Breaking the Silence

KARAN

Rebecca, this is a stunning set of poems — cinematic, intimate, jagged with memory. These poems feel like they’re stitched from old film reels and old family albums. They excavate history and domesticity with sharpness and grace, and they don’t settle for metaphor when rupture is possible. I want to start with “Clean sweep” — a poem about divorce, infestation, maternal control, and betrayal that somehow moves like a thriller. With rubber gloves I am / quietly murderous, praying for a citrus victory, committed / to a clean slate.” How do poems begin for you? With an image? A phrase? A character?

REBECCA

Thank you Karan, I’m so glad these poems resonated for you. It’s interesting that you say they evoke old film reels and family albums, as that’s two of the main inspirations for me when I write — cinema and photography. I often think of my poems as mini-movies, because narrative and scene are so important to me. In a parallel universe I would’ve fancied myself a film maker! And domestic space is key in my work, as is evident from “Clean Sweep.” This poem began as a meditation on a relationship ending and grew into something more ominous, murderous even. I wanted to capture what it feels like to move from pain and sadness to anger and retribution, as the speaker grapples with loss and betrayal. My poems often start with a phrase or quote that I jot down and return to. In the case of “Clean Sweep,” I’d been rereading the novels of Elena Ferrante, a writer I adore, especially as she details the specificity of domestic scenes — confinement, repetition, boredom and abandonment. The ants were there from the outset, holding the poem together. I often craft the last line first, or have a line that I return to throughout the process of writing and editing, and in this case it was the bolted door. A ferocious slam. Something irrevocable  and final.

KARAN

Do you have a writing routine, Rebecca? What does your writing process actually look like — structurally, emotionally, spatially? And when did you come to poetry — why?

REBECCA

I write wherever and whenever I can — in moments of solitude snatched before and after the work day, or when I have the space and time away from my family to lose myself in thought (residencies are key for that!) My favorite time to start something new is first thing in the morning, when my apartment is quiet, and I’m free to daydream with my coffee in hand. My writing process also involves a lot of time spent doing things other than writing that feed my imagination, like running, which I also do daily.

I was at a reading that Sharon Olds gave a few years back, and when she was asked about her writing routine she talked about putting on a record and dancing. I very much relate to that — moving my body is crucial, and running is often when I have my best ideas.

I have been writing poetry since I was a teenager in London, obsessing over Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, but I didn’t start publishing until quite recently. Poetry has always made sense to me, just like song lyrics and movies do. It’s the literary form that feels most natural to me, it always has. In the intervening years, I studied English Literature, Creative Writing and Performance Studies, and amassed a large number of poems which I kept in a drawer for years, unsure of their quality and worth. It wasn’t until the pandemic five years ago that I decided to dig out the drafts and lean in hard to editing and submitting my work, and that wouldn’t have happened without some wonderful poetry teachers who pushed me to share my poems with the world. And since then it’s been full steam ahead. I feel unstoppable, which is a powerful thing to feel, no matter what stage in life it happens at.

KARAN

In “Threads”, you write: “After school / we lie down dead in the street / with crowds demanding peace.” That line carries such psychic weight — it holds together girlhood, political protest, nuclear dread, family drama. Many of your poems feel haunted by Cold War residue, BBC newscasts, Reagan-era Americana, Thatcher’s shadow. What role does history play in your writing? Is it backdrop or active antagonist?

REBECCA

I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s, in a family that was very politically active. The Cold War, the Miners’ Strike and apartheid South Africa were topics of conversation at school and at home. Politics and music informed everything. It still does, I suppose. History is a key element in my poetry, not simply a backdrop, but part of the fabric of the work itself. I return to this time period again and again, as all writers do, in order to make sense of the past. In “Threads,” named for the terrifying 1984 film which explores the consequences of nuclear war, I wanted to capture and contrast the fear the speaker has of nuclear annihilation — “doorstep milk bottles melting/in the white heat of impact,” with the confusion and chaos of a splintering family. By transporting the reader to 1984, with a few small clues, I hope that history becomes a character in the poem; an omnipresent and active antagonist, as you say, holding both the speaker and the reader in its sway.

KARAN

“Mudlarking” is such a knockout — the poem tugs at grief through sensory detail: broken sisters, dishwashers, Custard Creams. You write: “Half-formed / vowels rumble across my ribcage, secrets surfacing as I dredge / for our remains.” So much of this poem feels sculptural — as if the speaker is chiseling her way back into unfinished language. Do you think of writing as a kind of recovery? What’s your relationship to silence — both yours and others’?

REBECCA

I’m so happy to hear this, especially the Custard Creams! These details are so important to me; navy windbreakers, loose teeth, too-short bangs. The stuff of childhood. It took a very long time to get “Mudlarking” right. I worked on draft after draft, and the writing of the poem was an enormous and delicate excavation. Chiseling is the right word, for sure. Writing is absolutely a process of surfacing and recovery for me. And in this poem it is also an act of apology. For me, the silence you refer to is the silence of time passing; the sitting with and organizing memories until the moment is right to speak. My intention with the poem was to ask, who has the right to speak? What does it mean to choose silence, especially as a response to trauma. While there is undoubtedly power and privilege in being the one to speak, it is also a burden. Writing the poem was a way of shaking off this burden, and uniting both sisters in a space beyond words.

KARAN

The Letters poems — from Rome and from Providence — are lush, volatile, epistolary shapeshifters. They contain both menace and glamour. I was reminded of The Passenger, or even Portrait of a Lady on Fire. There’s a real sense of women watching themselves be watched — and then writing back. Are these letters invented, remembered, or some unstable fusion of both? How do you approach persona or voice in your work?

REBECCA

That’s so interesting that the Letters poems evoked these films for you, both great ones! These two poems are part of an epistolary series taken from Daughters of the Minotaur, my forthcoming collection, which engages with the life and work of five mid-century women artists. The Letters series is inspired by the photography and letters of Francesca Woodman, a groundbreaking artist who created an enormous body of work before her untimely death at the age of 22. Woodman attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and traveled to Italy for an incredibly productive year abroad, before moving to New York City. Her photographs, usually with herself as the subject, explore the gaze, male and otherwise, and place the often unstable female body squarely under the lens. In writing the Letters poems I returned to her photographs from the period; some of which are directly referenced  — “a black glove/ a white feather/ from an angel’s wing,” Pilsbury flour, glass pressed against thighs — with a goal of giving voice to these remarkable images. Woodman wrote letters, to boyfriends and to her father, and I used these as prompts to craft a narrative. While the Letters poems are very much my interpretation of her voice and persona, it is my hope that they honor her work, while also making space for elements of biography, artistry and invention.

KARAN

That is so wonderful, Rebecca. Only the other day I got to see Leonora Carrington’s And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur at the MoMA and was completely mesmerized by it. There’s a visual art thread running through this collection, but “Contingent” makes it explicit — it’s such a beautiful homage to Eva Hesse, whose work is all about fragility, material strain, suspended grief. You write: “I am / my own materials.” How has Hesse influenced your writing? And more broadly, what’s your relationship to visual art as a poet?

REBECCA

Hesse is one of the five artists whose work and life I explore in my new collection. Her body of work was remarkable, managing to be both ephemeral and permanent at the same time. I was very intentional with “Contingent” (named for one of the last sculptures she made in 1969) that I wanted to write both ekphrastically, as a response to that specific piece, while weaving in aspects of her life without her biography or illness overshadowing it all. But those biographical shadows remain, how could they not? Hesse’s family fled the Holocaust; she and her sister came to the USA as very small children. Her mother died tragically. Her marriage was tumultuous and her remarkable career was cut short by terminal illness. And yet the work, and her diaries remain. I am so in awe of what she was able to produce in spite, or because of everything she endured — “anything is possible/ everything is worth/ the risk.” The line “I am/ my own materials” is a direct quote from Hesse’s diaries. And she very much was.

As you can probably tell from this interview, visual art plays a huge role in my life as a writer, and always has. I have researched and written extensively about the marginalization of women artists, and first encountered artists such as Hesse, and Ana Mendieta, as part of my graduate program in Performance Studies at NYU. Ekphrastic poetry is wonderful, but my goal with these new poems is to engage with the art in a slightly different way. I am interested in the tension between biography and creative output; between life and art. It’s a delicate balancing act which I strive to get right in these poems. And of course I am aware that I can never claim to know, or understand these women’s lives, though I do understand what it means strive for visibility in a world still very much dominated by men.

KARAN

Your poems give us wreckage and revelation, but never tidy catharsis. In “Clean sweep,” we move from ants and lemon juice to a scene of quiet surveillance — “my shame lit blue by mocking / streetlamps.” (Fucking love that line/image!) In “Prim,” the speaker walks out of a party and into an imagined life with hyenas and parakeets, reminiscing the past.. These shifts are emotional, but they’re also tonal. Do you think about modulation — how a poem changes register as it unfolds? What tells you a poem is finished?

REBECCA

Wreckage and revelation — can I steal that as a title please?! I absolutely think about the tonal shifts in my poems, and especially with “Prim,” where I wanted to convey the dissonance between artist Leonora Carrington’s isolated childhood in a wealthy, upper class Lancashire family, and her interior life; filled with surrealist leaps and daydreams. The turn in “Prim” comes with the line “This is the real me” as she escapes the yellow kitchens and stifling parties to the lush outside world of her imagination. Of course now that I reflect on it, I realize this shift occurs with a turnstile leap, and the slam of the gate — much like the bolted door at the end of “Clean Sweep.” Both poems conjure a woman’s need to flee the domestic, “Prim” even more explicitly, as Carrington was very clear she had no time to be a daughter, wife, or muse — she had too much to do.

And to answer your question about knowing when a poem is finished, I get asked this a lot, and honestly for me it’s instinctual. With “Prim” I knew the poem needed to begin and end with the spaniels, her constant companions. Often the poem will tell me itself — raise its hand and say “done!” I love it when that happens.

KARAN

This is a question we ask all our poets, though the answers are always wildly different: There’s a theory that a poet’s work tends toward one of four major axes — poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, or poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work, if at all? And do you feel it’s moved over time?

REBECCA

I was speaking to a poet friend of mine about this theory, and we both agreed that it’s impossible to divide a poet’s work (or mine at least) into these separate categories. It is my hope that my poetry responds to and evokes the body, the mind, the heart and the soul.

KARAN

You’ve been winning prizes, receiving major fellowships, and your first book was a finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. You’ve clearly built something remarkable with rigor and intention. What advice would you give to emerging poets?

REBECCA

In 1965, Sol LeWitt wrote a letter to his friend Eva Hesse, imploring her to stop overthinking the process of making art. The message of this letter has been a crucial anchor for me in my writing, so much so that I have an arrow LeWitt sketched in the letter inked on my right forearm as a reminder. His advice is what I would give to emerging poets, or any artists doubting themselves (which happens to me pretty much all the time!)

LeWitt wrote: “Learn to say Fuck You to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO.”

KARAN

Ah, I love that. I have listened to Benedict Cumberbatch read this letter so many times. Would you offer our readers a poetry prompt, Rebecca, to help them begin a new poem?

REBECCA

Write a poem about the house you grew up in. Focus on the interior and exterior, the smells, creaks and silences. Start with one room and work your way out. Is it empty and abandoned, or full of life and human connection?

KARAN

Please also recommend a piece of art (not a poem) that you keep returning to — a painting, a film, a sculpture, a recipe, anything — that haunts or sustains you.

REBECCA

The 1978 Gerhard Richter painting Betty, which depicts his daughter wearing a red and white floral sweater while turning away from the viewer, has been pinned above my desk in postcard form for years, since I first encountered his work in Berlin in the 1990s. This painting literally haunts me. I gaze at it every single day, and it always evokes something new. Initially I was so floored that Richter’s portraits weren’t photographs, that I was simply dazzled by the realism of his technique. But as the years passed, I saw so much more than craft in this painting. Betty is turning her back on the viewer; we will never know what she is looking at, or why. This ambiguous space is so compelling to me, evoking the private realm of a pre-teen girl, while also conjuring Germany’s obsession with looking back at the past. In this painting Richter manages to explore all the themes I am interested in my writing — a girl on the cusp of change; a national preoccupation with past trauma, beauty, ambiguity, tension and voyeurism. It is a true contemporary masterpiece.  

KARAN

And of course, because we believe in studying the master’s masters: who are the poets who have influenced you most?

REBECCA

The poets that are always within reach, in my veins or on my desk, include Marie Howe, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Victoria Chang, Emily Berry and Paul Celan. An eclectic group, for sure, but one that continues to sustain, inspire, infuriate and floor me.

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