SHANNAN

Poems about poems are never just poems about poems, are they? I felt this rising up in me so strongly as I entered into “After the Psych Ward”. Striking, in particular, is how the first line opens with running commentary on “the last poem.” And since the poem’s title itself is “after…”, I am inclined to connect the ideas of finality and hope. There is a certain “fuck-you” joy that comes with being done with something, getting through a storm, penning that last poem. This “joy” is curtailed to comedic effect in the third line of this particular poem when we hear that it is the poem “of my book, which doesn’t yet exist.” Existence is precarious and confusing, as the speaker attempts to clarify in the very next lines. I love how this almost-obsessive voice then appears to enter another scene, as though the poem that is being written about in this other poem is actually a play of sorts. A play both as a form and also in spirit playful. It is at this point that the speaker directly brings up “how easy it is to get in a poem.” This creates such a startling destabilizing effect because now I, the reader, feel I am a part of this poem. Later on you reference surrealism and dreams, and the same elements from the beginning intercept the poem here in different forms. And then, my favorite part, the ending (the finality!?) wherein you take on a Derek Walcott-ian sense of the pliability of language and attempt to (read: succeed in) embody the “noun” as an artifact of being in and of itself. Which is all to say, fucking hell, Leigh Sugar, you’re a goddamn spellbinding poet. This is not a question per se, but please feel free to talk about anything I’ve touched on here. 

LEIGH

I think I'm finally understanding the notion of negative capability from this question! It's such a generous reading and response to my poem, so first, thank you. My instinct is to say I really didn't do any of it on purpose and wasn't thinking about any of what you just said consciously, and that is true to an extent, but that's not an entirely fair answer. This poem is one that I wrote relatively recently, which for me means within the past 3 years, but it's not one I wrote during my MFA, and it's not one that I probably would have brought to workshop in the MFA. I don't think it would have gotten good feedback, which is so interesting because this is probably one of the poems that feels most natural and honest to me, and yet is not…I don't know, it's not…it doesn't have the same kind of sophistication in appearance perhaps that I think was praised in a lot of the poetry communities I've been in, or at least in the formal poetry communities I've been in. But what's happening here is honesty and vulnerability, and also I love incorporating and showing where inspiration comes from, so the surrealist part, it comes from one of my favorite poets, CA Conrad, their work, and I think conscious or not I'm just resisting the - I feel - outdated “rules” that contemporary Western poetry imposes or tries to impose…things like, you know, the idea or the false idea of originality, that you have to make something totally new, which is just impossible, and also this idea that the words you need to use must be complicated or “elevated” in some way. And the other thing that I'm resisting is metaphor. I had this professor, a very well-known professor-poet, who once said that “every poem needs a metaphor,” and this person meant metaphor with a capital M, like a very specific, dramatic metaphor, like, you know, “the sun was an egg yolk.” That’s a horrible example, but this person insisted that a poem had to have one and I just don't agree. There’s a lot of rules that I was told or that were suggested to me or that I somehow intuited – maybe incorrectly - that I don't agree with, but for whatever reason (mostly White supremacy) felt I had to embody in order to be a “real poet.” Part of this also comes from the fact that I did not study poetry in college, and still carry great imposter syndrome, so even in my resistance to these “rules” or outdated expectations, I still feel compelled to seek validation or prove that what I’m doing is “allowed.”

AAAAAt the same time I can’t deny that I’ve been privileged to be surrounded by amazing poets, amazing teachers, amazing books that have greatly influenced me, and that all of my experiences in life, both as a child and then through now, as a dancer and as a musician, musicality and rhythm and sounds are things that I feel very intuitively rather than consciously. In revision processes I might go back and notice that I can make something sort of sing a bit better, but I think it’s a product of an embarrassment of riches that I’ve had in my life, for which I’m incredibly lucky, and also a resistance to a kind of idea of even a canon at all.

AAAAIn terms of the poem referencing another poem, this is also a resistance to that idea that a poem must “stand on its own.” Not only do I not agree with that, but I’m just wholly uninterested in that conversation. Like, I don’t think…I don’t understand why it matters. I think in both macro and micro terms, kaleidoscopically, maybe that’s just ADHD, but whenever someone asks “are you a details person or are you a big picture person?” I don’t know how to answer because I’m both, so in terms of poetry, just like anything in life, anything I’ve done before is always going to affect and influence what I’m doing now. So anything I’ve written before is going to inform or be reflected in anything that’s coming. Referring to something else just feels honest and I don’t see what there could be wrong with that. I think that’s one of the reasons I love ONLY POEMS so much is the way y’all treat a poet as a whole rather than these discreet, single poems that just sort of occur into the universe, because when I think of my favorite poets, I don’t even usually have a favorite poem of theirs, it’s their overall effect, their overall work.

AAAAMore concretely, I did literally write this poem after I wrote what I immediately knew was going to be the final poem of my then manuscript-in-progress. I had taken an online class from Leila Chatti through the writing community Hugo House, and one of her prompts helped bring forth a poem that I knew finally held together all the themes and forms of the book I was working on. At the time though, that book hadn’t yet been assembled fully, and while I knew this was the final poem, I also knew there were other poems that had to be written to fill in some gaps. I was so delighted, though, by this chance happening. And it ended up being true – this book, FREELAND is forthcoming from Alice James in 2025, and the poem I reference here is, indeed, the last poem in the book, which, finally, does exist (or will exist very soon). The other concrete references in here are also true: I write a poem every year on my birthday, and I believe this one was from when I turned 30. I had semi-recently stayed in a psychiatric institution for 9 weeks, which I find very darkly funny, and my then roommate got me my favorite biscuit for my birthday once I was back home. So all this life inevitably come into the birthday poems, which end up being very strange and stream-of-consciousness and of-the-moment.

SHANNAN 

Representations of disability abound in your poems and it feels empowering to read. Poetry is a way to unmask, to make the inaccessible accessible but also understandable. What I appreciate even more in your poetry is how you also bring up working class discourse alongside disability, as for example in “Compassion, Fall 2020”, where it costs “$200 per clear liter…at the nearby IV wellness centers / popping up all over town.” Poetry and writing in general can sometimes appear to be an act of leisure reserved for those with the privilege of time, a privilege that comes with a degree of wealth and social freedom. However, some of my favorite poetry being written today actively deals with the difficulties of living in the world through the lense of financial, familial, and physical encumbrances that come from a lack of privilege. At the same time, privilege is so multi-faceted. Sometimes I even think just the desire to write poetry and express all of these things comes from a kind of privilege. I can see how you think through the foundations of some of these things in your poems also. You ask quite a philosophical question at the end of “Selling the Childhood Home” that I think feels appropriate here: “How do I know if I can picture a thing / if what happens in my mind, when prompted / to do so, is all I’ve ever known?” Our inner reality is all we’ve ever known, and yet in writing, we also read, and become aware of so many other ways of looking and living and being in the world. Do you feel then, that poets have a degree of responsibility in both helping show other people a different way of looking as well as reaching out to those who may not have the words to express the same turmoil they may be going through that you are, as a poet, able to channel, to lay bare so beautifully?

LEIGH

Something very important to me in poetry (and life, from which poetry is not separate) is financial transparency. For the past decade-plus I’ve noticed this trend, particularly among fellow White leftists, to conceal their access to wealth or privilege for fear of being viewed as a “bad leftist,” or out of embarrassment, or some other conviction that cosplaying as working-class or poor makes their politics more legitimate and their fight for justice more “true”. When I was younger I certainly played into this trend, but have since come to believe very strongly that lying (or lying by omission) about one’s background or financial situation is not only unhelpful, but is extremely harmful to individuals and the larger fight against inequality and classism (and all the other -isms).

AAAAI not only grew up with privileges – access to good education, healthcare, safe neighborhoods, extra-curricular activities, etc. – but continue to have access to many of the privileges that wealth affords (which is not true for all people who grew up with wealth). My transparency stems from a desire to make clear how I got to where I am, and how I do what I do. I chose to pursue an MFA in poetry because I did not need to have a guaranteed job with benefits straight away. And now, as I am dealing with disability and chronic illness, I am not able to work full time but I have the means to live comfortably without relying on the state for (terribly under-budgeted) disability checks. I can imagine that a person who did not come from such privilege might feel badly or internalize a sense of inferiority when observing their more financially privileged peers finding success in the poetry world, when in reality the “success” or “visibility” one has attained is due to their ability to focus on writing, find important learning opportunities, etc. instead of focusing on the imperative to support themselves and their family. That said, of course people without access to wealth have been and continue to be wildly talented and successful poets; I just know for me, my path as a poet looks different than it would look if I were in a different financial situation.

AAAASo, mentioning the $200/liter infusions is not an intention to suggest I couldn’t afford it, but rather to make clear the reality of the cost of healthcare and living with disability; to bring my commitment to financial transparency into the work. I know this whole discussion may feel tangential but I never want to suggest – in conversation or in my poems – that I am, or come from, something other than what is true for me. So, for me, my ability to focus on a life devoted to writing is inherently connected to privilege, but that is not a universal truth. Many writers find a way to make their art without such privilege, but to suggest I am among these latter artists would be dishonest and harmful.

AAAASometimes I feel that the compulsion to transparency is a sort of confession (though I did not grow up Catholic) – a confession but also a statement against our late-stage-capitalistic hellscape. I am grateful for my access to healthcare but don’t believe that my access should come at the expense of another’s. I wish for a world with much greater distribution of wealth and resources, and talking about these themes in my poems is just an extension of this urgent desire.

AAAAI don’t think, though, that a poet necessarily has a “responsibility” to anyone. My obsessions with abolition, interrogating Whiteness, and privilege, permeate my life, so inevitably show up in my poems. I would not actually want to read a poem about such subjects from someone who is not obsessed with those themes but is writing about them because they “should” or they feel they’re “supposed to.” For the most part, I think writing poetry is itself radical, in the way it forces both reader and writer to slow down, pay attention, and listen, endeavors that capitalism and White supremacy - which are so concerned with efficiency and production - actively oppose.

SHANNAN 

Maybe it’s because I love a good sex poem, but “ode to phone sex” is especially thrilling for me in your packet here. The “go ahead — call / an ache / into a name” is so active and sexy but also restrained, intelligent, calm. Just the other day, we released our February Poem of the Month wherein our theme was “love and sex”. The poem that immediately captured Karan was 15 pages long! But you know, there’s that same arresting spirit I see in your piece here. I’d love to know more about how you approach writing a love poem or a poem that really enters into the body (pun very much intended)?

LEIGH

Oh lord, this is a Pandora’s Box kind of question. This poem is from my forthcoming book, which is “about” my relationship with an incarcerated person (among other themes). We corresponded feverishly for 7+ years, mostly via hand-written letters, and it is really that relationship that catapulted me into the world of poetry, as we would share our writing and send each other books. The nature of prison is separation, segregation, invisibilization, so our relationship was built on the impossible desire to bridge, to connect, to touch. It’s not an exaggeration to say I pursued graduate school in order to help him get his poems published and to help me write better (love) poems to him.

AAAAThat time in my writing life (and life) felt so urgent, and poems were the closest we could get to intimacy. I don’t so much have an approach to writing love poems so much as that story about why I’ve written so many. For me, I had to, because I had no other choice. Now, outside of that relationship, I don’t find myself writing many love poems, or poems to lovers/partners. I miss having access to such grand and consuming emotions and desires, but in their stead I get to have a real person, a conversation in real time, and privacy – none of which were available to me when I was with this incarcerated individual. I suppose all I can say is that my most convincing love poems were written out of obsession and necessity, and now that the nature of my relationships is different, I no longer experience the same urgency to sublimate my feelings – or physical desires - into poem.

SHANNAN

Time is another concept you play with in your poetry. In “The prisoner photographer makes his rounds”, the speaker questions, “How to cheat; to stretch a ticket into time. Time into time. How to spend more time…”  And then in “Self on Psych Hold Imagines Future Self After Psych Hold”, the poem carries along the setting of the “prison” and closes with: “Let me hold off transcendance / for another tomorrow.” Time is framed as a cure against death and, at times, as the instigator or cause of death. Both are true, I suppose. Your poems employ the logic of both often pervasively through direct statements as well as repetition that borders on obsessions and wordplay. This ends up creating a kind of intellectual and/or emotional claustrophobia, feeling trapped inside the box of the poem along with the speaker who is also trying to get out but somehow, inexplicably, feels comfortable in this trying, is not desperate even as they are desirous. Where do these explorations and excavations of time step in your poems? 

LEIGH

Here's perhaps another instance of negative capability, as I don’t consider myself someone who thinks a lot about time, at least consciously, but as you point out the theme shows up again and again. I have a very disconnected/disjointed sense of time in my own life. I know a lot of people who say things like “I don’t remember my childhood.” That’s not quite what I mean. More I feel like I don’t always connect my past self to my current self, or don’t feel that those selves are the same person. When I was heavily involved in prison work – both in my relationship and as a writing teacher and someone who physically went in to prisons on a regular basis – time felt much more material, almost granular, solid. There was always a lot of talk and discussion about “time in” or “time left,” meaning how many more years a person had in their sentence, or how long they’d been there, etc. Time was very concrete in that setting. I was waiting for the year that my then-beloved would be free; every day thinned the waiting. So in that sense, time is/was a very natural thing to enter the poems, because it dominated my thoughts and my desires.

AAAAAdditionally, my mom worked as a neurologist, and in her later years focused primarily on the dementias. I grew up hearing about patients, mostly “older,” and what happens to memory in a diseased brain. I think this background really influenced what I think of as “old”; if my mom would talk about someone in their 60s with dementia, I knew that was relatively early. My conception of “old” kept getting pushed back as I heard stories about these patients, because, of course, I was aging, as was everyone around me. Now in their 70s, if I imagine one of my parents displaying symptoms of dementia, I would consider them quite young, even though statistically that’s not so much the case anymore.

AAAANot to overwork the question, but I also think of my own life in a “before” and “after” sense because my disabilities are directly connected to a traumatic accident I experienced in 2018 (December 5, to be exact). The life I lived before 2018 feels impossibly far from the life I live now, in that so many of the activities I did and ways I identified (I was a dancer, musician, athlete, and general go-go-go type person) are just no longer possible in my current mind/body. These days a lot of my thoughts about time have to do with how long I’ve experienced certain symptoms, or how long my case has been medically neglected. Too, how every second I get farther from the self I was “before,” and someday I will reach a point where I’ll have been disabled for longer than I was able-bodied. That’s a mindfuck.

AAAAI realize as I’ve gotten older that there likely will never be a time where I feel I’ve “arrived” – at adulthood, at a certain “level” of profession, at a finish line of contentment, or at a period where a certain event, even if statistically common, feels correctly timed. Outside of prison, time feels totally amorphous and impossible to conceptualize, and yet I know it’s constantly exerting its forces on my life, the lives of everyone I know, and all the world and universe. Perhaps is this utter confusion by/about time despite my ever-present – and critical – obsession with how it works and what it does that has it returning again and again in my poems.

SHANNAN

Thank you, Leigh, all of this is so enriching! Finally, we would also love to know poets who have influenced you most.

LEIGH

I love this question because the work of my teachers and mentors is so sacred. I have a special bookshelf in my room reserved for only the best of the best - writing that’s been the most impactful and moving to me. In no particular order – Marie Howe (What the Living Do was the first book of poetry I checked out independently, outside of a school setting, and the first time I felt I ‘understood’ the power of a poem); Srikanth Reddy (Voyager baffles and astounds, as does Underworld Lit – the concept behind each book that dictates the form and style…genius); CA Conrad (I first read Book of Frank and since then haven’t been able to get enough of Conrad’s honesty, whimsy, and deep care for the world and its land and people)…I could go on forever but will just list a few more key names: CD Wright, Solmaz Sharif, bell hooks, Anne Carson, Rachel Zucker, Audre Lorde, Shane McCrae, Maged Zaher, Claudia Rankine, Sheila Heti…