The Shore Interview #39: Zea Pippi Lotte van der Elsken

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: The perspective of a photograph, of a story, is a decision made in the moment the photograph is taken. Your poem in this issue, "Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City, 1981," focuses on expanding this moment in a triptych of perspectives that stretch beyond the flash of the camera: Nan, the camera and the viewer of the photograph itself. What do you see as the role of perspective in the poem?

ZPLvdE: This is such a wonderful question! It perfectly highlights the relationship between poetry and photography that draws me to ekphrasis. The stillness where photography and poetry overlap is where both mediums have me in their grasp. They differ intriguingly in their process of creation. Like you said, the story of a photograph seems irrevocably decided at the shutter. Language however, takes time to build. It is never set in a singular instance with all its undeniable truth and detail. In this poem in particular, language was my tool to expand that sixtieth of a second into an imagined reality through making perspective malleable. I wanted to reach beyond what I knew about the image by moving past myself, and by extension the reader, as the viewer. The camera—positioned by Goldin purposefully in this self portrait—plays a voyeuristic role here that I related to as this poem was becoming. I found myself thinking of the camera itself as the viewer: not only in this exact moment but rather for years to come. Knowing the images this camera was still to take—in particular Goldin’s self portrait, “Nan one month after being battered,” taken three years later—was the catalyst to what this poem became. In a sense, perspective is limited in a photograph, but in a poem it can move like a film unbound by borders of frames or time. Allowing for perspective to move from what is seen to what came before and comes after allows for the singular image to unfold into the story that contains multitudes: wishes, speculations, truths and other images.

TNS: The rhythm and pacing of this poem constantly disrupts itself. Can you speak to your process as you chose line breaks and line length here?

ZPLvdE: My line breaks always happen intuitively as I write. Breath plays a huge role in my writing process and that is usually what informs my line length. I often feel as if the poem chooses its own breath, almost involuntarily. Especially with this piece the process of composing it was visceral, partially fueled by anger. It became a prayer-like experience as I grappled with my admiration for Goldin and her raw, honest work and my repugnance of the abuse she endured. I think the disruption that emerged from this intuitive state represents that part of wanting to watch and look away simultaneously. Each line break seems to embody a hesitation. I kept asking myself: What happens next? Where do I look to? Where does this go? What does she see now? What does she know? Can I wish this for her? Every time I questioned, the poem automatically paused. It asked for breath, for space.

TNS: You're an experienced photographer yourself, having had your photographs published in magazines and displayed in galleries. How did your understanding of the medium inform your sense of perspective in this poem? Do you find that this experience informs your writing in other ways?

ZPLvdE: My background in photography always sneaks its way into my poetry and vice versa. Starting ekphrastic poetry actually seemed all the more daunting at first because of that, weirdly enough. It felt as if the direct intersection between my two loves was just too tender to touch. Once I found ways to go beyond description though, ekphrasis became a playground. In this particular poem it gave me an opportunity to express my passion, not only for the beauty of imagery, but for the hands-on process of analog photography in particular. This poem had a couple drafts, but only really flourished once I allowed the speaker to be a watcher inside Goldin’s darkroom. The many darkrooms I’ve worked in have always felt like sanctuaries to me: the appearing of somethings on a sheet of nothings will never cease to amaze me. The developing and printing process can be meditative in the same way writing can be. It can also be full of frustrations. Not unlike scaffolding a poem, a good photographic print can only be made from errors, most of your time is spent saying: too light, too dark, that part isn’t quite as visible as it needs to be… Anyways, I can go on about poetry and photography forever. To come back to your question, I think my understanding of the fragility of the photographic medium itself, as well being very familiar with the intimacy of self-portraiture, also informed the way this poem moves and spends time with the (speculated and imagined) decisions made by Goldin. I know what comes before and after the shutter, and I wanted to make space for those experiences in this imagined alternate ending for her.

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

ZPLvdE: Besides this beautiful issue of The Shore I have recently been loving the latest issue of North American Review. Also, I adore Literary Mama always and have been going through their wonderful archive.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

ZPLvdE: There are so many poems in this issue that I could spend a lot of time with! I absolutely love Melanie H Manuel’s “on watching scream (1996)” and the way it ebbs and flows between danger and pleasure. It’s just a super sexy poem with such clever and calculated dualities. After Manuel paints a most romantic picture of a fictional murder she moves into reality and has us, quite literally, by the throat: “when you said, let’s fuck/like we’re in a slasher movie, we laughed, &/months later, we did. on the hardwood floor,/three double shots of patron silver in, scissors/to my throat,” the messiness and want that shine in these lines build a filmic scene that blends seamlessly into her ekphrasis. I feel like I am still watching a movie as the speaker becomes Sydney and is “undone” by her lover at the poem’s close. The yoking of love and tragedy, murder and sex, creates a very realized tension that carries this poem from start to finish.

Though in a completely different tone, the tragedy that lies in want surfaces beautifully once again as James King’s brilliantly titled “In Light of Recent Fires” unfolds. The sense of danger is sweetened in this poem in such an ingenious way: King seems to close our eyes by having us imagine darkness, but then shows us a new reality in which the dark, the soil, even death can be romantic. When the poem turns, the beloved and the speaker become worms underground: “We will learn/multiplicity of hearts,/as the worms did all those years ago,/breathing and being the breath/of the black soil. Come to me,/sightless. You and I will be myriad/in our slitherings”—a tragically romantic image. I adore how in both these poems, horror entangles itself with sweetness and want.

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Zea Pippi Lotte van der Elsken grew up in Amsterdam and holds a BA in Photography from the Royal Academy of Art, The Netherlands. She is enrolled in the MFA Poetry program at San Diego State University where she received the Presidential Graduate Research Fellowship. She is Development Director at Poetry International and an instructor for SDSU's department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies. Her photography has been exhibited in galleries across The Netherlands and published in numerous magazines and papers alongside her non-fiction writing, such as De Volkskrant, Focus Magazine and others. Her poetry is forthcoming in Zone 3 and has been published by Michigan Quarterly Review, Foothill Poetry Journal and Pineapple Road Press. She lives in Encinitas with her soon to be husband and many plants.