Kendra DeColo's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, CALYX, Muzzle Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, Split This Rock: Poems of Witness and Provocation, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and residencies from the Millay Colony and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is the founding poetry editor of Nashville Review and a Book Review Editor at Muzzle Magazine. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Her poems "The Vocalist," "I Heart Pussy," and "Blue and Green Music" appear in Issue Forty-Two of The Collagist.
Here, Kendra DeColo speaks to interviewer Elizabeth Deanna Morris about public spaces, scrawling, and decadence.
1. Could you please discuss how you ended up writing “The Vocalist”?
“The Vocalist” is probably one of the hardest poems I have tried to write in terms of revision and content. It is more or less a narrative poem as it attempts to describe something that happened. The challenge was in understanding and coming to terms with the narrative’s angle: the speaker’s gaze. There is a lot of discomfort and ambiguity, and a lot of psychic drama in trying to occupy that space. The speaker therefore is evasive, slippery, and resistant to the very language she is trying to manipulate. However I did not intend for the poem to be self-conscious. I really just wanted to paint a portrait of this amazing singer, a trans inmate who I saw perform at a commencement ceremony at the women’s prison where I used to work. The experience of hearing them sing in this context brought up so many complicated feelings about gender, desire, witnessing. It is a poem I will keep writing.
2. In “I Heart Pussy,” you reimagine someone carving this phrase into a bench. Why, out of all bathroom scrawls and bench carvings, did this particular one stick out (and thus seem worth writing about?)
I have always been drawn to (and repelled by) public spaces. I love the way a green park bench can trigger feelings of domesticity and transience, privacy and exposure. I associate them with paper bagged 40s and other fun things you can try to get away with in public. But really the place is a platform and signifier for what we see/hear everyday: how the female body is praised and objectified in a single gesture. I wanted to explore a premise in which these declarations are uttered in earnest and manifested in the world. Wouldn’t you want to live in a world where pussy is king?
3. Could you talk about the three-line “waterfall” stanza that you use in “I Heart Pussy” and “Blue and Green Music”? What draws you to this form on the page?
For me the 'waterfall' stanza’ evokes a sense of decadence and disintegration, like a chandelier in a flooded room. I love how the form becomes physical, exacting from the reader a kind of intimacy and dance as the eye moves along the body of the poem. It has a feel of turning (tuning), shape-shifting, and obscuring itself in the way of a sequined dress. I also see the form as a nod to poets I love such as Lynda Hull, Hopkins— lyric poets who search for grace in the ruins.
4. What could you recommend for us to read?
Lately I have been enjoying the understated sensuality and eroticism of the novelist Yasunari Kawabata. I have also been working my way through the collected journals of Tennessee Williams. (I truly believe he is my best friend). I find his descriptions of anxiety and self-loathing as a writer extremely comforting. I am excited for A. Van Jordan’s new collection, Cineaste, especially for this poem: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22987.
5. What can we expect from you writing-wise?
I hope to keep peeling back layers of my identity, exposing my fears and desires, and going after that shifty huckster I call my shadow-self. More than likely, you can expect more pussy-positivity, more longing, and more struggle.