Trailblazers

Interview with Aidan Castle

10/23/2021

Aidan Castle was one of the finalists with the following concrete haiku. Here are some questions he answered about his poem and process:

name
the     after ambulance
silence the
   dead

What inspired the poem?

I had been drafting and scrapping and re-writing a poem about an ambulance on and off for many months, haunted by the image of the ambulance carrying my grandfather to the hospital in the wee hours. That experience was the jumping-off point, but I wanted to write a poem speaking to the process of gender reassignment. When I went through that process, it felt like there was a lot of fanfare and emphasis on the moment of change (ex. the moment the clerk of the court stamped my legal change documents). The journey that happened afterwards was much more subtle, and much more significant.

What other forms, formats, or iterations did you consider, and why do you think the poem had to be written this way?

I considered many different lineations on the spectrum from traditional to alt, fixing on this one because I feel it echoes the appearance of a patient’s vitals when hooked up to a heart monitor. I intended for the poem to speak to “naming the dead” more broadly, with “name” functioning as both a noun and a verb. I have a strong preference for poems with multiple meanings because each reader comes to the poem with the background of their unique experience, different from mine, and so I like to afford the greatest possible potential for meaning. One of my favorite parts of writing is hearing a reader describe a meaning they took from my work that I never thought of.

How do you think the poem helps to push the boundaries of, or contributes to, the genre?

I feel this poem contributes to the genre by treating the phrase “dead name,” and by using alt lineation. I think there is a lot more room for poems dealing with non-binary and queer experiences in haiku journals. I also think that journals would benefit from publishing more ku that employ alt lineation, as it is a powerful tool that serves to broaden and underscore the moment. I am very honored to have had my poem selected, but the real win for me will be the day when a poem like mine is no longer considered trailblazing because so many more ku treating queer experience and using alt lineation have been published.

What was your process for writing it? Is there anything else you want to share about the poem or writing practice?

It is inherent to my process that different experiences (ex. grandfather in ambulance, legal name change) - often separated by years - end up in the same poem. I deal with memory loss from a TBI, so my sense of time is altered. I try to use this to my advantage, joining an old experience with a newer one into a single moment. It is my intent for this act of combination to create continuity, if unexpected, and, thus, create new memory. This is my way of making lemonade out of lemons, and giving voice to the neurodivergence that I experience. Haiku, in its juxtapositions, lends itself to my natural process, and that is part of why I love it so much.

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Interview with Michael Morell

10/23/2021

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Michael Morell was one of the finalists with the following one-line haiku. Here are some questions he answered about his poem and process:

the a(n)esthetic of ableist thought

I don’t remember the specific inspiration, so I'll give an example of an Ableist incident towards someone with dwarfism. Back in August, I took my car in for inspection. Instead of waiting, I went home and picked it up later than usual, and there was a different cashier I’d never dealt with before. When I arrived at the counter and said “I’m here to pick my car up,” she laughed out loud and said “down there?,” which caused the other cashier to laugh. As a very tall woman, her premise was that I was too short, or maybe not man enough, to drive a car. Both cashiers got a big laugh at my expense. Many non-disabled people might not recognize this encounter as Ableism, or claim over-sensitivity on my part. However, I have 50+ years of acuity to the subtlety of this “ism.”

Part of the piece was written in a flash— “the aesthetic of ableist thought.” That’s not yet a poem, so I let it sit while it boiled and brewed in my head. It becomes a meditative process, and this one took several months to complete. I refer to this style as “crock pot poetry.”

In my thought process this piece was always a monoku. I might have been trying to write an intentional monoku at the time. Most of my monoku are written with the format in mind.

I chose this piece because I believe it empowers a minority voice and pushes boundaries. Whether real or imagined, I was not finding much “Disability Poetics” in Japanese short form poetry. And in the same vein, I was not finding any Japanese short form poetry in the disability anthologies I was reading. On another note, the poem consists of five words (six if you consider aesthetic/anesthetic). I think its brevity provides a direction for exploring how much silence poets can create. Three words . . .one word . . . I look forward to reading more creations of this type and going even further. Finally, I love the description that the Trailblazer Contest provided as an example of moving the genre forward. I’ll paraphrase, but it went something like ‘write a poem that only you can write.’ That’s when I decided to submit this poem for the contest.

About the writing practice: Sometimes a poem arrives in a stream-of-consciousness, and it’s as if I’m having an out-of-body experience, more like the person looking over the poet’s shoulder than the poet themselves. At other times, the practice becomes a very meditative process. I may even repeat a line or phrase during my meditation practice, so that when I pick up the pen there’s a freshness that wasn’t there before. Or, my time on the meditation cushion quiets and opens my mind to allow the finishing touches to come through.

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Interview with Aidan Castle

Interview with Michael Morell

2021

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