Grieveland, 2020

Latimer’s debut book of poetry, ZOETROPE, is out August 8th 2020. Emilie Kneifel sat down with him to discuss pink, the embodiment of punctuation, whether doors close, and who lets a poem be political.

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EMILIE KNEIFEL: tell me about pink.

KEVIN LATIMER: it’s my favourite colour. it’s also a betrayal of masculinity, which, as a Black and queer man, i try to subvert a lot. so pink as in queerness, and pink as in a sense of letting go of something. 

you also use it to describe the opposite of letting go, i guess? is that the body? like when “pinkness / hangs.” the strangeness of a body. i’m thinking about all the necks and knees. body parts. disembodied body parts. 

as a unit of exposure, yeah. i try to pick body parts that crack or snap. or this feeling in the real world of being heavy and stuck, in contrast with space where everything is sort of loose and free. 

right. like the space between your bones expanding. next: exclamation points. i feel like they introduce the awareness of an audience at the most basic level, the idea of reactions to what occurs in the poems. 

in a way of feeling, yes. it lets you know that this thing is serious, or this thing is something that you should pay attention to. beyond that, i just like the way it looks. it sort of looks like a body. this is a larger point towards punctation as sort of as a visual effect. it looks more concrete. using ampersand, for example, there’s something about the way it looks. it visualizes to me something actually being there. i guess that goes along with where the eye wanders. punctuation is a place where the eye stops. 

that is so exciting, because i told devin gael kelly recently that the ampersands in “vertigo” make me see people and balloons. wow. i feel like i’ve unlocked the kevin latimer experience. i’m wondering about that idea of stopping, and also velocity. there’s one poem, “swallow me, sky,” where you’re like, “say all the following, slowly.” can you talk more about that? [pulls up the poem] there’s an exclamation point too. how ideal.

i think movement was one of the most important things i focused on in the book. a lot of the poems sort of move in a way where you don’t really know where place is. the exclamation point after “the sky opens suddenly / and the sky goes to hell” is a sort of a break point, the first concrete place where you’re in a scene and you know you need to stay there. there’s a lot of places where the punctuation is wrong on purpose, and it’s a sort of jarring point. sort of a break in the rhythm and the movement. 

hm. like when someone in a play stomps their foot and it jolts you. the other really interesting use of punctuation is how you begin a line with a period. i want to know what you feel like that’s up to.

it’s a way to denote space. or denote that you’re in the specific space. when i use periods at the beginning of a line, i don’t use them at the end of a line, sort of as an opposite to stopping. i always try to give periods in each poem their own rule. i think in “last dispatch at the end of the world,” all the periods are used for scene placement or an action happening. but in other poems, they’re used as a point of starting, or a point where a character begins. 

that’s so smart. i want to know about the “is this weird?” in “moratorium on flight and fame.” you’re doing a lot of world-building in this book, but there’s also a lot of snapping back into “the world,” the world being a place where one is perceivable, and maybe how that differs from the experience of being a child. 

i think the snapping back moments disorient you from this world that is illogical by nature but that you’re starting to see as logical. there’s things that don’t make sense, or are not normal, but at this point in the book you’ve come to accept them. the “is that weird?” is telling you that you shouldn’t accept this. it’s letting you know that, one, i am unreliable and, two, the world you’re living in inside this book is unreliable. 

right. right. so even the reader isn’t safe from the pitfalls of the world. the reader can fall through as well. 

yeah. i want you to know that this is a play or that this is something that’s happening on a stage. 

i’m excited to hear that you’re thinking of it as a play. i was worried that i was just doing that because i know you write plays. but you are thinking of it as a staging of sorts?

it was intentional in that way. the spectacle is sort of there before, in that i want you to see it but you’re not forced to. by the end, in the last section of the book after the credits, i’m telling you you’re in a play. 

right, exactly, you see the light fixtures. okay. kevin. what are the necessary elements for a world?

i think intention is the most important thing. this world has to exist for a reason. before you start thinking about the characters or the situation, it’s “what is the main function of this world?” “what are the triggers that make this world function?” so, for example, i chose plays because there’s this universal “you’re on a stage” sort of thing. but then what you think isn’t possible on a stage is happening on a stage, and that doesn’t make any sense! so i think about a world that is uniquely mundane, and using very concrete things in a way that shouldn’t be possible. 

that use of what we might call absurdity, or the juxtaposition of things, is happening on multiple levels, the first of which is obviously content, deer holding guns, and the second of which is on the level of form. the repetition and the splits, if i may call them that, feel like a similar kind of twist, where you’re doing something– “on purpose” is what i want to say, even though that’s wrong. do you have thoughts anywhere around that?

the intention was to see how far the limbs in this illogical world could stretch. to find that little space where what is improbable now becomes probable, because i’m telling you so. maybe through content, or me changing how the page is moving. i wanted to try to figure out what this idea of spectacle can be stretched to, and how tactile can i make sound. 

you’re almost lifting form to the level of content by giving it this dense texture. like, rather than being the receptacle or whatever, it’s another character in the play. 

yeah. or another stage.

do you think meaning changes when something is repeated over and over again? or is something other than meaning moving through it? or do you think there is something to the incessance of repetition that requires one to stop, and for nothing to move?

i think the latter. the intention of the 137 shots in the space opera poem is to show how long it takes to reload 137 shots. i think there’s something tactile in the way the mouth moves that makes you register how long this is taking. and in terms of the “my boy is dead,” it’s just how much grief repeats itself, and becomes this single-minded thing that sort of engulfs everything else. so repetition is mostly used when i want to, one, sort of beat this into your head and, two, put you into the emotive state in which this is happening.

i feel like the “livingliving” repetition is a different kind of movement. would you agree with that? because it’s not existing in that same block of text, there’s room for something else?

in the original publication, it’s this sort of house, but i thought it would be interesting to contrast the living that’s sort of moving with the judgment that’s coming. it makes you realize that this thing is ending. then, by the time it’s over, you get these tactile things that you can’t do anymore.  

can we talk about scope and zooming in and out? i think we’ve talked about speed in a horizontal or linear sense of the word, but i’m wondering about the z axis, or access, of miniatures and giants in your poems. 

i think it just goes back to the title of zoetrope. the intention is that these are many different stories and many different characters in their own very small worlds that can, at any time, zoom out to something bigger. the way stories affect me on my physical heart level, or on a societal level. and i’m also really curious about this alternate way of telling story, the illogical nature of it. trying to take away the assumption of what is normal in this world. because nothing is, unless i state it is, or let it be that way. 

i’m thinking about the line in “a poem turned political” when you say “this poem is political because i let it.” you were just talking about letting a poem be normal, and i’m wondering if there’s almost something nonchaotic about the illogic or the absurdity of your world, that something about them is nonchaotic because we know that they are artificial. can we talk about natural disasters? i’m just thinking about the destruction of that world. 

i got really interested in God’s plagues. how they were so small and tactile. locusts are really interesting to me. and the contrast yet the sameness of natural disasters and disasters inside your own body. in terms of something falling apart but the rest staying the same. or how the body reacts to its own disasters in terms of the setting of the bigger disaster.

that’s what i love about how you use natural disaster, or just the weather– it’s always attached to the body. “i kissed the homies”’s “muddy tongues like fresh rain” or what the twister in “this tuesday in kansas” does to the bodies of the people trying to put out the fire.

the idea of a sort of threat too. what i think is really interesting is not so much fear of the disaster, but fear of what disaster will do to the body. how we use the world as a standard bearer for what’s normal. what happens when disasters are happening inside of yourself, but the world is also in a state of disaster? 

that’s good. that’s really good. and the way they crack differently, or how different things crack them.

yeah. but also they end in the same way, in terms of this thing opening up. 

the wavering door. 

that’s my favourite image in the book. 

am i allowed to ask about it?

yes, feel free.

you can pick one of these, but: where is it, or what is it made of, or is it closed now, or where is it going, or what was before it, or is there a window in it? 

the idea is that the door will always be wavering, but the real question is what’s behind it. and in this poem [“something about the pink sky”] particularly, the whole idea is this obsession, and coming to the understanding that you’re not getting what you want, but you’re getting something else. i think i really wanted to personify how love sweeps someone up like a tornado, and then trying to hold onto what is real. the mail box, for example, is this idea of grounding. and taking that away with the wavering door. it’s holding onto this image you have in your mind, but being open to what the alternate could be.  

how is that related to the wavering door in the last sentence of the postscript?

one, it answers the question of whose hand i’m brushing for. two, it makes the zoetrope come back full circle. the door never closes, because the questions that i’m asking don’t get answered, and these emotions that i’m feeling, in terms of this obsession or this idealized version, don’t go away. it just sort of circles back around, and something or someone else opens the door and walks into the room. whether that’s my mother, or God, or me, or the deer. 

it definitely feels like the door is always open, and there’s always something passing through it. it reminds me of doors in kitchens.

i like that. it’s just this sort of accepting that you don’t have an answer to the question, or that you don’t know what’s going to come through the door, just that something always will. i’ve been thinking a lot about the question of what is this book for, what i was doing when i started writing it three years ago, when i was 23, and writing it now, when i’m 26. all these experiences i think i struggled with a lot. 

the graph at the end of “the last dispatch,” where it’s like “blk boy / how do you deal / with grief? // on my knees?” i really fumbled around with the question mark. originally it didn’t have it there, but it felt like i was answering the question. this is just one way in which i just don’t know, but i’m realizing it’s not working.

what’s not working?

the way of grieving. or in the case of this poem, the way of not accepting grief. 

how do you understand those graphs? 

in terms of a speaker, me talking to God. it’s just a voice in my mind, i think. it takes over the page because it takes over like an anxious thought. me trying to figure out what is wrong and what the solution is, and me realizing in every case there’s no one answer or the answer is what i want it to be.

in the sense of self-determination, or?

less self-determination, more that the answer changes so frequently. or in terms of: this is a passing thought that seems to be correct at this moment in time.

right. right. okay. i see. whatever you put into the bubble that day is correct. 

yes. or in the rules of this world, this is how i see this being correct. like, i think the idea in the “on my knees?” part is penance, but i’m realizing that it’s not working and that denying it doesn’t make it go away.

i feel like that brings us back to our question about letting chaos exist in a constructed world. 

here we are.

we’ve landed. hello houston. i guess maybe that’s where the chaos gets let in, because you have no choice. because even in the most constructed of worlds that’s a question you don’t have an answer to. 

i guess in terms of chaos just being an accepted part of life, or learning to accept these chaoses as a part of life. because i don’t want it to be this despair thing where you can’t change it and it’s inevitably going to happen. more of a thing where how do all of these whirlwinds survive in your body.

right. right. i didn’t mean to imply despair. i’m actually thinking the opposite, which is that you are still the constructor of the world, so you get everything else. you get to decide that Black boys drive comets and that they fly. everything is available to you. but even as the constructor of the world, there are still limits to your own–

yes. exactly. yes. 

can we talk about that line?

which line?

“the poem is political because i let it.” i’m curious about the idea of you or the speaker or the constructor of these worlds’ agency over what does and does not fly — literally — in this world.

first of all, changing the idea of what a political poem can and cannot be, and doing that on a micro level in the way that it affects a Black boy’s body. how do i make you care about this thing? i think the way to do it is by opening it up and letting you know that the tactile thing it’s affecting is my body, and my mother. using that at the end of a line opens it up and sort of focuses it in a way that gives the permission that this is now a political poem. 

how old do you feel you are?

a child, indeterminate age. anywhere between eight in some places and sixteen in some places. an age where discovery is confusing.

in which physical places are you those ages?

with my mother, i am very young and very confused about the nature of her illness. her death, though that occurred when i was 23, feels like i was younger because of the confusion. there are places, like “in poem turned political,” where i am older than that. it becomes an understanding of control, so i see myself as older. there are places, like “last dispatch from my dying mouth,” in which i feel dead, in the way that i have accepted that this is happening, and i feel like all the ages, and i’m asking all the questions all at once.  

is that what being dead feels like? being all the ages all at once?

yes. 

is there milk in space?

i think there’s everything in space.

how does a deer hold a gun?

typically using its mouth.

what is your relationship to reality?

present. often confused, but always accepting. 

would you close the wavering door?

can i tear down the wavering door? i’d like to tear down the wavering door. and i guess not in a way where it doesn’t exist, but in a way where it sort of spreads so everything is wavering.

what would you do with the door after you took it down?

i think i would just leave it there. the door would just sit on the ground in perpetuity.

it just kind of sleeps there.

dust everywhere. zoom out of what’s behind it.

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KEVIN LATIMER is a poet & playwright from Cleveland, Ohio. he is the founder & co-editor-in-chief of BARNHOUSE & co-organizer of grieveland, a poetry book project. His plays have been produced by convergence-continuum & recent poems can be found in jubilat, Poetry Northwest, Passages North, Hobart, & elsewhere. he really likes Nickelback.

EMILIE KNEIFEL is a poet/critic, editor at The Puritan/Theta Wave, creator of PLAYD8s/CATCH, and also a list. find ’em at emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiá:ke, hopping and hoping.