E.C. Belli’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in VERSE, AGNI, Colorado Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Caketrain, DIAGRAM, Forklift, and FIELD, among others. Her translation of I, Little Asylum, a short novel by Emmanuelle Guattari, was published by Semiotext(e) as part of an exhibit for the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and a selected volume of her translations of French poet Pierre Peuchmaurd, The Nothing Bird, was released by Oberlin College Press (2013).
Her story, "Breathing," appeared in Issue of The Collagist.
Here she speaks with interviewer Dana Diehl about homonyms, transitioning between poetry and prose, and finding new paths.
Please describe where this story began for you.
It began as failed poetry. (I only moonlight as a fiction writer.) I was reflecting on a few isolated things that ended up pivoting in tension: lifelong learning, domesticity, mothers. The usual things. I had a few lonely lines, but nothing with the tensile strength for the type of short poem I’ve been interested in writing lately; they did have the elasticity required for a short story though. One line led me to the next, and the story ended up building itself like that. I’ve started many, but I’ve only ever finished four or five stories.
This story has a pivot point. I feel it when the older woman in the girl’s memory begins to speak, and suddenly I’m transported. Do you have any advice for short fiction writers trying to achieve a similar shift or movement in such a small space?
Process is a hard thing to discuss because for me it’s adaptive; it morphs to fit whatever the poem or piece requires. I have to uncover a new path each time. In this case, I reached a point in the conversation that the class is having and thought, This is boring! I need a lift off. Something or someone to stand in contrast to whatever is going on. The old woman came—actually, her hair came: a spread of phosphorus—and I immediately knew her.
I’m interested in the many ways writers choose to depict dialogue. Could you explain why you chose to omit traditional quotation marks and paragraph breaks for your characters’ dialogue?
The overall form of this story was difficult to settle on because it’s actually quite ugly and stifling. I’ve always loved a nice airy poem: the kind with the windows open and the laundry flapping in the wind. The topic of the story, however—“breathing,” and all of its discontents—necessitated a breathless environment in order to maximize impact. I wanted the end to come as a great release. Which is why even the dialogue got swallowed by that hideous magma of text. What an eyesore. I almost couldn’t do it. I’m sure it will discourage some readers initially, but I think the aesthetic integrity of the piece benefits overall. I hope.
You also work as a translator. How does a knowledge of more than one language affect the first stages of your writing process, when you’re first putting ideas to paper?
I was thinking about connections between words the other day. For instance, take the homonyms “LARME/L’ARME” in French (“TEAR/WEAPON” in English). Then take “TEAR/TEAR” in English. In both French and English, the homonym for a tear can be something with violence at its core. I think, as a translator, being forced to reflect deeply on the various dimensions of meaning of a single word, or of a small group of words, you come upon these little gateways that are so generative. Stories and poems can arise from them.
What projects are you working on now?
I’ve just finished revising my poetry manuscript. Went at it with a scythe, really. I’m also working on the translation of a book by the Franco-Swiss poet Brigitte Gyr and a science-fiction book from the early ’60s by a French writer. I have a few little stories in the works, but I’m very slow.