We tend to call something an “experiment” if it satisfies either of two conditions. One, it has the properties we associate with lab science: controlled conditions, hypotheses about what might eventuate, careful observation—everything associated with “scientific method.” Two, it has none of these properties explicitly and we distance expectations from ourselves by calling something “a leap in the dark,” “a flyer,” “a long shot,” or “a throw of the dice.”

Still, everything we do is an experiment of sorts. For example, in raising children, from day one, we haven’t a clue how they’ll respond to us. We watch, perpetuate what works, go back to the drawing boards on what doesn’t. We adapt, monitor the process, attend to outcomes, adapt again when what works ceases working. The same applies getting to know anyone, including yourself; being a teacher or student; a shrink or patient. Life is a long series of experiments. They become leaps in the dark when we cease being conscious of who we are and why we’re doing things.

In summer, we went to Cape Cod. I remembered another summer when one night, after a morning of digging clams, the sky turned blood red. Would I ever see a sky like that again? We returned to the same beach, by day and by night, but not every day or every night. The old magic returned, but not solely by chance. I had to position myself to find the right angles, to watch the human actors perform against the background of moored ships and evolving sky. But, without movement, we can’t appreciate stillness. If we fail to watch for unintended changes in our ability to capture a phenomenon—in words, in pictures, in sounds—in this case, the effects of the rising and falling sun on the beach and its waters, we can’t experience surprise at the unintended. That is an essential aspect of any experiment: being alert for the unintended and, if negative, finding ways to prevent it and, if positive, capitalizing on it. Whether we engage in deliberate behavior or spend much of our lives “winging it,” we’re living a series of experiments, some more consciously than others.

 

 

 

After retiring in early 2015 from a career in public health research, Jim Ross experimented by using creative activities to resuscitate his long-neglected right brain. Pleased with the experience, he perpetuated, and adapted. He’s since published over 50 pieces of creative nonfiction, several poems, and 180 photographs in over 60 literary magazines in North America, Europe, and Asia. He and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of four toddlers—split their time between Maryland and West Virginia.  

 

Bombay Gin’s graduate editor Gabri-EL Dawkins hand-picked a writer whom she deeply admires to indulge in an interview with, about the theme of our upcoming issue #44 of Bombay Gin, “a constellation of ghosts.” See what insight the creative Janice Lee has on the topic, in their conversation below!

Janice Lee is a writer, artist, editor, designer, curator, and scholar. Interested especially in the relationships between metaphors of consciousness, theoretical neuroscience, and experimental narrative, her creative work draws upon a wide variety of sources. Her obsessive research patterns lead her to make connections between the realms of technology, consciousness studies, the paranormal & occult, biological anthropology, psychology, & literary theory. She writes about the filmic long take, slowness, interspecies communication, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, and the concept of han in Korean culture, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? 

(taken from writer’s website, http://www.janicel.com)

 

Gabri-EL Dawkins: Who do you admire in the literary/writing world and why?

Janice Lee: So many people, but ones that immediately come to mind at this particular moment in time: Porochista Khakpour & Lidia Yuknavitch, both of whom I admire for so many reasons, not only because they are brilliant writers, but they are vulnerable, brave, generous, visible, hopeful, inspiring, and real. Chiwan Choi & Michael Seidlinger, who are both tireless in the ways they continue to support and believe in the literary community and small press publishing.

GD: How does their work influence yours? What/who else influences your work?

JL: I’m constantly pushed by writers such as them, and others, to not be afraid to be open and vulnerable in my writing, to be okay with what may be articulated in moments of honesty. I think about intimacy and openness, about redemption and truth, about who is reading because they can and who isn’t reading because they can’t.

GD: In what ways do you engage with the idea of ghosts, constellations (could be literal or figurative), and lineage in regards to your writing?

JL: Ghosts have to do with haunting, have to do with questioning, have to do with relating. We often think about ghosts in popular culture as staying in our world because they have “unfinished business,” though of course, it is not the ghosts that have unfinished business with us, it is us that have unfinished business with them. So there are questions like, what am I haunted by and what have I inherited? But also, who am I today? Who was I yesterday? I like to think about Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity—that there are moments in space and time where and when the physical world becomes a text to be read and interpreted, where and when the event is structured not by casual networks of matter but by symbolic references producing meaning. Jeffrey Kripal relates these processes of writing and reading to paranormal processes, coining the phrase “authors of the impossible.” It is this reaching for impossibility that for me unites the “beyond” haunting metaphysics and a personal writing practice that attempts to articulate what happens inside of silences and dreams, what happens when we face our ghosts or turn away from them. Grace Cho asks, “Why study a ghost at all?” From her book Haunting the Korean Diaspora: “Hauntings are not rare supernatural occurrences but, more often, the unexamined irregularities of everyday life… Like the shadowy thing that lives in empty spaces, haunting is a phenomenon that reveals how the past is in the present…”

GD: Why “the apocalypse?” What keeps you drawn to the idea of it?

JL: “We are living in the apocalypse. The first moment of life was the first moment of the apocalypse and death. Please, don’t fear the apocalypse.” This quote by Lazslo Krasznahorkai, is one that really resonates with me, this idea that we are already and have always been living in the apocalypse. The apocalypse, for me, is sort of an anticipatory state. Krasznahorkai also talks about birth as a journey towards failure, this inevitable journey that becomes the life in which we live, bookmarked by these two events in time. So for me, the apocalypse isn’t about a singular event. It may still happen. It may happen tomorrow. But what is interesting to me is how anticipation becomes habitual, how redemption seems impossible, and that real human impulses aren’t always generous but sometimes ugly and uncomfortable and vile. I’m interested in exploring all of this in writing.

GD: Can you speak more about the concept of han in Korean culture? In what ways do you think those concepts weave into American culture (if at all)?

JL: The definition I look to a lot is this one:
“A feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one’s guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong—all these combined.” — Suh Nam-dong

Because han signifies more than just historical trauma, there is also the presence of an unresolved corporeal history and the impossibility of articulation or expression in relation to questions of authenticity, historical accuracy, individual subjectivity, lived/embodied experience, loss, shame, guilt. Even the Korean language and alphabet were conceived out of violence and trauma. So even though it is a culturally specific concept, I think there is something here related to the inheritance of trauma more generally, the silences and pain we inherit from our parents, the ways in which we learn to reconcile our invisible pasts with our visible bodies, and how history challenges the limits of language.

GD: In a single sentence for each of the following works you’ve written and published thus far: KEROTAKIS, Daughter, Damnation, Reconsolidation, and The Sky Isn’t Blue, briefly describe what you’ve learned (about yourself, how you read your work, your writing/editing process, etc.).

JL: KEROTAKIS – that a question can be both a beginning and end.

Daughter – that excavation and investigation can take many forms.

Damnation – that there is no redemption, or maybe there is, but that’s not the point.

Reconsolidation – that we are haunted not because the ghosts linger, but because we ask them to stay.

The Sky Isn’t Blue – that intense beauty & absolute devastation can be simultaneous.

GD: What theories have you come up with in regards to your question: “how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy?”

JL: Theories? None really, just that it is possible and worth reaching towards. That it is all worth reaching towards.

 

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Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She is Editor of the imprint #RECURRENT for Civil Coping Mechanisms, Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Assistant Editor at Fanzine, and recently helped launch (w/ Maggie Nelson) SUBLEVEL, the new online literary magazine based in the CalArts MFA Writing Program. 

Daniel Battigalli-Ansell is a poetic contributor to our upcoming issue of Bombay Gin. He is a poet, rapper, and spiritual student. Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, he moved to Colorado to attend Naropa University where he graduated with degrees in Religous Studies and Traditional Eastern Arts: Tai Chi Chuan. With far-reaching influences, from Nas to Rumi, he draws verbal pictures to captivate the ear and mind. His work ranges a spectrum of content touching on personal, cultural, spiritual, and political themes. Whether on the page or on the mic, this self-defined “word wizard” embraces the power of language to make meaning and convey feeling.

Keep an eye our for his poem Hazrat in Bombay Gin #44.

ERICA HOLLAND: How long have you been writing?

DANIEL BATTIGALLI-ANSELL: The interview answer is I’ve been writing since 4th grade, we had this poetry project and I still remember the first line, which was “Do fiery asteroids break time?” When I was like 9! I still remember something clicked inside of me… I was just like “Woah!” Just creating a thought that I had never thought before, that doesn’t even make sense, but does something to your mind, it takes you somewhere! But that’s kinda bullshit. I really started really writing when I was about 15. I started writing spoken word pieces. When I was 20 I really started getting into slam poetry and knew that’s what I wanted to do, it was awesome, and that’s when I really started writing.

 

EH: Anne Waldman and Ginsberg, the founders of the Kerouac School were amazing performance poets… and all of yours is so spiritually inspired, I am so happy I could interview you for this!

 

DB: I think it’s kinda funny, I always feel like I’m too poetic for rap, and too “rap” for poetry.

 

EH: I love it. I really love the line in your “Skeleton Closet” poem. There was a line in there, “I don’t need pity / pithy pissy poetry is my replacement for crying.” I could hear you say it when I read it, and I think that’s an awesome example of conveying your “rap” voice to a reader. It’s almost impossible not to read aloud. You do a lot of hip-hop and spoken word performance. What’s the difference between hip-hop and written poetry? How do you decide between something spoken versus something printed?

 

DB: I think they basically have different aspects, spoken word can have a whole different realm of intention, rhythm, cadence, how you’re saying things. In spoken, you can create that paradox where you create a tone that isn’t normally fitting to the words you’re saying. I think spoken word has an easier way of expressing words, I’ll perform poems differently based on how I’m feeling.

 

EH: Some poetry is just meant to be performed.

 

DB: I’m really influenced by Sufi poetry, and that was a huge trend, Sufi poets would always but their poetry to music, make their poetry into songs. I don’t think it’s new at all. If you look back into king’s and queen’s courts, and they had musicians playing the harp, and all types of instruments, while the poet was reading or singing their poetry. It’s natural. Allen Ginsberg – I don’t think you can really appreciate his poetry until you hear him read it out loud, it’s so good when he reads it; the page has a different way of expressing things. The page provides its own mediums of conveyance, and spoken word allows for different things. I feel that poetry is meant to be read aloud. I think there’s poetry that doesn’t even sound good or convey itself properly strictly on the page. If you give me any poem I’m not just gonna read it like a book, I read it like there is a voice behind it, and I think that’s one of the skills of page poets, being able to convey a really strong voice without the use of a voice in the physical sense. When I write poetry on a page, I already have a concept of how I would speak it, and I want to bring the reader into that.

 

EH: How do you go about writing? Do you take a lot of notes and then put them together, or do you just sit down and bang it out?

 

DB: It depends. Sometimes poems come really quickly. I just feel some impetus, some stirring inside of me. A lot of the times it’s subconscious or unconscious, a lot of times a first line will come to me and then I just sit down and it comes out. Other times, I’ll start writing and write it over a few days. It’s usually never fragments of things, it’s just sitting down and letting it come. Sometimes there’s some editing, but rarely very much.

 

EH: If a lot of it is subconscious or unconscious, do you feel like you learn a little bit about yourself when you see what comes out?

 

DB: That’s why I love poetry, because it’s revelatory. For me it’s the big difference between normal writing (like when I’m writing an essay or a blog post where it’s something I already know) and poetry. Poetry feels like it’s revealing something to me. Lines will come and I don’t necessarily even know what they mean, or they have a multifaceted meaning. One of the poems I gave you is lots of latent material and dark feelings, just finding expression, so it’s very cathartic — a release. At different times, like with my Hazrat poem, it feels as though another voice is speaking through me, and I just channel that, like I’m not even the voice. My muse writes, I don’t write, I just channel.

 

EH: And you weren’t a lit major, correct?

 

DB: I was not a lit major. I’ve never taken a poetry class. I majored in Religious Studies and Traditional Eastern Arts. Religious poetry has influenced me a lot, and I’ve thought a lot about what Hazrat Inayat Khan says, “Not all poetry is prophecy, but all prophecy is poetry.” Any truly inspired writing or scripture is poetic. The freedom of poetry to juxtapose meaning and words, and create concepts that seem impossible, helps bring about the paradoxical truths of religion and spirituality. In the Zohar, there’s this famous line talking to the emanation of creation, “in a single point, it both broke through and did not break through its aura.” That whole book is incredibly poetic, like, “A high holy king, adorned with adornments, gushed its flows through the ethers.” Reading it is poetry, and I think it just comes out like that because truth is spirally. Poetry is spirally.

 

EH: Let’s talk about our theme, “A Constellation of Ghosts.” One definition of ‘haunt’ is ‘to visit habitually or to appear to frequently.’ What haunts you?

 

DB: Using that definition, it’s a conglomeration of positive and negative things. Fears, regrets, and practical situations that are difficult keep recurring. Bills haunt me [laugh]. But also, things like love haunt me. Truth is the biggest thing that haunts me, the search for truth. Trying to live transparently to what is really true, and not just what I want to believe, is always disrupting my egoic plan. And then obviously there are actual ghosts that haunt me. Demons. The normal things that you would think of. Passion haunts me… I’ll be going to bed, but I just can’t because I need to write. It won’t go away.

 

EH: So you have happy ghosts, too? What’s a happy ghost? I feel like love isn’t always a happy ghost, or truth, because they’re such a struggle.

 

DB: Oh they’re not always happy ghosts. Joy haunts me. It comes up, even in the darkest of moments. It’s definitely been a recurring experience of sinking to depths of darkness and sadness or anger and really sticking with it and feeling it fully, and then it spontaneously transforming into joy. I have a hypothesis to support it, supported by lots of teachings, that joy is our natural state. No matter what’s happening, it’s a joy to exist and to be alive. I get bogged down by all types of fetters, but joy keeps coming up — in dark alleyways and black holes.

 

EH: That sounds like Trungpa’s teaching of basic goodness… so it sounds like you’re saying we could be haunted by our own true nature. It keeps trying to show up in between all the shit we try to cover it up with.

 

DB: Yeah exactly. I think a lot of times we build up so many walls and close ourselves off from our true nature so expertly that we can’t necessarily say our true nature haunts us, because in a certain way we just closed it. A false self and false walls will never truly feel right, because deep inside of us we always know how we really are, and there’s a part of us that hasn’t forgotten, no matter how lost we are. I think it haunts us in that way, but it “haunts” us as a more general feeling of angst or anxiety because we know. It’ll keep poking at us, but I think it’s different if you’re consciously deconstructing those walls, or at least open enough to experiencing truth or true nature.

 

EH: You think your poetry is an expression of your true nature, or a cathartic way for you to get back to it?

 

DB: Both. I really try to not hold myself in any type of state, positive or negative, deep or superficial. I feel like different poetry comes from different places. Some poetry is just very neurotic and it’s expressing neuroses, and some poetry feels like it’s coming from a very deep, wise place that, like I said, doesn’t even necessarily feel like me, it feels like God or something speaking through me. Poetry can be from a contracted place, or an expanded place, from a place of insight, or a place of neurosis. I feel like poetry is just a means to express the entire spectrum of thoughts and feelings. I think that’s something I struggle with as a writer, wanting to be true, and speak truth, and yet at the same time realizing truth is so multifaceted and there are different truths and different perspectives even within a single day. What my truth is can be changing. If I’m standing in line at the DMV, my truth right there is that I’m fucking annoyed that these systems are so inefficient, so I can write a poem that’s just angry rambling against skyscrapers and inefficient paper-people and whatever. And then there can be a moment of really deep peace and solace, and verse could come out of that. So it’s really about trying to represent what feels accurate in the moment, because there are no words that could ever really be the absolute truth. It’s only ever the truth from a single perspective. We have positive and negative and wise and neurotic aspects, so I try to represent all of it, and not hold a value judgment. I think for a lot of history, poetry was solely meant to be beautiful and wise and sweet, but I love poetry that’s like “fuck this, fuck coffee, fuck cigarettes, fuck the man” some Bukowski-cynical shit!” Yeah it’s cathartic, it’s maybe hyperbolic, but it’s all honest in some way.

Our Senior Editor, Alexa Chrisbacher, sat down with Shawnie Hamer to explore “the experiment,” lineage, and body and sexuality in writing.

Alexa Chrisbacher: What kind of work do you usually make?  Who are your major influences?  Do you consider your work experimental?

 

Shawnie Hamer: My work tends to lean into trauma and the female body. More specifically, because of my background/upbringing, how dominant constructions have indoctrinated my views of the self, the body, and sexuality.  The things we carry (un)knowingly. Writing about these issues is an act of activism for me, as this trauma is not always exposed. Though my writing often comes from the personal, my hope is that there is a multiplicity within the lines that many female or female identifying voices can relate to.

One of my major influences is Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body. I am fascinated how bodies interact with each other in intimate relationships. I believe there is a stigma in modern poetry circles against writing about love, and yet it is the one thing we have in common. I keep it by my bed as a constant reminder of what I hope to accomplish in my work.

Other poets that are really influencing me right now are Bhanu Kapil, Samiya Bashir, and H.D.

Also, my cohort is the biggest influence on my writing. They are brilliant and beautiful and constantly pushing me to find a strength in my writing I didn’t know was possible.

 

 

AC: Are you working on any projects right now?  What are the motivating interests/influences behind it?  What are your visions for the end result?

 

SH: I am working on two big projects right now. The first was started in Bhanu’s Architecture class. It is an experimentation of reframing the “I” and “You” of a romantic relationship through the lens of an architectural structure, more specifically a geodesic dome.

The second project is my critical thesis, which is on a topic very near and dear to me. I am exploring/inventing a term I have titled “Violation Poetics.” This term dissects masculine language, its violation of the female body, and how by creating art the female body, in turn, violates the dominant conventions. I am focusing this theory specifically to populations in conservative/rural areas of the United States. Stay tuned.

 

 

AC: How has the JKS lineage interacted with your writing and other artistic endeavors?  Do you consider yourself part of this lineage, do you think your work is in conversation with it?

 

SH: Part of the lineage of JKS is that of pushing boundaries and leaning into the fray to enact change. It is about community. It is about holding yourself and institutions accountable. In this way, I do consider myself and my work a part of this lineage.

 

 

AC: Every generation of writers is classified into a group (ie Outrider, Beat, New School, etc).  What do you think the state of writing is for this current generation of makers?  How would you and your peeps classify yourselves in the larger scope of poetics and culture?

 

SH: I think this is a tough topic to navigate for a lot of the current generation. There is a desire to be like the writers that many of us have been so influenced by, but there is also an understanding of the issues these groups had. I think it boils down to the fear every artist has had since the beginning of time… we want to be relevant. However, that being said, it’s kind of all bullshit if you really think about it. It’s an illusion. I think my peeps and I would go for the “or not” option. Why should we limit ourselves and our work to a label? We want to write. We are passionate about change. We don’t need a name for that.

 

 

SH: To participate in poetics is to be in conversation with “the experiment,” as defined by each individual and group.  To you, what experiment are you interacting with through your work, practices and creative actions?

 

AC: “The experiment” is such a broad (and sometimes overused) term in modern poetics. I have thought a lot about this and all I can say is, to me, the experiment is subjective. It’s personal. A writer can smear shit and piss over their work and be in conversation with the experiment. A writer can work with traditional sonnets and be in conversation with the experiment. Personally, I find my experiment to be following intuition. Trusting myself and my writing when it needs to go too far, or stop completely. I think the experiment is truly pushing yourself to continue to learn and expand your work. If you think you are an expert and have no need for this anymore, you are involved with the experiment.

curated by M Shea Lynch, Bombay Gin’s Marketing Co-Editor

Featuring work by: Bruce Bennett, Judith Lavelle, and Jes Lyons

A Taste of Gin Editorial Feature:

Each month (or so) Bombay Gin Literary Journal presents an online feature by one of our editorial board members. We call this: “A Taste of Gin.” These tastes give us, as editors, the opportunity to share our individual artistic and aesthetic visions. We split our Bombay Gin third-mind temporarily in order to show you the nuances, quirks, and concerns we, as an editorial board, comprise. We hope you enjoy these future tastings.

Somatic Book Review of Miranda July’s The First Bad Man

Miranda July
The First Bad Man
Scribner
$16

Before reading Miranda July’s The First Bad Man, set up an airbnb or couchsurf account. Host someone younger and more attractive than yourself, preferably of the same sex.
The night before they arrive, put on a pair of sweatpants. Sit on the sofa and eat half a box of Oreos. Feel gross.
Put on a kickboxing video. Watch it while eating a few more Oreos. Watch another. Eat more Oreos.
Open the book. It is preferred that this reading takes place in one sitting. If one is to get up, it should only be to further stuff his or her face, to further the feeling of self-disgust. Occasional longer breaks may be taken, but only if they are used to watch another kickboxing video. Or, if that gets tiring, watching Jillian Michaels is fine.
Fall asleep on the couch in your own filth.
In the morning, be sure to arrange the house or apartment very meticulously. Put everything in its place. Make sure it is spotless. Have more fitness/fighting videos on in the background while this happens. Make sure to be constantly eating junk food. This is important.
When your guest arrives, act very awkward. Eventually, start a fight. Use the moves you learned in the videos. Be jealous of how attractive they are. Feel inferior.

REVIEW BY SHY WATSON