Interview with Anthony Anaxagorou

Anthony Anaxagorou will be reading from his book After the Formalities (2019). A truly multifaceted poet and person, Anthony speaks about his path as a writer—the gladiatorial side of poetry based on his experiences as a slam poet, the drawbacks to rankings within the arts, his creative processes, and the relationship between poetry and mental health. As an educator, Anthony also talks about ways to create access points for readers and the misconception that poetry must be intellectualized versus appreciated as any other art form might be. We’re so honored for the chance to share his words with you now. To watch the interview, visit our Instagram IGTV, https://www.instagram.com/napkinpoetry_review/channel/.

We have included the transcript of both Anthony’s discussion as well as his poems.

What started your interest in poetry?

The earliest memory that I have with language is sitting in the car with my mum when the song “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon comes on. It starts, “Hello darkness my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again,” and I remember saying to my mum, how can he talk to the darkness, who’s the darkness, who is it personifying—well, I didn’t say personification, but what I was asking was how can someone talk to the darkness, and she explained that it was a metaphor. That’s the earliest recollection I have in thinking about language and what it could do. But when I got to maybe 13, I started listening to a lot of hip hop, particularly American Hip Hop when I was 18 or 19, and I think that catalyzed my interest in language.

But what’s interesting is that I started writing from maybe 13, 14 very crude raps, kind of rudimentary in how they looked and they were just emulating 2Pac and DMX and whoever else I used to really like. The bookworm came much later. I won a slam when I was 17 and that gave me a flavor the competitive, I guess gladiatorial side of poetry. I didn’t come from a bookish family, basically books were anathema in my house. We were never encouraged to read so I had to find that later on my own. But the slam peaked my interest in what poems could do—then I didn’t write for seven years after that. One time, when I went and read at a pub, I was nervous, a bit defensive, a bit unsure and at the end, the promoter said something quite disparaging and I didn’t do anything else in poetry for 10 years, picking it back up when I was 28.

What do you see your role as a poet in collective culture?

When I was younger, I was a lot more sanctimonious, a lot more direct with trying to educate, to enlighten, to bring attention and empathy to issues. When I sat down to write, I had a very clear purpose, maybe like a speech writer going into poetry with a very political, polemical kind of mindset.

Over the years, I’ve been less into poetry that’s predicated on certainty. To write a didactic poem, you need to be certain: one, certain of your own convictions, but two, that everyone feels the same. I started to rethink that as I wrote more and the stage no longer had the same appeal as when I first started. The contract, the negotiation between someone on stage and someone in the audience is very specific. It’s not the same contract as between the reader and the book, not the same dialogue. This new dialogue led me into a place of uncertainty and vulnerability, and that was a whole new realm around myself and who I am. It became more philosophical, more open-ended and that’s when After the Formalities started to come out. But about your question, how is my work in conversation with politics and culture, I don’t sit down to write with an agenda. I don’t know where I’m going to end up. I ask myself where I am at that moment of writing and that’s what I’ve got.

Can you describe your writing process for After the Formalities?

The poems that I wrote at the beginning, looking back now, I’d probably take out. I find that the best books come out of a very short, intense period, and if I set out saying okay, six months to write this, then there’s kind of a continuity, something that feelings congealed within the work because you haven’t left the box. So, with what I’m working on at the moment, I’m trying to keep up a momentum of writing more or less every day, thinking about things and taking notes rather than leaving big gaps. And I often feel that the speed at which I develop sometimes eclipses the work itself so that by the time you get to the end of the book, you never could have written that poem because you’re a different writer now, you think of poems in a different way. It’s such a complicated process because it is organic, it’s constantly changing as you change.

I think of someone like Ilya who spent ten years writing Deaf Republic and I don’t know how you do that. I don’t know how you sustain ten years of writing but make it feel like it was written in a matter of weeks. I’ve read Dancing in the Desert, which was much different [than Deaf Republic], and he said it was written in a much shorter period. And then you read someone like Terrance Hayes who wrote “American Sonnets” in 3 months, one sonnet a day. I can see the intensity, having this conversation and finding different ways to position it. But in the end, it depends on how each writer prefers to work. I know Jack Underwood, a good friend of mine, advocates for taking your time, like six months per book and I’m like six years? I’ll be fifteen different people in six years.

I think when you’re constantly—maybe this is it. If you’re restless in yourself, and you’re interested in other ways of doing things, you’ll always be probing whereas if you’re like, no I have my way of seeing and that’s it and I can sit back. I read Jack’s stuff now and he is definitely the same writer who wrote Happiness in 2015. Arthur Miller once sat down with an interviewer who asked if he was working on anything at the moment and Miller responded, “I don’t know, I probably am.” It’s like you’re saying, everything that happens in the process is not just pen and paper to get to that end result. But what goes on when you’re washing dishes, in the shower, lying in bed, that’s where all the heavy lifting happens.

You’re constantly mining, it’s a constant excavation like an archaeologist with the brush, moving things around to see what will come out and it’s exhausting. I think with mental health, artists constantly obsess over these things that are nothing but they want to make something out of it.

How do you see the relationship between poetry and mental health?

I’ve read quite a lot of research on clinical psychology and poetry, poetry and therapy and a lot of this stuff makes sense for me. Because poetry’s language is slightly off-piece, it allows everyone to participate in some way whereas with an essay, it’s short, it’s certain. So unless you meet the essayist, you’re not going to be able to get involved. Here’s the thing: I don’t think you go to poetry for clarity. Poetry is the last place you go to for clarity. If I want clarity, I’ll go to an essay, I’ll speak to a therapist, I’ll go to someone who’s going to hit me straight. I don’t want someone who’s going to talk to me from the side. So, going back to the surrealists, Andre Breton, Ezra Pound, you find that the reasons those modes became popular after WW2 was because of the trauma. And surrealism allowed people in. So, people are using that genre as a means of trying to remedy their own trauma. Whereas if I give you an image, and it’s all nearly tied up in a bow here you go, there’s not much for you as a reader to do. It’s about agency, like how I see surrealism’s function.

What’s interesting is at what point, and I think there is a point, does something become impenetrable. Even the most erudite reader—like I read Geoffrey Hill. And I have no idea what Geoffrey Hill’s poems are about, they’re rambling, nonsensical. I can work around images, that’s a nice image, that’s a nice image, but you have to have such an academic framework in place to understand those references. So, I feel there is a poetry such as Prynne, the avant-garde, who you have to give yourself permission to participate in without looking for right or wrong, just look to take essences out of the poetry. I was talking about this with a friend and we both had the idea that class protections have created the idea that there’s one way to look at what poems do. But when you lose class protection and you say, I can give someone down there a poem by Geoffrey Hill and ask how does this make you feel? If you take away the analysis of poetry, everyone can have a way to participate. Like I don’t know how to play the guitar, but I appreciate the sound of the guitar. I listen to music from continents like Africa and Asia, and even though I don’t know what those languages are, I can get involved in those musics.

Poems:

I Kissed a Dead Man’s Mouth in May

            it was like a weapon               walrus tusk

but it wasn’t dead enough yet    was it uncle  remember?

   when water knelt before us  & you asked me to count the doves

you blew into the blue       that day uncle       a small boat in water

both our shadows        marooned        craving sand    breathing talcum

whole spikes in our lungs       uncle   why winter then?        why the

            throat first?

what happened to our throats?           why did May become so sad?

            the help

empty  handed leaving uncle     both of us     sharing ghosts

remember the boy uncle      who kissed a dead man’s mouth in May

because he couldn’t reach his eyes     in time    funny    how many

            apologies

fill a life    my uncle   it’s been years   since I lifted your death

from out the water   black baptism   said those white words to your

            wife

   dead uncle   uncle’s dead   my uncle died (I’m sorry)   he’s dead

let me hold you one last time uncle   & try to get the letting go right

I can’t get it wrong anymore   not this time   time   left   uncle

returning me each day     to the moment    when the sea

            made more sea from him

his eyes still open   in me  & he had never died  & you have never died

not in any May   not with my mouth stil on yours & perhaps   my

            my arms weren’t solid enough

enough to breathe you back in   or back up    so what do I do now

            with all this May

  spinning        slipping through   your hand still in mine   your mouth

chewing its last meal    the taste of bread    I’m still tasting bread

soft as chest hair     the last sea-hole where he sunk

from there   where did you end up?   what world did you find more

            gentle than this?

I’m in the future now   uncle   with   your shirt   still in its Spring

a sandal floating towards   your body   its heart   so almost here.

                                                                                    i.m. C.P.

Once I had an acceptance speech

Driving too close to the curb. Admit

to being poor. Stash pumpkin seeds

for my kid. Hustle the Christian way.

Starch my shirt collars. Value a strong

smudge. Give pigeons saintly names.

Cream both my feet. Recycle. Sign off

emails with warm regards. Double tap

#vegan. Heart statuses which start with

I’m delighted to announce. Mornings.

I struggle to decide what mood to wear.

Evenings. I lie beside my aftershaves

imagining the sea. I should really have

it by now. A Dyson. Panasonic bread

maker. A photo by the piano of a slum

tour. I need the spirit of a full-moon party

rather than the charisma of a shed. They

honk when I slow. I swear with my eyes.

Think of real blood. Sunday comes. Dad

asks what’s the plan. I knit him the only

winning scratch card. I leave a candle on

for destiny. Once. I had an acceptance

speech written. Soon. A staircase will rise

to defeat us all. The roads have moved.

When I get in I’ll sit in the shower & say

it’s a bath. Double tap an ultrasound pic.

Sip railroad water. Notification. ZANC1

started following you. Check my speed.

Slap on another Barry Manilow playlist.

Keep my grays in the dashboard. Wonder.

What the guy who put a gun to my little

brother’s head is doing for New Year’s.

Wonder. If my neighbor made it through.

Up ahead. A badger’s hit beside a boulder.

Its glare a wooden egg I slow for.