CURRENT ISSUE

The Flower or the Flame:
Kennedy Halwa interviews
Shauna Deathe

Winter issue #229 features three of your poems, all of which I loved. The first stuck out to me the most—“New Psalms 8:12.” Psalms 8 (NIV) discusses David praising the Glory of God and only goes until verse 9 from what I could find and from what my years of Catholic education in adolescence taught me. What is the significance of extending the chapter to 12 verses in this way to you?

These poems come from a larger collection I’ve been working on that centre around queering religion, and there’s a large section of poems all titled “New Psalms” with various numbers. At first, they were a place holder or default title when I couldn’t think of anything else (titles are the absolute bane of my writing life) but I grew to love the theme fairly quickly. “Psalms” means “a sacred song or hymn, in particular any of those contained in the biblical Book of Psalms” and in writing these, I was attempting to create a sacred celebration of queerness, a statement that we’ve got hymns too, holy things worth singing about. The numbers in the titles of these—8:12, for example—aren’t meant to directly correlate to the actual Bible verses but rather show an extension, that there’s more to the story, more that’s holy. (I’ll admit that some of the numbers were pulled from the time of day I wrote that particular poem at, or other irrelevant things, but they’ve got nothing to do with the poems themselves.)

All three of your poems touch on religion and faith in some way. Do you often find your writing intertwining with faith? Or is it the other way around—finding faith in your writing? If you feel comfortable discussing your current stance on religion directly, how do find yourself processing this relationship through writing? In “Phantom Limbs,” you write “…I think I recognize / the scarecrow they’ve got strung up / & I’m here to bring her home.” How do you find yourself bringing the scarecrow home, so to speak?

Beautiful question, thank you! I was raised Christian, in a pretty religious home. Most of my family is religious, and a good amount of them are fairly…traditional. So, needless to say, I had no chance in religion not permeating a large portion of my life, both back then and still. The larger poetry collection I mentioned above actually came from the thesis I did for my MA in Creative Writing, which kind of morphed into a “Christianity actually does make room for queerness; Christians do not” deep dive. There’s a whole monster of an essay I could (and did!) write about this but one facet of it is that there’s a lot in religion and religious symbology that remains its own kind of beautiful and far be it from me to not incorporate that into poems.

As for the scarecrow in this poem, it represents a whole mess of things. The main one is, in a twisted way, acknowledging that queer people have often been made into this amorphous monster, hung up, so to speak, as a warning to the “pious” about immorality and evil and all the things backwards preachers like to yell about. In this, I’m reminding? Stating? Pleading? that there is no faceless horror—there’s people. Human beings. And each one belongs. Currently, I’m specifically thinking of all the wonderful trans women in my life who are absolutely demonized by the media and how I wish I could take them down off the metaphorical post. Let the birds have the crops; they’re not worth a life.

Themes of fire, desire, and rebirth also surface in your work, with references to Exodus 20:3 (“You shall have no other gods before me.”) and Mizuta Masahide’s poem “Barn’s burnt down” (“Since my house burned down / I now own a better view / of the rising moon.") I love how your poems explore not only one’s active queerness, but also their relationship towards their queerness itself. Queerness as not only a celebration and rebellion, but as a reimagining of the self. If this resonates, can you tell us about this process?

Years ago, I stumbled across the term “pyrophyte” for the first time. Simply put, a pyrophyte is a type of classification given to plants which have adapted to tolerate fire. There are two types of pyrophytes: passive and active. Passive pyrophytes are fire-resistant and are able to survive fires, and active pyrophytes are plants that have adapted to use—and sometimes even depend on—fire for their existence. I became thematically obsessed with this concept of these gorgeous plants—giant sequoia, banksia, manuka, for example—and their relationship with something that should destroy them. Mix that in with the notion of healing/cleansing from the Bible and the Indigenous concept of a “good fire” and we’ve got a metaphor I can run with. Just don’t ask me if queerness is the flower or the flame—I haven’t decided yet.

All this preamble is to say that I love identities that don’t obey, that are unruly and adaptive, that dance and rebel. I’m in awe of the force that queerness is and all the forces it has endured, thrived in. If you’ll excuse one more self-reference, the title of my thesis was “Pyrophyte: A Field Guide to Burning Alive” because I loved the concept so much. The survival. The reveling. I want my poems to celebrate that, too. I’m not actually sure if this answers your question or if I just used it as an excuse to geek out for a bit, but here we are.

Who are some authors you pull inspiration from?

The list is infinite and ever-growing. I’d say my biggest two are Louise Glück and Ocean Vuong; when I need inspiration, I find myself flipping through their collections the most. Glück just has such a stunning, reverent way with words, and Vuong’s poetry is so gutting and raw while still being remarkably beautiful. The way he plays with the words on the page, too, is something I’ve definitely pulled inspiration from into my work. As well, Jordan Abel was, I think, the first poet to make me fully realize the power of words and really stoke my interest in poetry. The first time I read Injun, I couldn’t stop talking about it—apologies to those around me at the time. I was floored by his creativity but also how politically powerful his work is, how clever and pointed his projects are.

What are you reading and/or writing lately?

I’ve been reading more and more nonfiction lately to try and make sense of our political climate. I’m currently reading Too Dumb for Democracy by David Moscrop and just picked up On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, perhaps for obvious reasons. I’ve also just finished reading 10:10 by Michael Trussler which is an absolutely gorgeous poetry collection about both the horrific violence and the remarkable beauty that co-exist in the world. There’s a part in it that talks about a scientist whose job was to birdwatch at Auschwitz while it was operating and I have not stopped thinking about that. I’ve also, as a palate cleanser perhaps, just started Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. We can call that last one self-care.

For writing, as I mentioned, I’ve been working on polishing up a full-length collection where all of the poems published here are from. If I ever get done tweaking it, or at least can convince myself that I’ll never be done and might as well get on with it, then I’ll work on finding it a home.

 

 

---

---

We gratefully acknowledge all of our supporters