We know from the Greeks that the poet is a maker of things. Looking at the root of the word poet, we find poiesis, which means making. In fact, Edward Hirsch tells us, “Open the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics to the entry for “Poesie” and you discover that in the Renaissance the word makers, as in courtly makers was an exact equivalent for poets. The word poem became English in the sixteenth century and it has been with us ever since to designate a form of fabrication, a type of composition, a made thing.” When we think about the poem being a made thing, we think about Jennifer Borges Foster. Not only does she create her own words in her own poems, she also makes her own literary journal, Filter. We asked her about her work, and below she explains the made-ness of her linguistic artifacts. After reading our interview, you just might think less about the Kindle and more about the human communication invested in poetry and book making. To learn more about Jennifer’s bookmaking, visit Ticker Finch. — Lori Huskey
Dark Sky Magazine: What got you into bookmaking? Did you feel that in our Kindle-reader-world there was a need for it? Or is it simply a pleasure for you?
Jennifer Borges Foster: Unless a poem is written to make the reader feel better about themselves, it is an act of rebellion. As they were first imagined, books were an act of religion and mysticism. I learned how to bind books so that I could make the first issue of Filter, and for me this was an act of mysticism and rebellion. Designing, editing, and binding 200 copies of a literary journal is crazy. But it’s also pleasurable: when I do it, I feel like I am giving these specific poems, stories, and art a durable, beautiful vessel in which to travel the world.
I’m full of contradictions. I’m a poet and bookmaker who believes that written language is largely at fault for humankind’s disassociation from the natural world. Because of our disassociation from the natural world, we destroy it – resources, animals, people that are considered to be animals, you name it. Actually – this is the problem, that written language has evolved from pictographs and oral tradition to alphabets that do not symbolize the things they represent and the act of reading silently in solitude. We name things abstractly and destroy them with equal abstraction. Anyway, this makes the Kindle the logical next step – a mass-produced, highly edited device that has little to nothing to do with our surroundings. If the Kindle can widely disseminate information that will help us to course-correct and re-connect, I’m all for it.
But really – fuck the Kindle. A book, despite and because of all its shortcomings, is an intimate, cherished object. Receiving a book from a lover, a friend, or a parent makes a book physically relevant. Can a lonely, ostracized child fall in love with a kindle? Probably, but everyone else will have one just like it. Books allow us to feel that the words they contain were written for us to discover. The Kindle pre-discovers a little too much. I don’t think that people will ever really give up on books, which means that the future of books is a class issue. If all of our information is sanitary and expedited by computer interfaces, the future of books splits in two directions — to those wealthy enough to collect and protect them, and to those too poor to afford current technology.
I think they beauty of any given object is based in its impermanence. I think people love beautiful things. As long as people keep writing (or typing) things down, there will be people making and buying books.
DSM: This interview made me realize how heavily we rely on online resources. Even wanting to learn more about you led me to Google. It felt counter-intuitive to conduct online research about a person who communicates with the world through something as charming and Arcadian as handmade books. What does Filter say about this and how is extra intimacy added to journal content as it goes from one hand to another?
JBF: Making an edition of 200 books by hand draws a fair amount of blood. In any copy of Filter, there is blood from my paper cuts and needle jabs, there are stray eyelashes and hairs caught in glue and sewn into bindings — and god knows what other microscopic parts of my body get into the books. Every copy of Filter could be used against me in court as a DNA sample, which leads me to a life relatively free of crime.
I have binding parties where people help fold the paper into signatures, tip in art, and cut out patterns — last year my friend Kate commented on this, on the many hands that carefully manipulate the interior of the books before I bind them. The books are created in a series of intimate, reflective acts. Each book becomes a separate entity, the small differences defining its character. When people are confronted with an array of the finished books, they tend to spend time looking carefully at many copies before choosing one that best reflects themselves.
When I started Filter, I wanted to give written art a worthy vessel, but I also wanted this art to end up in uncommon places. Most literary journals are read by writers, critics, librarians and teachers — but they rarely fall into the hands of those who are not already educated in poetry and short form fiction. Some of my favorite reactions to the book came from people who do not normally read poetry, but who bought the book because of its beauty and then were brave enough to read what it contained. Many of these former poetry eschewers told me that they looked up more work from people in the book, or that they began to search out more poetry. This is the most successful aspect of the intimacy of Filter, that it is able to communicate with people who are not pre-disposed to the somewhat exclusive world of writing.
DSM: Your poems have a sense of enclosure, with lines like “the city ferries me there in its palm”. It often feels like the reader is being enveloped by a place — doorways, attics, graves, eaves. And then there is a whole lot of construction and building going on — we find lines like “For you she builds a house…” and “sew together the brittle little leaves.” You use so many organic materials in your language and even invent words and terms like waneslope, fogpath, smokecertain, tugbonnet. We often hear poetry critics and essayists talk about the poem being “a made thing”. I wonder if your poems comment on that.
JBF: With the exceptions of poetry and music, most aspects of my life revolve around making things out of organic materials. I can’t help it — I see everything unraveling in reverse and I have to go back to the beginning to reconstruct it. My husband bought me a sewing machine, and after learning how to use it, I had to learn to weave fabric by hand. When I decided to start eating meat, I raised chickens and killed them. When I started painting, I had to learn how to make the paint from pure pigment. There seems to be an inherent falsehood for me in accepting all the pre-constructed things I am handed — and although I have no desire to apply these insane standards to anyone else, I can’t escape my curiosity. It seems like it would be exhausting, but I am really turned on by being able to create and destroy these little parts of the world to better understand them.
It makes sense that my poems reflect these aspects of building, making, creating. A poem is certainly a made thing — so many elements must be balanced or exaggerated before the poem can breathe on its own. That said, poems are different for me — how they are made is one mystery I would rather accept without deconstruction.
I understand communication on a very physical level. I suppose the repeating theme of enclosure simply reflects the balance of one’s self within any environment. Even in the most desolate desert, you are held together or destroyed by the things that surround you. Plus, I enjoy being held.
Sometimes I have no idea what the poems are commenting on, but I can see the place where they exist very clearly. The poem opens up its landscape and, if I am lucky enough to be paying attention when it happens, I wander in. Writing a poem feels like taking field notes in an alternate universe.
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Jennifer Borges Foster is a poet and a bookmaker, and the editor of Filter, a limited edition hand bound literary journal featuring erasures alongside unaltered poetry, prose and art. She is the recent recipient Art Patch and 4Culture grants, and was short-listed for The Stranger’s 2007 Genius Award in Literature. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, ZYZZYVA and other journals. In November 2008, several of her encaustic erasure paintings were featured in the gallery exhibition Less is More: the Poetics of Erasure at Simon Fraser University Gallery in Vancouver B.C. Jen wishes to extend a special thanks to Kate Lebo for all of her help.
