ABP- Thank you for taking this interview, Alise. This past Spring, ABP had the privilege of publishing your poetry collection, ‘A Psalm For The Weary’. What can you tell us about this book? What was the writing process like.
AV- This book is a collection of poems I wrote through Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests happening in the summer of 2020. I was so upset by what I was seeing and I didn’t know what to do or how to make sense of it all. When I can’t make sense of all the heavy feelings I start writing poems, to get my thoughts in some type of order, to determine how I really feel. The book expanded after the overturning of Roe V. Wade and it just felt like such a miserable time and chaotic place and I needed to remind myself of the point of things. So this book was essentially me writing through a lot of pain and anger and grief and trying to find hope through it, in the midst of all that chaos. There’s a line in the book that talks about the whale that returned to the Hudson during the Pandemic and that felt hopeful to me and there’s this image in another of a seagull floating on tumultuous waves, I say, “I am amazed how it becomes one with the wave and still floats” and that felt like the crux of the whole collection. It’s those images that keep reminding me we are still here. This was my psalm for all our collective weariness. It was also a call to rise up as a people and resist. To come together. There is another prose piece in the collection I love called A New Kind of Anarchy where I say, “Who else but punk fucks could love as hard as we do?” I think that despite the heavier subject matter in the book, that is the ultimate goal after having written it: to call out the injustices and fight back through the chaos, to still believe in hope, to love harder.
ABP- Can you share a poem from “A Psalm For The Weary’ with us here?
AV– Sestina for the Right to Life
Silence equals death
I see the refugees, stitching closed their lips
The image becomes protest
Stitch means the last bit of a thing, it also means bring
Together. Like how the Egyptians believed they’d be in an after-life
But first, against a feather, the heart must be weighed
How would your heart weather if it were to be weighed?
Isn’t it enough that we will grow old and ill and meet death,
Shouldn’t we love madly and sing loudly fully embracing life?
If no one listens to what drips from our lips
What good is the mouth for, what would the tongue bring?
Once the soul passes on the body remains. The vessel, a protest.
We stand defenseless in protests
Rubber bullets and tear gas, the trampling of bodies, how heavy hypocrisy weighs
Cops and their blue duty to serve and protect who are they protecting? When those cops bring
In a black man or woman they meet their death
No deaths for the white shooters with their smug, privileged lips
Who deserves this pursuit of happiness, this liberty, their life?
The huddled masses are fighting for their lives
Hospital beds scream against mass graves in protest
Forgotten prayers tumble from lapsed Catholic lips
No stars pull at our hair- only crows, pulling at our bones, it’s all so heavy
This march toward death
When he comes, with what would he bring?
Death comes for all of us but no one appreciates the gift he brings
Reminder of our mortality, bittersweet brevity of life
There is so much to be learned from death
How to be like the blaze of sun that protests
Dusk. When the legs that keep you treading grow heavy
In empty waters watch how the humpback whale returns to the Hudson, hope on his lips
There is so much still to snip the stitches through lips
A woman stands triumphant above this city begging you to bring
Her your dreams, though the sorrows endured have made the bag heavy
There is still so much burgeoning life
The roots claw through the sidewalks in protest
The seedling persists silently objecting to its death
We will keep objecting the death oppression brings
Every kiss we throw away from cracked, chapped lips pleading for life
Smile in protest, the muscles fighting against the aching jaw and the heaviness.
ABP- Are you working on anything now? Any plans for 2024?
AV- I just released two new chapbooks this summer Tender is the Body with Querencia Press, which is a collection about embracing pleasure and not apologizing for it and Maenads of the 21st Century with dancing girl press, which deals with patriarchy and girlhood. Another book is currently in the works and I hope to see that come 2024.
ABP- Who is your favorite artist? What is your favorite book?
AV- My favorite artist…. There are too many! If we’re talking poets I really love Sonya Vatomsky, Claire Schwartz and Caylin Capra-Thomas. Yesika Salgado and Olivia Gatwood of course. Miriam Kramer and Chimen Georgette Kouri are ones to watch out for as well. TJ McGowan, Dave Seter and Dimitri Reyes also. My Favorite book is The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. And I have a special place in my heart for The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Highly recommend anything by Olivia Laing whose book Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency inspired poems in A Psalm for the Weary.
ABP- What is the art/lit scene like in New Jersey?
AV- It is thriving! If you look up @njpoetryrenaissance on Instagram you will see the movement that has taken over Jersey. Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, Long Branch, Red Bank, Asbury Park and as far down as Tuckerton and Hammonton. Poets like Don Krypton, Damian Rucci, Ras Heru, Chris Rockwell, Cord Moreski, Mychal Mills and Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal have been putting in so much work hosting and creating spaces for poets and the like to come out and share their work. I am beyond grateful to have performed with them and to be given a space behind their microphones. I think people seek out these spaces for art and poetry and music. There are galleries, like Over the Moon Art Studio in Asbury constantly hosting events and we have things like the Smithville Art Walk and Art Club Hammonton and the Paterson Poetry Festival. It’s needed and I’m happy to see and be a part of its blossoming.
ABP- What can you tell us about Maenads of the 21st Century?
AV- Maenads was inspired by the Bacchae. There is a quote, “You did not know me when you should have.” And that struck me as a woman. Society likes to make as if it has women figured out and the Bacchae makes as if women are just crazy and weren’t driven to madness, Dionysus was to blame for the actions of the Maenads in my opinion and Patriarchy is to blame for what women have to endure. All of the poems in the book are about fighting back against that patriarchy. Fighting for the women who no longer can. I have poems I dedicated to Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard so they wouldn’t be forgotten. Sadly two names among many who go unnamed. The collection is also about girlhood and the fear that goes into girlhood. But ultimately the power of a woman. The last poem, If I were Eight I’d Tell You, the last line goes, “We are the answers to everything.”
ABP- Thank you again for being a part of our 2023, Alise. If there is anything else you want to share, announce, promote, or anything else, please do.
AV- thank you for taking a chance on me and putting out A Psalm for the Weary! Anyone interested in any of the books mentioned above can reach out to me via Instagram: Alise0x for signed copies or please support the presses directly. Next month I have an event in Burlington which I will post the details of to my feed. Connect with me!
Alien Buddha Press 