Christopher Parks is a psychologist and occasional poet who works with people experiencing addiction, mental illness, and homelessness in Detroit, MI. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Touchstone, Collagist, Red Cedar Review, Fanzine, and others. His writing often catalogues the trail from fundamental Christian to faithful heretic. Occasionally he backslides.
His poem, "I Picture Him In a Petri Dish," appeared in Issue Fifty-Eight of The Collagist.
Here, he speaks with interviewer Darby K. Price about spirituality, dogma, and the need for infection.
Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of your poem, “I Picture Him in a Petri Dish”?
The poem started in a gathering of writers, musicians, and visual artists who get together and do stream of conscience work. The group is called the Synesthetic Muse. Someone wrote a piece about germs and being infected by something. I played with the idea of how we are infected by ideas. The Petri dish image came from the idea of a culture of bacteria.
The petri dish is a fascinating image for this poem, especially because we have the “he” who behaves like bacteria within the dish. In the final stanza, however, the speaker’s body takes on the role of container: “I know him moving beneath/me, inside me.” Can you talk about this shift from the outer object to the inner, visceral self?
My life has been dominated by religious and spiritual ideas. I was raised in a strict fundamentalist household where we went to church at least 3 days a week. My mother read Pilgrim’s Progress to me when I was 7 and acted out the parts. The concept of Christ infects me. Though I have moved far away from the religiosity of my younger life those ideas of spirituality being both inside and out, both personal and universal permeate my work.
I am struck by both the poem’s compactness and its carefully wrought surprises: the word “crucified,” for instance, at the end of the second stanza. All poems use language purposefully, of course, but when you work in a small space, how do you balance the pleasures of language against any of the poem’s needs for clarity and communication? Or are the two things ultimately the same?
A need for clarity is the myth of dogma. Language is a means to transmit ideas. In the transmission we shouldn’t concern ourselves with controlling the concept on the other end. When we try to compact such concepts within a small boundary (the Petri dish) we are in essence killing the idea. The true idea of Christ or Buddha or any other figure invades us, multiplies, and grows in ways we can never understand. The mystic movements in any religion refuse any demands of clarity. They understand the need for infection.
What are you reading right now—and/or what have you just finished reading?
I just finished reading Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions by Priscilla Hayner. It is odd that you decided to approach me for an interview at this time. Her work shows the unsatisfying attempts made by Truth and Reconciliation Committees in the aftermath of brutality.
What writing projects are you currently working on?
I am currently working on a play. It starts with an accidental shooting in a deer blind and progresses from there. Essentially it is about the ways in which men fail women.
The transition from poetry to drama is difficult. I have attempted it before. This idea seems to be carrying me along to some destination.