. There was a crazy creative undercurrent running beneath and atmosphere of despair. Susan B. Anthony, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson all lived within a 30 mile radius. The Appalachian Mountains run through North Adams and it is Mohawk Indian land. I grew up on the foot of Mt. Greylock—the highest elevation in the state. Behind my parent’s incredibly landscaped garden (my mother’s life work, she used many recycled materials from the Urban Renewal period in the 1970’s when many Victorian buildings were torn down) is a vast zone of forest that grew back after the intense logging that took place in the 1800’s. Since much of the land is hilly it is possible to find remnants of tampered forest. North Adams was polluted by many sources. There were many tanneries, hat factories and shoe factories. Also, Sprague Electric which made transformers especially for use in WW11 dumped tons of PCPs into the land. When you turn off of Route 2 onto Notch Road, where my parents live, you can see an entire street where the houses were demolished because of the over saturation of chemicals. I experienced an active eclectic childhood. My mother, a German immigrant, couldn’t accept the dilapidated, tumble down state of the town so she took it upon herself to single-handedly clean it up. I was her helper (indentured servant). Everyday we’d clean sidewalk cracks of weeds, rid hurricane fences of tons of trash, plant gardens, sweep the Main St, etc. This intense activity went on for years. My parents were very civically involved and helped many people in need. We recycled tons and tons of Urban Renewal materials—hauled mounds of marble, slate, brick and huge wooden beams for use in landscape projects. When I wasn’t helping my parents I was involved in gymnastics and also did a lot of drawing and reading and romping through the forest. There would always be drunken gangs of men in the forest. My sister and I made crude bows and arrows and would aim our arrows at their camps and then run away. My family did a considerable amount of travel which I am thankful for. I learned German because my mother emigrated from Bavaria. My childhood was definitely energetic and chaotic—the household was a depot for people in crisis—my parents had an open door policy and they tried to help people in abject situations. My parents are creative. My father made sculptures from found objects—totems really—my mother painted, landscaped, etc. My childhood was an unmonitored experience.
2) What are your Poetic Influences?
My influences are constantly shifting and there are confluences. It is difficult to acknowledge all the myriad strands. The visual arts, the ecology, science, architecture, social history, music —virtually everything shapes my poetics, the modalities with which I work. Pillar influences include: Alice Notley, Kamau Braithwaite, Gertrude Stein, Jackson Mac Low, Leslie Scalapino, John Wieners, Jean Toomer, Mina Loy, Bernadette Mayer, Nicole Brossard, Lorine Niedecker, Basil Bunting, Jack Spicer, Miyazawa Kenji Friedrich Holderlin and Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. The music of Sun Ra might be just as influential as any of these poets, or say Pauline Oliveros, 18th century organ music, Tuva music, Indonesian gamelan—it is endless! Philosophers, theorists, scientists. Local color information. Found reality. Christa Wolf’s Cassandra is brilliant and charged the making of Eco Quarry Bellwether, a manuscript I recently completed. Certainly all the poets I’ve published under the Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs imprint—such intense focus on their work is generative—Roberto Harrison, Allison Cobb, Diane Ward and Jonas Mekas are examples of poets whose work I’ve published. My friends, acquaintances and peers engage me with their vision, emphasis and mode. I avidly read the work of Heather Fuller, Carol Mirakove, Rob Halpern, Laura Elrick , kari edwards, Ange Mlinko, Kim Lyons and Julie Patton to name a few…
3) When did you realize you were a poet?
I’m still in the process of realizing…
4) What type of class has proven most useful for your development as a poet/writer?
I took one class in poetry, so I can’t really answer this question. For me it has been a process of total immersion without the confines of the classroom. I didn’t have mentors or authority figures suggesting pathways for my work. This feels open to me. Since language use is at the basis of expression I feel like it hasn’t been essential or desirable to pursue poetry via academia.
5) Favorite Team or Sport?
I’m not smitten of organized sports. If there is a body of water in the vicinity I am likely to immerse myself…
6) Food?
Everything that hasn’t been repeatedly sprayed by herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, pumped up with hormones and antibiotics! I eat a fair share of dandelion—avocados I consume in great number. Miso soup is a staple as is cheese. Mainly I eat small mounds of verdant matter—joyously.
7) Vacation Spot?
Tourist destinations I avoid. On my last trip with Toshi we navigated through the working and defunct coal mining towns of West Virginia. The nights were so black! No restaurants, convenience stores (there was the occasional junk store and several times I sighted shackles and other items telling of the United State’s menacing past), liquor stores—only churches (numerous sightings of three epic crosses positioned in fields reminiscent of KKK cross burnings), industrial chicken coops burning their lights into the night and stars in the sky—serpentine roads through the hollows quite remote and sparely settled—hardscrabble existences. The air had an entirely different texture—it was incredibly clean. I am drawn by the desolation of parts of Portugal. One day I hope to visit Iceland for an extended period of time—otherwise, ambling about New York’s boroughs suits me fine. I don’t have any urgent need to go great distances.
8) Swear Word?
“Oh”
9) Are you working on a book?
The work is called Remembering Animals. It has to do with the illogical separation of humans and animals (in language structures, etc.). The impetuous for this was the documentary film, Winter Soldiers. Over 100 returning Vietnam Vets decided to have their testimonials of witness recorded by a group of filmmakers because they wanted in some way to stop the atrocities being committed. They frankly described their participation in torture. The stark, incredible admission so many soldiers offered had to do with the framework of positioning the "enemy" as an animal and also their having to become animals to commit these crimes. It seems that this weird dichotomy has much to do with the eco disasters caused by humans, especially in the West, where animals and humans are separated out. I've been doing a lot of research into how animals are portrayed in the visual arts--how humans visualize animals, as well as mutually being animals. The work takes on slavery and that direct dehumanization. The massive extinction and devastation to the ecosystem is central to this project. As well it forms empathies with animal otherness and interrogates the hierarchies assumed. And...
10) How does being a visual artist color your poetic project?
Greatly. Synesthesia and kinesics (painting and drawing have to do with gesture, oftentimes—non-verbal movement) work together simultaneously. Painting, drawing—materiality is never denied. I feel like I realize conversions differently because of my involvement with visual arts. A significant part of painting is science—how materials interact—this perception filters into my poetry. I think a lot about scale, density, layering, edges, lines, texture, spatial relations like multiple dimension, the body as a fluxion in regards to art as a fluxion. How is subtly conveyed in, say, painting compared with poetry—I do a fair amount of unruly philosophic speculation. Painting is considered more rarified in this culture compared with poetry because at a certain stage of development young adults depart from the making of visual arts while language use continues. Maybe poetry seems a mutant form of communication to the larger populous.
Craft Questions
11) How do you write a poem?
Clusters of impulses build as they arise out of reading, research and experiential sensory data—I get totally consumed by the process of finding out what the confluence of ideas is about. Once I begin to write I don’t censor myself—it is a bit trance-like, but deliberate somehow, also. Since I hardly ever write a disparate poem, the surge can sustain itself for 6 months, longer.
12) Is poetry a synthetic or organic process for you?
Both, and then some.
13) Where do you write? Is ambience important for you?
I move in and out of environments. Presently my home is a demolition site: dangling wires, exposed plumbing, no walls. This rawness is quite provocative and it signals me to interact.
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