Speaker 1 00:01 <inaudible> <inaudible> <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:34 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 00:41 You're listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at <inaudible> dot org.
Speaker 4 00:50 Then I'm in Graham Leask tonight on, right on radio. David Fettig talks with Roy G. Guzman about the release of his poetry collection from gray Wolf press CATA ruckus raised in Miami, Florida. Roy is the recipient of 2019 grants from the national endowment of the arts. In 2017, they were named a Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sergeant Rosenberg, poetry fellow. They currently live in Minneapolis where they are pursuing a PhD in cultural studies at the university of Minnesota. I'm Josh Webber. The last part of our show, you'll be talking with Marlene FIPSE about her latest novel house of fossils Lowe a form of the author. Soul sees beauty and timelessness and gestures manner and thought, but finds herself caught in a world where human beings are held hostage to racial origins, racial origins, skin color, and culture, her collection, the company of heaven stories from Haiti when the 2010 Iowa short fiction award, her memoir unseen worlds was released by Cayman additions in 2018, all this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 1 02:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 02:14 Welcome, Roy, to write on radio. Thank you. So congratulations on the book, your debut collection, uh, let's kick things off with the reading and then, um,
Speaker 0 02:23 We'll talk about what, you've your work here? Sure. The title of the poem is when a person says, go back to your country.
Speaker 0 02:34 When a person says, go back to your country, that's exactly what you do though. You can't tell a feel aggressively run or trip on national borders. You'll have to make up for the declaration. So thunderous that even the floor can't hold still and whether or not you have a passport on you or you're wearing any choose at all to cross the thorniest distance of yourself were oceans, mean the same as portable water, or if the neighbors are having sex while you're dragging sacks of regrets, that might as well be trash bags, leaky and heavy. So they called the cops anyway is insignificant because by then you're not an adult, but a child aspiring to behave like a bread winner. And when you can't find this country to which you're asked to return though, back has always meant finding an on this close space to vanish in.
Speaker 0 03:56 You try to give a retort, not an argument, exactly what a glimpse of the other body that can easily escape through our tongues. And you usually wait until the speaker has remembered to go back to his family. Since his family can be remembered. And you curl into the night's sash cold out of habit to your dwelling though. There's nothing in there. Even if you have purchased all the furnishings, because a man who decides that a country is not an extension of one's heart can easily say that's not what he meant. And what he meant was more like we all just need to get along, man. I don't want any trouble men. I don't want any trouble. And that's what you're debating. When you remember that the child you carry on your back, hasn't been fed in days, months, cause heavy breathing a river overflowing as you multiply on certainty before you, which hides behind the safest central Aries, even inside most countries, can't recall their mothers just as shame can't be extracted with any medical devices or prayers. If innocence can be taken by force only ones, what is truly sees thereafter is absence only absence. Thank you, Roy. That was Roy G. Guzman reading from correct. My pronunciation. If you like, please.
Speaker 5 05:59 Very good. Thank you for that reading. And I usually don't do this, but let's start with, <inaudible> the title of your book, tell us what it means. And uh, and that's gonna segue right into, I would ask you to describe your background. It's just so key to this collection of poems is really a narrative story of, uh, your experience I think, uh, coming to America. So, uh, please tell us about the projects and your background.
Speaker 0 06:24 Of course. Um, so I was born in underdose and there was a guy by the capital. And so the title of the book is, uh, it's sort of his name after Hondurans. Um, back in the mid 18 hundreds, um, many American filibusters, actually, there were many of them, uh, rich American, um, men who wanted to, um, not just build industrial empires in central America, but they literally wanted to become emperors of the area. And so, um, William Walker was one of those men and, um, he tried doing that in, um, Mexico in Nicaragua and undo the us and eventually he was caught and he was, um, executed. And so the general who led these troops, um, his last name basically provided the inspiration for, um, this war cut that I chose, um, which, you know, it's a nickname for Honduras, but it also has all these connections to you was imperialism in the area.
Speaker 5 07:35 Very good. Thank you. Um, a little bit about your background than Roy, if you could, uh, your, uh, quite amazing career at this point in your writing life here, um, and how you got from there to here and from Miami to Minneapolis.
Speaker 0 07:51 Sure. I was, um, I'm hopefully us when I was about nine and a half. I moved to Miami, Florida and there, I grew up, um, lots of different neighborhoods, but specifically, um, poor racialized neighborhoods. Um, I eventually ended up, um, completing my bachelor's degree, um, at the university of Chicago and there, I was also exposed to all these sorts of racial, um, sort of tensions, um, that I had been exposed to it in some ways before, but it was a very different context. Um, I've also lived in New Hampshire, um, via my, my master's degree. And I've been in Minneapolis, um, since 2014, um, all of 2014.
Speaker 5 08:41 Great, great. Thank you for that. Um, I'd love to talk with you on the size of time about the university of Chicago. That's my employer, but, uh, uh, I miss it. I haven't been back in a long time, but I hope you had a good time there.
Speaker 0 08:54 Yes.
Speaker 5 08:56 Uh, so, uh, Roy, there are many striking elements of, of your poems, including, uh, uh, form language and even design of the pages. And I hope we have time to get to some of that, but I want to make sure we start with a series of poems on column, a series of poems. I believe it's 13 poems with the same title, queer, queer ODAC tilt. Um, so please, uh, tell the listeners about that. Uh, how did those poems develop with the same title and um, how did you conceive of them as 13 different ways? What
Speaker 0 09:30 It's a striking feature of the book? Absolutely. Um, thank you for that question. Um, it started off basically as just, um, a game between, um, my partner at the time. And I just sort of, um, thinking about dinosaurs and thinking about, um, I grew up just fascinated with dinosaurs. In fact, when I moved to the U S um, dinosaurs, or sort of like my inspiration as I was learning different names and different words in English. And so, um, this sort of neologism came out of this sort of war play, um, in a very sort of intimate Mo um, exchange between this partner and myself and, um, the queer Dr. Holmes embodied lots of different things. Um, on the one hand they are their own, they have their own narrative arc. They deal with issues related to, um, exploitation related to violence against trans and queer bodies.
Speaker 0 10:33 It also deals with the question of home and homelessness, um, experienced by, by queer and trans people. Um, at the same time there are muscles, even though they're carved, um, the poems are called queer ductal. Um, there are many of these creatures, all queer doctorals and, um, yeah, they played different roles in these poems. Um, some of them allude to not just all of these violences, but also wastes to think about the future and think about queer time and queer space differently. Um, what does prayer, what does, um, um, spirituality mean for bodies who have been historically, um, you know, deem exploitable Dean, um, replaceable and so all of them, um, I think that attending with these issues, sometimes I think of them depending on the mood, I think of them as like, sort of children's stories, even though they're pepper with a lot of adult themes, what does the child do in the face of something so threatening like this media or write this, this asteroid that is about to hit the planet? Um, they make fun of the asteroid. They, um, the asteroid plays different roles. One of them of course, is, um, thinking about heteropatriarchy, but it also plays roles like, um, someone inviting themselves into a narrative and into a space that was not made for them. Um, and so there's this constant threat and these sort of creatures are dancing. They're sharing stories, they're, um, voguing at the same time they're singing. Um, yeah.
Speaker 5 12:33 Nice. That's a great description. Uh, while you were describing those poems and series of poems, or you went to one of the quiero dactyl poems on page 52, and there's a particular line of the many lines I've underlined in the book, uh, toward the bottom, near the end. Crazy what intimacy will forge from colonized hunger. I love it and like poetry. I'm not always sure what it means, but I just love it. And it's, it's, there's a lot to think about there. Do you want to unpack that?
Speaker 0 13:03 Absolutely. Yeah, I think about not just in my creative work, but in my academic work, the, um, not just the residuals of, of thinking about colonization as this moment, um, that that occurred, but also thinking about colonization as an ongoing system of extraction of labor and lands. And I think about often, um, if we're living in a society that is constantly being mediated by colonization by, by settler colonialism, what forms of intimacies are produced by that state and also what intimacies, um, are produced counter to that, um, to the state. And so when I, when one of the things I was thinking about with those lines is, um, sometimes intimacy becomes a Praxis for liberation, right. Um, thinking about queerness and transness and, um, you know, intimacy as just one of the ultimate gestures of liberation. Um, so this is what happens at that point. Like what kinds of intimacies are forge when one speaks from the space of the colonized, right. Uh, the space of the marginalized, um, and in thinking about even that question, the poem continues with this idea of a map for ever extinguishing taking more than a blitz glitch to cover the stratosphere, right. That perhaps in looking at intimacy, one starts creating a new cartography, right. A possibility for not just the body, but also, you know, for what community looks like for, um, allyship, what that looks like as well.
Speaker 5 15:09 We're speaking with Roy G. Guzman. The other is debut collection of poems. Contractuals are from Greenville press. Uh, so many influences on your work, Roy and on your life show up in here. Um, obviously your heritage, um, even some, uh, uh, cultural pop cultural references, uh, or if there's spelling trouble, if I have that right to have funny yet, not always funny at the same time. Um, I know Arthur from my kids and I'm watching it. So I got the references, uh, but, but also the influence of church, the Catholic church, I presume, uh, you have a series of poems there, which are modeled after a Catholic mass, I believe, um, is particularly struck by that. I was wondering if you want to read one of those like traps per session, and then maybe we can talk about, um, or the liturgy of the Eucharist. I liked that one too. Well, you choose, how about that? You choose one of those representative poems from this, uh, again, a series of poems, uh, based on the form and structure of the Catholic mass.
Speaker 0 16:15 Absolutely. There's a lot of questions about, um, religiosity. And where does, um, in thinking about queerness and, and thinking about the closet, right? How does one, um, navigates basis that are very much rooted and not just heteropatriarchy, but they're rooted in certain rituals, um, and practices. So this particular poem is absolutely model after, um, Catholicism and the particular mass, but there's also, um, other poems that contend with the Lutheran faith. Um, I grew up Lutheran as well, um, evangelical practices, um, as well. So the, the, the, the section that I'm going to read is called the liturgy of the Eucharist. Um, and yeah, and we can talk about that. Great. Thank you. Thank you. If I whisper one of their names, the bison teen ghost on the window might burst a mother Iran's her son's white shirt, the creases interminable campuses, drunk on direction, sheep with slaughter trapped in their throats.
Speaker 0 17:45 He splashes dirty water on death beds to be inconsistent confessional battleground with burning Orthodox doors to nominate the muted combat Oh, sympathetic trader. We doom song on Sunday, Barry blame under our mattresses on Wednesday, we keep our savings and the hush money stitch toward cushion covers no space to bury his torment. Who am I, what a glimpse into avoidance empty outline of warship, congregation of posts per turbans. I find myself pronouncing the scores of names in the Torrance. Thank you. And I love hearing poetry read live, and it's just a reminder that that's exactly what it was meant for a well done. And thank you. So let's talk about this series of poems and what you're trying to convey for, for listeners. Uh, there's an entire pages in this little series that are dedicated to silence, and there are noted as silence and that's, that's all that's on that page.
Speaker 0 19:08 Um, so, uh, tell us what you were constructing here. Yeah, one of the things, um, I was thinking about with this poem, um, was definitely the systemic violence against children, um, propagated by the Catholic church, uh, Catholic priests specifically in Latin America. So in some, in one of these sections, for instance, it brings up some of the, um, the, the places in Latin America. So, um, us being one of them, but also, um, uh, Pittsburgh where, um, a priest is found guilty of committing sexual crimes against minors. Um, and in thinking about the form of the mass, I was thinking about like, instead of the mask being a space that, um, praises something like tradition, that price is something that is Holy. Um, what if we were to turn this form and actually, um, praise the children who have been silenced by these crimes. Um, and so this, you know, some of these sections go into, um, um, sometimes sometimes explicit moments of, of, of sexual violence. Um, but in this particular one that I was reading, I was thinking about, um, the ways in which silence is operating, um, things want to speak, they want to shout, um, there's mother that is, um, ironing, this shirts, and somehow the creases, um, even have their own language. Um, and, you know, th th this phrase compass is strong combine direction, right. That, um, what happens when, um, a child also is enabled to have the language to speak about these kinds of, you know, injustices, right.
Speaker 5 21:17 Well, they're very powerful. It's a powerful, a series of poems, uh, right. I like to talk to poets about form, and this is a book that is rich with form. Um, sometimes we encounter a, a big block of text on a page, uh, maybe a series of paragraph like texts. Other times formal stands out like poems, and even a poem written as if it were a menu, which I just loved, uh, in terms of structure. So form for you is obviously very important. Um, I'm going to ask you a silly question. What comes first, the form or the poem when you, when you get the words, when you get the idea, does the form come to mind or does that get constructed along the way?
Speaker 0 21:59 Yeah, I think that my tendency, um, to answer that question is to save that the form comes out of the content and I wholeheartedly, um, not wholeheartedly, but I think that for the most part, I believe in, in that, um, and that in that idea, because, um, it is when I'm revising the poem, or sometimes I think that the content is gravitating towards certain forms. Um, but then sometimes I see a form like the menu and think, Oh gosh, this form is actually, um, triggering certain memories in me. And I want the readers to be aware of what, you know, every day items can do for you in terms of just, you know, not just triggering trauma, but triggering, you know, tender moments, um, and et cetera, et cetera. So the, the one poem that you reference brings up B um, this Chinese takeout menu.
Speaker 0 23:04 And, um, and that was a very, um, not just intentional move on my part, but when I thought about that space and writing about the people in that restaurant, I was thinking about like, so what are the objects that I have at my disposal, but I could also, um, find even online. And that was one of those items I could find online and, you know, absolutely, you know, it, it triggered a lot of different things. And so I wanted the reader to kind of contend with that, um, the form with the content, but yeah, I think it really depends on the phone, but for the most part, I believe that the form comes out of the content.
Speaker 5 23:48 Well, visually it's appealing to a reader to see, uh, it actually sort of shapes the mood of the reading of the poem, frankly. Um,
Speaker 0 23:57 So yup. And you were even saying that, you know, there's like certain couplets, right. Um, and those decisions don't, don't come out until later on in the poem when I'm revising and thinking, I had a, you know, a cluster of, of texts on the page, but it's asking to be read a certain way and it's asking for certain causes and certain breathers, and then I'm thinking, Oh, the coupler can do that. Or the Theresa can do this. Or, you know, just having single lines with space in between can do that. Or, you know, spreading the textbook over the page can also do that. So there's a lot of ways that I think form, um, enables me to think about how is my content also speaking beyond just, you know, language.
Speaker 5 24:51 Right, right. That's right. And, and the book, as I mentioned earlier, referenced, uh, it's designed beautifully, uh, broken up on in sections. Uh, it it's, it's, it's a tree to look at also, where do your poems come from Roy? Uh, one of these guys who sits down in the morning and knocks out a poem before, you know, 10 o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 0 25:10 Oh yeah. I think my poems primarily come from a space of, um, I mean, that's such a, that's such a powerful question. Um, they come from a place of indecision, I would say, um, they come from a place of, um, nebulousness confusion. Um, they often come from this, this, you know, something is disturbing. Something is underlying this, but I don't know what it is. And so I have to sit down to get some language on the page to help me reflect them. What is it that is, is, is bothering me or what is it that is moving me. So that's where I would say, um, poems come from, from this space of the liminal, I would say. Great, great.
Speaker 5 26:05 I don't know if you saw that, but we just got the two minute warning from our friendly producer, Josh back in the studio, it's hard to believe. It seems like we just got going. Um, we don't have time to read another poem. I don't think that amount of time. Uh, so let's talk about what you're working on and what might be coming up. And, uh, and then if we have time, I'm gonna ask you about another series of poems called self portrait, according to George W. Bush, a lot of richness in this collection. And before I turn it over to you again, I'm gonna remind our listeners that we're talking to the Roy G. Guzman and the author of the debut collection of poems called <inaudible>. So what's coming up away. What do you have on the horizon?
Speaker 0 26:43 Yeah, this summer, I'm thinking about, um, you know, having a book come out during the pandemic and then, you know, having this, this, this crisis global crisis of, of, you know, violence against black bodies, black people, um, it's something that has reconfigure, even though the ratio of where this is going, but in terms of thinking about summer plans, um, I have some academic articles I'm working on. Um, the next thing in terms of creative work, I, um, you know, like in this book, tackles immigration and the injustices around, you know, the immigration system, the next one is going to tackle, you know, the, the, the healthcare industry. So, um, back collection looks at, um, I think more hybrid than this, than this. Um, think that, that I chose, it looks at, um, different poems that contend with illness, disability, um, medical reports, um, and some breeders hopefully might be, um, find it interesting to read, um, poems written from the perspective of Ronald McDonald, um, as well. So, um, made up commercials as well. So that's kind of what the horizon is looking like.
Speaker 5 28:05 Well, you make no small plans. I mean, you're not just going to sit and write poems about trees and butterflies and birds, and there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Well, that sounds fascinating. And we really look forward to it. Uh, I'm sure we're pushing the end here, um, until Josh comes on and waves us away. Um, do you want to describe as briefly as you can, this series of poems, self portrait, according to George W. Bush, cause that particular poem,
Speaker 0 28:32 Um, came out of this, um, as I said, you know, writing from a place of, um, this disturbance and I would say that, um, I was appalled when, um, George w bushes paintings, um, um, were released on the internet and people were just sharing them. And, um, you have George W. Bush painting his toes in the bathtub. And, um, all these moments that felt very Placid and very gentle. I was just appalled because I'm thinking like how many lives have been robbed, you know, um, in order to produce something like this. So the, the, the Le the language of the poem contends with that.
Speaker 5 29:15 Well, thank you, Roy. Our gentle listeners are going to have to go out and get the book and read it for themselves. Thank you. Once again, Roy G. Guzman author of <inaudible> have a great evening in the rest of your year, summer. Thank you. Bye bye.
Speaker 2 29:30 <inaudible>
Speaker 6 29:40 Right. Radio calendar of literary events. Most of us now are being held virtually, and we've got a few of those to announce. We're going to give out the phone number of the stores. So get a writing instrument and you'll be able to call the stores and find out the exact address. Uh, Thursday, June 4th, from seven to 8:30 PM. The East side freedom library presents grocery activism, virtual watch you that with Craig upright, and you can call (651) 207-4926 for more info on Friday from six 30 to 7:30 PM. Next chapter book sellers presents Eric through Vini, the devious war and our Eric Thomas here for it in conversation. Um, you could call six five one two two five eight nine eight time. Anytime between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM in the loft literary center open book is going to be presenting a 2019 to 2020 loft mentor series reading. That's going to be digital as well with mentors, Denise Cappo, krusei, and Juanita Petrus and fellows Nicol, Nicola Cole, Rachel Castro, Jennifer Hildebrand, and Tyra McDaniel. To get more information about that called (612) 215-2575. This has been your short calendar of literary events. There is a
[email protected], which will have up to date information about any literary events.
Speaker 1 31:13 <inaudible>
Speaker 6 31:24 Go ahead and read Marilynne.
Speaker 7 31:29 I had one thought of my good fortune at finding myself in a house full of fossils. I relished their discovery as a similarly thrilling opportunity as when we get a sighting of oils, GARC, sleek, or inspiring emerging boldly in foresight, like an idea suddenly might be for plunging back into the Jeep, leaving us with a persistent longing for what they had helped us briefly glimpse my intellectual distance had ebbed. I no longer saw a tectonic plate simply as matter, forced away by more than heat that wants to shape the earth and continue to do so. Tectonic plates, we're now living entities while human beings themselves seemed to be tectonic plates each confronted with and manipulated in their core by forces in comprehensible, uncontrollable, and viciously windsical. I saw the tragedy of these tectonic plates and how they are sloping almost months and shifting away they retrievable the left part of themselves behind human life itself seemed to voyage on the tectonic plate. We are slowly and imperceptibly drifting away. Losing sight of our original shores. Childhood is a hazy landscape where our roots and croach and way like petrified eggs that never hatch as we dreamed they would. While I stood in the house surrounded by inanimate fossils, I fell to myself instead in the company of animal formals, resulting from the continuous fragmentation of their being through millennia. I, so fellow human beings in them, dark prayed, ms. Shaping brittle divided, randomly shelved to accent. The small house, our universe makes
Speaker 4 33:51 That is absolutely astoundingly. Brilliant. You've been listening there to the house of four fossils by Marylene FIPSE. Um, she is a Haitian Haitian author and painter, a member of the Academy of American poets and a recipient of the NAACP award of excellence for outstanding, uh, commitment in advancing the culture and causes for communities of color. Her collection. The company of heaven stories from Haiti won the 2010 Iowa short fiction award. Her poetry won the 1993 Grolier prize and her collection, crossroads and unholy water won the 2000 crab orchard poetry prize. Her memoir unseen worlds, which she talked to us about. Uh, last year on Russian radio was released in 2018 by Calumet additions. A website is www.marylenefipse.com. Welcome back to write on radio merrily and FIPSE. That's the, what you read was just mesmerizing. Absolutely gorgeous. Um, I want to talk a little bit about tectonic plates and maybe remind our listeners a little bit what they are, but first, tell us a little bit about what house of fossils is actually all about.
Speaker 7 35:23 Well, it is hard as for an author to describe their book.
Speaker 4 35:29 Huh?
Speaker 7 35:31 I was one writer to the senior of the work of art of it all in life force from the start. And writing for me is often a single actor face in response to a nerve that reveals it September. I did go. Yeah. And then, um, I was had the guy, I had the good fortune of having, uh, 14 endorsements of my book. And people have seen it as a magnificent piece of exile literature or immigrant literature. Um, it has been seen as very political and at the same time, it was very personal and, uh, drawing from history to, um, bring people back to the present and seeing how history unfortunately repeats itself and, uh, and affects who we are continuously. Um, I'm originally from Haiti and Haiti is never too far from, uh, from my work, whether it's in painting or in writing. And the book also takes us a little takes us out of Haiti at the beginning and back to Haiti at the end, the story is told in six chapters. And, um, a friend recently was reading the book. She describes it, thought I was a travel story because you find that we keep moving from one place to another it's, uh, we do the book starts, we are in Nova Scotia. We go to Cambridge, Massachusetts, or we go to Alaska to Florida. Um, in some ways we go to, to Abu Ghraib to Cuba and Cuba and, uh, and back to Haiti and the sixth chapter at the end.
Speaker 4 37:28 Well, it's interesting all the different moves, the moves that the text makes. Um, it, it does fit in with the theme of, of tectonics, you know, uh, the, the character of EO. Um, we'll talk about her in a moment. Um, there is obviously some somewhat based on yoga. We'll talk about a second too, but she is a plate tectonic plate moving around the world. Isn't she she's she's the same.
Speaker 7 38:00 Yes. I hadn't thought it that way, but I'm discovering as I go from the reactions of other people and what my book is really about.
Speaker 4 38:12 Yeah. I think that's wonderful that you can, you can say that then that creates a very flexible situation for you as, as an artist. Um, so just let's remind our listeners what a tectonic plate is. Do you want to do that?
Speaker 7 38:32 Oh, well, the I've a little lost touch with the tech. Tell me,
Speaker 4 38:38 Oh, okay. I'll take out. The surface of our planet is made up the surface of our planet. The crust of our plan is made up of these moving plates. Obviously they move very slowly and, um, they started out as one big plate called gone Wonderland, which is what the scientists call it. And we've been able to map the movements of those plates, uh, geologically, and, you know, the notion that we started out in one place and then fragment, which is what he were writing about is very accurate.
Speaker 7 39:14 The interesting thing about Nova Scotia, where my, uh, my all starts is doctor, the three main tectonic plates were there. And you find in, uh, in Nova Scotia, fossils and well, so found the first footprint of her dinosaur that was also found in, in Africa, you find traces of vegetation and things. And, uh, it, it, it's, it's a very interesting area in terms of fossils. And, uh, anyway, I was, I was there on a journey or a brief vacation. I took my car and, and left, uh, at the time I was living in Cambridge and, uh, and spent her art a few days there. And, uh, anyway, it was a journey of discovery for me in the sense that it was the first chapter of the book.
Speaker 4 40:16 They're all very exotic locations. He make them exotic by the way that you write about them. And they, I think Nova Scotia is a genuinely incredible place. And what's so interesting to me is how you contrast that with Haiti. I mean, you could think of no two islands. I mean, I was coast is more or less an Island, I guess it's depends on how you look at it, but, uh, yeah, you could, you really couldn't see two places more different
Speaker 7 40:45 With ocean.
Speaker 4 40:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. But there's no two places that could be so different. I don't think. And, um, you know, obviously the locus is always back to your home Island of Haiti and much of the book is, is about what we're dealing with right now, here in Minneapolis and Minnesota. Um, especially in Minneapolis, the racial tensions, racial issues and racial notions that are so deeply webbed into the culture. And you write about that in the very muscle stringent way than anything that I'm hearing, even at the moment with everybody going berserk. Yeah. Do you want to address some of that
Speaker 7 41:32 For me? And seeing,
Speaker 4 41:35 I mean, as I was, we have little trouble all over the world, and then particularly right now, we focused on what's going on in America. Um, there's trouble going on in, in Haiti as well. And they told her racial and social tensions and things are coming up to, to, to the door. Um, I was in Haiti in February two for the death of my mother. And, uh, and there were riots and there was a civil war. The police was shooting at that day army. And every day on my way to the hospital, there, there were riots, there were kidnappings and everything. And, uh, and I, and I came back just in time for the lockdown over the pandemic. And, and what I'm seeing is that the trouble in Haiti and the trouble here is this racism, idiots, all the leftovers of colonialism. We've never really solved the wounds of that part of, uh, of the world history. And, um, that's true. The, how, the, how are you feeling about how are you feeling about the COVID-19 situation as a person that's coming out of Haiti where, you know, you have to wash your hands all the time. You've got to be very careful what you do there. Uh, how's that striking you?
Speaker 7 43:02 Well, um, yes, I mean, this, this wall is something that we can't see is, is, is unnerving. Um, but in terms of, of, of a situation, I grew up under the dictatorship of the two devalues in Haiti, and there was curfew every night murders every night, and the soccer's massacres, other women torture in prison, people disappearing, sling into exile and, and the, the political history of age alone independents in, in 1804, uh, just a series of bloody list of military occupation, murderous, Rita. I mean, it goes on and on. Um, so depend dynamic. Uh, I was a world effort also now to, to, to be controlled, feels like something every time do the, the whole world is joining hands. And, and, and, and it should, uh, you know, I bet I find out I was a Christian for me. They, they issue love thy neighbor as yourself is something that has been a challenge in my life.
Speaker 7 44:28 And I tried to, to approach it, uh, and that notion as far as much as possible. But I, I find that racial and religious hatred that acted like a, like a pandemic throughout the history of mankind, how badly does something have to be before the entire world joined hands to fight it? I mean, you know, Italians, French and new Yorkers are dying by the thousands and we were upset and we should be, but yet, if you really think of the, the Haiti 2010 cholera epidemic, right after the critical earthquake killed thousands of people, but the Calera epidemic killed more than 820,000 people. That is a huge percentage of a population in a small Island. How concerned was the world and greed for territory and power, men's racial or religious hatred of men, I've been a virus then COVID-19, if you want, I mean, the Cambodian genocide in the late 1970s killed nearly 2 million people DDD in Malaysian, mass killing in 1965 and 60 destroyed nearly 1 million people don't want it in genocide in 1994 and a mass slaughter of Tutsis eradicated, nearly 1 million lives in, in just three and a half months. And then we have the Armenian genocide in Turkey in the early nineties, 19 hundreds. And then we have the death of a million and a half people. And then let's, you know, not to forget the Romanian genocide, the unfiled genocide of the Turks, they are Syrian genocide, the Bosnian genocide goes on and on how close do neighbors have to be, to count as neighbors. And then we decide to do join forces.
Speaker 4 46:29 Yeah. And then of course the ultimate, the ultimate genocide is, is the Hitler Hitler's war on, on the Jews and the gypsies and all those things. But yeah, so it's, it's quite frightening to see where it could go. And, um, you know, I think that's what everybody's worried about. And especially after the president's peculiar, uh, statements yesterday. Um, so just to get back to the book a little bit as we must, um, you, your book came out in March. Uh, several of the authors that we've had on the show recently have had their books either canceled or delayed, uh, yours came out in March and is a beautiful book with a beautiful cover on it. And, you know, I certainly, um, uh, Congress conjure our listeners to go online and take a look at house of fossils by Marylene and see some of your artwork, which was used for the cover. Uh, it is an absolutely beautiful picture of a house with the tree in front of it, which you painted. And, um, we were persuaded to give up for the, for the cover of this book. So one of the most gorgeous, um, book covers I've ever seen. Yeah. It's just fantastic. Tell us a little bit about how your art as a painter, um, works with your writing, with your poetry and it pros writing in memoir writing fiction writing.
Speaker 7 48:16 Well, it's a question that I've been, I've been asked before, and I find it difficult to answer, um, from my perspective, they seem to be different from one from the other. Um, and one is not the illustration of, of the other. Um,
Speaker 1 48:40 Yeah,
Speaker 7 48:43 I mean, for many years I write and I paid, there was a time I was more of a poet and then a fiction writer then. And, um, yeah, that was easy, easier than to do both because poetry, things like short bursts of inspiration are usually in the middle of the night nights of insomnia. And I would paint during the day. And as I, as I grew into more of a fiction writer and little tech school, then, um, it was different. They would, they would take more energy.
Speaker 4 49:20 So has the, uh, has the pros, the intense pros writing and you're on your pros is very poetic, but it's, it's quite a long book, you know? So it's, it's definitely a long breadth that you're, you're holding here as you're writing this. And it does that sort of dampened down, no desire to paint.
Speaker 7 49:42 Well, it takes a lot of the energy.
Speaker 4 49:44 It's the same energy, is it, is it the same sort of energy, similar energy in some way?
Speaker 7 49:55 Well, everything that we do requires energy and, um, and everything I am and everything I've done in my life and in whatever I do. So they, they post both types of work. I inform it by time, my personality, my experiences, and, and I, and the choices I make in doing either one, um, painting. Well, I could do small paintings sometimes in, in one day alone, you know, bigger paintings would take more planning and more time, uh, poems used, you know, would take 15 minutes to write the first thing. And then, you know, as the days go by, you, you craft it, you edit it, you work at it and you, you toy with it. And then when you have enough poems, you, you have a collection, but when, when we're doing a novel or memoir, I did a couple of years ago that was released. Um, it's, it's, it's a body that stays with you all the time and it's in my subconscious all the time. Um, and, and it takes away the, the energy.
Speaker 4 51:12 Yeah, good answer.
Speaker 7 51:14 Manage to keep up photos. But I used to do very large canvases and then produced in Ireland. There was a big gallery director used to call me miss energy.
Speaker 4 51:31 Well, miss energy. Let's, uh, let's get another little reading from you. I just, at that point, we usually go to, we've got eight minutes or so left. And, um, let's have you do that, that other reading that you told me about that's I think you said it was about three minutes,
Speaker 7 51:49 Uh, the daily of a rat running free, high up on a power line, tasting the sun, feeling alive under the dark hide rusted eyes, blowing from the thought of ripe mangoes into which it'll sink its teeth, the that's gloating inside thinking in self clever for having gone up the electric post circumventing, the wides literary shield of corrugated iron that has been nailed at the bottom of the mango tree and around all the fruit trees of the land that tree near the house is the creature's favorite from the power line over which he speeds the ride, finally hops onto the branch of the tree most. And with fruit, this is picking season season without hesitation. The rodent grabs for the first reachable fruit, the riper, the better, uh, what jar is to be hot inside the house, rat traps and pink rat poison. We're waiting branches of the mango tree already Rose as high as the second floor balcony near my parents' bedroom that had avoided all traps or pink poison were eventually found a drought chamber pots that were placed by the bedside at a comfortable stretch for the drug, the sleeper who lived in a big old house with many bedrooms and whose bathroom was at the end of a long dark hallway.
Speaker 7 53:27 It's hard to decide, which was the better test for the rat. First choice was a spine broken through it's a little by a metal bar. That's not shut on the creature. Second choice would have been to succumb to the temptation of pink rat poison sprinkled with care in selected areas as a third option. Drowning in high levels of patriarchal peers could hardly have been a better death. It's hard to imagine what got the rat to jump or crawl in to begin with. It's nevertheless, not hard to imagine the rodent almost submerged drenched in that smelly yellow pool of piss that legs pushing and repeated jerky, leaping attempts to get some spring upward fraud, Claus reaching up as well, but time and again, screeching down the vertical. Why denials in a strokes of the piss spot until fatigue or perhaps a backward fall into the pool, got the better of the animal who stopped struggling finally accepting this end of it. Tropical rats, slight. I come, I come from generations of colonial arriving.
Speaker 4 55:00 What a lovely piece of writing poor old rat. Yeah. It's interesting that the book is characterized as, um, autobiographical fiction in the, in the same sort of genre, if you will, is James Joyce's sports asses artists as a young man, of course, completely different thematically and, and, um, rhythmically completely different, but, but still, uh, the book is very much based on your own experiences and, uh, fictionalized obviously, uh, in, in lots of ways. Um, why did you call the character? He is, I would say EO, is that correct? Or Americans for recycle IO, then it's the, who is she in Greek mythology?
Speaker 7 55:52 Well, you asked me such precise questions and I'm embarrassed to forgetting this. The thing is once I write a book and once I I've finished with paintings, that's something in my brain that, that moves into something else. But I remember that the Navy always connected to Europa. I have a sister and they are, um, what's the word there revolves around a planet, which is what are they called moons? Yes, the moons that are revolving around her greater planet and with the planet in that story, that chapter stands for their father and the story reveals of how they sort of grow up revolving around that central patriarchal figure, who is so strong and so overwhelming and a real struggle to, to, to free themselves from an in, in different ways. And, uh,
Speaker 4 57:11 It's fantastic inward. And we shouldn't forget the mother in the story too, is, is also something that they're constantly circulating around in various ways. Yeah. EO and her sister and, uh,
Speaker 7 57:27 Yeah, several mothers, they are, they're the matriarchs I signed. You asked me what the book is about. I find that the book is more and more about betrayal and the betrayals, the kissing cousin abuse. And, uh, of course, you know, it's been described as very polite, poetic Kirkus reviews called it, having orienting a lyricism. And there is all that. And perhaps in the first piece that I read you, you must see that, but the book is also political and it, uh, and it's a denouncing of other abuse, uh, betrayal by countries of, of their people. Uh, in this case, you know, Haiti, cultural betrayal, and then economic betrayal people, people not abandoned that there is also the betrayal and abuse in families as well. Uh, figures who do take advantage of, of the, of the respect and the reverence that the families have.
Speaker 4 58:38 Yeah. We're running up to the end of the show now Marylene and you've given us a wonderful view of what this book is about. Our hope our listeners will take it seriously and have a look online and look at this beautiful cover. And thanks so much for writing this book. That's a, it's very, very important book and I wish you lots of luck with it. Thanks for being on write and radio once again.
Speaker 7 59:05 Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 4 59:09 Thanks. Marlene, me and grime, Lisa speaking with Marlene FIPSE about her new release house of fossils.
