Eleni Sikelianos TRT 56:51 [MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to Mindful U at Naropa. A podcast presented by Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. I’m your host, David Devine. And it’s a pleasure to welcome you. Joining the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions — Naropa is the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement. [MUSIC] David Devine: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Mindful U podcast. Today, we have a guest joining us in the studio today, Eleni Sikelianos. Eleni is a poet, a writer and a Master of mixing genres. She grew up in the earshot of the ocean in a small coastal town near Santa Barbara, and has since lived in San Francisco, New York, Paris, Athens Boulder and Providence. She is deeply engaged with eco-poetics. Her work takes up an urgent concerns of environmental precarity and ancestral lineages. She has written 10 books within her career, and so we’d like to welcome her to the podcast. Thank you for joining us today. How are you? Eleni Sikelianos: I’m good. Thanks so much for having me. David Devine: Yeah. And what’s really cool about you is your husband was just in the studio last week, so if — this is the first time I got to do like a wife and husband combo. Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, nice. David Devine: And you both are similarly in the same world of like writing and poetics, so this feels really nice to have like the combo come in. So thank you for joining us. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, cool. David Devine: And so to get started, what I’m curious about is, could you tell our audience a little bit about your upbringing with higher education, and you’re a writer, you’re a poet, you — you work in mixed genre, you said. And I’m wondering where did the passion come from? So like, where did your educational experience start? Where did you go to school at and did you have that passion to become a writer then? Or did it come later in life? You know, just tell us about your journey a little bit. Eleni Sikelianos: Sure. Well, I guess one thing is, is like education actually starts as soon as we’re born, probably even before. So just thinking about all the way — David Devine: Oh, ok. Eleni Sikelianos: Just thinking about all the ways that we’re educated about the world, you know? And yeah, and I was born into a very non traditional family, like a few generations of non traditional people. My mom’s mom was a burlesque dancer who was doing the nightclub circuit in the 1940s and 50s. My mom grew up on the nightclub circuit, so there was that. Dad’s side of the family, his grandfather was a Greek poet, a very well known Greek poet. My great grandparents were these visionaries who are trying to bring about world peace by reenacting Delphic festivals. And then by the time my mother and father — by the time that their generation, had become a bit ragtag, but they were always, I would say, not people comfortable in the institution, not people comfortable with kind of regular modes of prescribed social beings. So that was already an education. And I grew up in California, so the education of all the plants and animals around me were pretty profound. And the kinds of cultures, you know, my friends, one of my good friends was Chumash and so forth. So, yeah, that all fed into things. And then so I myself was not a very I v you know, my dad — I wrote a book about my dad called the Book of John. He was running around the country. He was a drug addict. He was a musician. He was homeless some of the time. I didn’t grow up with him too much. My mom, we were on welfare. We — it was not like, okay, you know, let’s train you up to get to the best schools. David Devine: Not this was traditional upbringing. Eleni Sikelianos: No, not at all. Yeah, I dropped out of high school in 10th grade about, and then, luckily for me, there was a — a kind of pilot program to bring people back in, where you didn’t have to go to classes, you could kind of do things that you wanted to do and get credit for that. So that’s what I did in high school. I didn’t — I stopped — pretty much stop going to classes after, like, maybe the first few months of 10th grade. Then I — also growing up in California, there was this incredible city college program, where it was 50 bucks a year to start taking college classes, incredible system that’s so important for people who don’t have that same trajectory, you know, they’re already applying to colleges or thinking where they’re going to go by 10th grade. David Devine: What college was that? Eleni Sikelianos: It’s called Santa Barbara City College. And, you know, I don’t know how many there are in California, but there are, you know, probably a couple hundred, at least. They’re all over. Did you grow up in California, also? David Devine: Simi Valley. Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, wow. David Devine: Born and raised. Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, is there a city college there? David Devine: Moore Park Community College. Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, I know, yep, okay, cool. So I did that for I guess, let’s see, I did it for two years, and then I had saved some money from working. Had all kinds of crazy, crazy jobs, working in assisted living facilities and all kinds of things. And I had a student loan, and my dad had shown up in the picture for a little while and given me, I don’t know, maybe two thousand bucks. And I left the country, and I hitchhiked all over Greece, Turkey, England, and then I took a boat and a bus and ended up in Cairo, and I hitchhiked from Cairo to Nairobi, and that took about, I think, about eight months. So, and so I was hitchhiking and then I took a flight back to Athens and hitchhiked to Paris, and I stayed in Paris for a year. So I was out of the country for two and a half years. So that was a major part of my education, too, living on very little money. David Devine: Traveling like really rattles you in a way that sitting at a desk can’t. Eleni Sikelianos: Yes, totally 100%. I forged some papers so that I could go to school in Paris. [LAUGHS] So I studied — I had — I was taking classes in French French and French cinema and things like that there. And then, I guess in terms like, I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I remember, like, at seven years old knowing I wanted to be a writer. And my family, really, despite being so ragtag, they had such like, the best thing you could do was be an artist, a writer. They — you know, they were deep readers, but not in any academic way. But, yeah, I had kind of set it aside because I was trying to be a little bit more practical. Because, you know, I was growing up with these people who could not always feed themselves. So I was studying biology, which I loved also. But during that hitchhiking, I realized, no, I need to — what I — what I really love is writing. And hitchhiking around Crete, I had come across, in one of the, you know, just on the port, they had these stands of books, and there was a book of six modern Greek poets, which I bought. And my great grandfather’s work was in that book. And curiously, it wasn’t his work that woke me up, but a couple of other poets in that book that woke me up to the fact that I didn’t have to write novels, I could write like poetry was something you could do too. So yeah, then when I came back to the states, like two and a half, almost three years later, I saw an ad for Naropa in some literary magazine, and I recognized Anne Waldman’s name because we’re related by — there was a marriage in our families, yeah, so she’s my aunt, although nobody really ever had ever explained that, just in the sort of complete, diffuse character of my family. My dad used to send me her books, but he never said why. So I recognized her name, and I recognized, of course, Allen Ginsberg’s name. I was like, Naropa, that’s where I’m gonna go study writing! Yes! And it was a moment when Naropa, so I didn’t have a BA — David Devine: What year was this? Eleni Sikelianos: This was like — David Devine: Because if Allen is there, it’s — Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, Allen was definitely, yeah, I studied with Allen. David Devine: Like late 70s? Eleni Sikelianos: No, no, like about a decade later. So eighty — I don’t know when I first saw that ad, but I showed up at Naropa in ’88. And I didn’t have a BA but it was this great time when Susan Edwards sat down with me like, tallied up, okay, so you were hitchhiking in Africa for eight months? That’s a semester’s worth of credit. And then you studied in Paris, okay, that’s another semester. David Devine: I see what’s going on. Eleni Sikelianos: And she — yeah, yeah, totally. So I entered as a BFA student, kind of a dual BFA, MFA student, yeah? And they gave me — David Devine: So somehow you just, like, walked in with some credits. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, and you could — they could do that then. They would never do that now. So I started going to school in ’89. I came to check it out in ’88 and started going to school in ’89. And so I guess, I think I was here maybe two and a half years, and I got an a BFA and an MFA in that — David Devine: Wow. Eleni Sikelianos: Little juncture. David Devine: Okay. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. And so Allen was around, and Amiri Baraka was around, Joanne Kyger, Diane di Prima, you know, all the — all the greats. And, of course, Reed Bye, many incredible writers. I had workshops with people who became so important to me, Alice Notley, Susan Howe and so on. David Devine: Wow. So you almost had, like, an untraditional way of education. You, like — life was your education. Your family, your — your just whimsical nature of traveling. And then education, like higher education, came to the forefront, but it was Naropa, which is like not, you know — Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. Not quite traditional, yeah. David Devine: It has an higher educational path, but it’s not as traditional as a traditional education. Eleni Sikelianos: No, yeah, far from it. Yeah. David Devine: Okay. Eleni Sikelianos: I would say yeah. And then the weird thing is, I teach at Brown University now, and so it’s a strange — it’s a strange path that way. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, but what a gem. You know what I mean? Because you get to bring all those experiences to your — to your class and to your students. So it’s great. So after your educational experience and your journey, what was some of the goals that you had after graduating from Naropa? So you had a BFA, you had an MFA, and did you — did you have an idea of where you wanted to go, or did you just follow the passion of, oh, I love writing, and I want to be a writer, and then you’re a writer, but then it’s like, okay, well, now what do I do with it? Eleni Sikelianos: Well, I guess a few things. Like, when I was here, I took a class, and I can’t remember the name of it right now, but it was sort of community engagement. It wasn’t actually running when I was a student. I really wanted to do it, so I convinced them to run a class because I wanted to go teach poetry in the prisons in particular. So I did that as a class, and I went down to Canyon City with a couple of other people, including Gary, the student here. I’m not going to remember his name. Anyway, I went down with a few students, and yeah, so we went down to Canyon City, and we taught in the women’s prison and the men’s medium security, I think, poetry — writing workshops. We did that a couple times. We’d go stay for a weekend or for a few days and — and that’s because I felt pretty passionate about bringing poetry and writing, communities that might not have the opportunity to access that, or who hadn’t had traditional educations themselves, or who were blocked from education. So when I left, I knew that I wanted to keep doing that kind of work. When I left Naropa, I knew I wanted to keep doing that kind of work. And I moved back to my hometown, to Santa Barbara for maybe six months, and then I went up to San Francisco, and I worked for California poets in the schools, which is a really loose agency that helped you write grants and placed you in public schools to do creative writing workshops. David Devine: Interesting. It’s weird that they have poetry in their label, but they write grants. Because that’s like a different type of writing, I guess. Eleni Sikelianos: Well, they don’t write grants. You had to write grants to get — to pay yourself to work in a school. And often you would write it with a school. David Devine: I see. Eleni Sikelianos: So they would just help you identify grants, write the grants, and then help place you or find a school that wanted to have you. So — so I did that as well as I was poet in residence in two homeless shelters for three years. David Devine: Amazing. Eleni Sikelianos: So that was the work I did there. David Devine: Okay, nice. Eleni Sikelianos: And then I continued that in New York for six years for teachers and writers collaborative. So those were things I knew I wanted to do. And I — obviously, I was completely, and am still completely passionate about poetry and literature. So I was seriously, you know, writing and reading every day. First book came out almost as soon as I graduated. Joe Richie started a little micro press, and it was my MFE thesis, kind of reworked. That press didn’t stick around, but I’m grateful that he published that book. Another Naropa person. David Devine: That we’re out here. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. Totally — totally Yeah. And so then it was sort of — yeah, then I was living in New York, and I was working for teachers and writers collaborative, going to every single borough in New York, teaching poetry, K through 12 and adjuncting a little bit. And then a job opened up at Naropa, teaching in writing and poetic so Laird and I came and we shared that job, and we did that for maybe three years. So full time teaching writing and poetics here, and the University of Denver asked me to come teach there, and that turned into a long term thing. And then Brown took us east. So it was pretty accidental, I would say that we ended up in universities. It was not the goal, but it happened. Yeah, and now, you know, I have these incredible students, I have to figure out all the time how to be in the institution without being institutionalized. David Devine: Is it working? Eleni Sikelianos: It is, It’s, you know, it’s like, it’s a practice to keep doing that for sure. David Devine: Interesting. So what I’m curious about is, like, over your career, you’ve penned ten books now. And what I’m wondering is, how has your writing changed over that time since you, you know, maybe started your passion for writing and to where you are now, and how has your focus of content and the topic shifted? Because it sounds like you know, you were showing up in prisons, and you’re like, doing workshops and things like that. And I’m also wondering, what were you excited about when you were writing, and what first got you started to write? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: You know, because you’re — you’re talking about your journey of writing, but like, what — what was the content about? You know, you kind of loosely talked about it, but I’d love to go a little bit more and like, has that shift changed, or is it — is it stylistically and topically the same nowadays? Eleni Sikelianos: Um, no, of course not. I hope, I hope not. David Devine: Artists evolve. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, we hope, right. David Devine: This is my like trying to extract that content. Eleni Sikelianos: Um, I would say one of the biggest shifts is that, I mean, I think I always, certainly like environmental things and the natural world have always been a source for me, and they show up in the early work, and I was thinking about them in the early work, and certainly questions of justice. But I was never one to write, like straightforward political poems, but it’s always there. But the early work, I would say, was a little bit more focused on, like my emotions and my experience. David Devine: I see. It’s like self reflective. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, I would say so. I mean, always language, you want language to carry it in a way that that like heightens it or makes it you know not the ordinary way you might express that so you can feel it. So I think one of the things that poetry is doing is trying to find in language that those kinds of — that sort of intricacies of experience and emotion that ordinary language doesn’t hit. But then actually, I was working pretty early on, like let’s see, I think I had two books out, no, maybe three. And I started, I had — I actually had a dream I was living in New York City, and I had this eco disaster nightmare that was very vivid and intense, and it was all about my home state and the coast kind of crumbling under the weight of money and pollution and crowding and so forth. So I woke up and I started writing this poem, the language was coming to me in the dream, and then that turned into about a seven year journey of wanting to write about the landscape, my experience of it, the fauna, the flora. And in that process, I realized — I kept thinking of this William Carlos, William’s line that’s in his long poem, Patterson, Outside, outside myself, there is a world. So thinking about the world outside the self. You know, the self is an incredible thing, but it’s a pretty limited container. So how big could the poem be? How much of other realities could it bring in? David Devine: I don’t think a lot of people explore that too often, of like, what’s outside of myself. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. I actually think it’s a — it’s kind of a — I think it’s a an issue, a political and ethical issue, because the more we focus on the self, the more we forget the collective you know. David Devine: Yeah, yeah. We have insanely bias, I’ll say. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah totally. David Devine: We jut stick in our own head. But you know, it’s like how — it’s hard to get out of your head because, you know, you’re the — Eleni Sikelianos: Because there it is. David Devine: The occupier of it. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, totally. And it’s not that you can’t — I mean, you can’t ever totally get out of it, right? But it’s just trying to make that gesture out towards what in the world can — can come in? Well, how permeable can I make this space. So that that’s really been — like, I’ve just been writing about eco escapes and animal scapes and extinction and those kinds of things for a really long time now. I mean, I have been also doing at the same time these family histories, but I’m not the center of those stories either, actually, they are. Yeah. I mean, maybe I’ll come back to being the center of something in my own work, but I feel like I live in my brain, as you say, I’m kind of interested to figure out how to be outside of that, to get, you know, it actually came from this notion that Dante had, of all people, that you only see 10 percent of yourself on earth. How do you get to see the other 90 percent. And so for me, it’s like, if you can turn the kaleidoscope on the world a little bit, you might — you see more of the world than your own little narrow — David Devine: I see. So as a kaleidoscope is like shifting, and it’s changing its image in a fractal pattern, you get to — you get a little spark of like, oh, I’m over there too. Eleni Sikelianos: Totally. Yeah, quantum physics of the self, yeah? David Devine: You’re like, oh I’m in that triangle that just showed up in the right corner. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, which is so true just even thinking about like everything we do has so much impact on the rest of the world, right? David Devine: Yeah, I hear that. So you know you’re currently in Boulder, because you’re teaching at the summer writing program, which I used to work when you were there. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: And you’re still there. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: What I’m curious about is, how long have you been doing it. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah — David Devine: How long you’ve been teaching there for now? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, that’s, you know, I don’t, I wish I knew the year, but I came back, I think I came back as early as, like, maybe ’95 or ’96 to teach, yeah. So that’s a little — that’s a little stretch there. David Devine: So you’re OG? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, I think I am. Yeah. David Devine: Was SWP there when you were a student? Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, yeah. And it was required, you had to do three summers. It was — it was four weeks then, and it was a huge part of the MFA. David Devine: That’s probably one of their longest running programs. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, I would say. So I don’t know when the SWP itself started, but in a way, it started as an SWP. So — David Devine: For the archive. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, 100 percent for the archive. Yeah, so I did three summers as an MFA student. So four weeks, when you change, you know, each week you have a new workshop. You know, all those incredible workshops. David Devine: Yeah, and the performances are awesome because everybody like it’s the thing to do. Everybody comes together and does their poetry and then their writings, and then you see the teachers do it at the end of the week, and it’s just so rad. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, totally. When I was a student, there was also a dance program and a performance program in the summer. So there was a lot of interdisciplinarity as well. David Devine: Okay. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: That’s awesome. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, so, and then I — so I did, like, maybe every few years for a while. And then when Laird and I moved to teach here full time in 2002 then we taught almost every summer for 16 years, I would say, except for one summer when I was pregnant. I think I just gave a reading that summer. And then now I’ve been doing about every two years again since 2016 I would say. David Devine: Okay, so you’re like a staple? Eleni Sikelianos: I guess so, yeah, it is — it’s kind of a solid part of what I do. David Devine: Yeah, so it’s like something you plan. You’re like, you already got in the calendar for next year I bet? Eleni Sikelianos: Well, not next year, but maybe if it’s still going the year after, yeah, and they invite me. David Devine: I see. Eleni Sikelianos: Got to get that invitation. David Devine: True, true. So one — one thing I’m thinking about is, if I was a student and I was taking your class, what is the class title that you have? Like, what is it I would be learning in your classroom? What is the title? What is the — the style that you teach to your students? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, depends on the summer this — just this past week, I taught the class was called, Voicing Listening, and I was thinking a lot about, it’s something that I — I’ve been teaching for the past few years. David Devine: It’s like an oxymoron. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah! Well, it shouldn’t be, that’s the thing, right? And it is. I mean, I was just thinking about politically, how people started not being able to talk to each other anymore, especially during the sort of Trump Clinton race, let’s say. And, or let’s say that in quotes marks won, because he didn’t actually win. But yeah, I was just really noticing and feeling in people’s lives this polarization, and now it’s even more extreme on so many political levels where we can’t, you know, even people you — you thought that you might agree with and you don’t, and but people don’t seem to be able to talk to each other any longer if they don’t agree, in particular about — about a political situation. So yeah. David Devine: Is there like another situation that isn’t so political because — because the — the understanding of listen, like in in relationships — David Devine: Eleni Sikelianos: Oh yeah. David Devine: It might be hard to hear or and or voice your feelings to a partner or something like that. Or maybe in like a dynamic of family situations or work situations, there’s so many opportunities where listening is crucial, and also understanding how to explain yourself. Eleni Sikelianos: One hundred percent. And we don’t actually really focus on the — the political. But the other thing that interests me is so all these families who no longer speak, there’s — you know, no longer speak to each other, these rifts, and I have, for example, my mom and her sister haven’t spoken in 20 years. Almost everybody I know has a situation like that, or a friend they no longer speak to, or you know somebody. They’re so frequently, and it seems to be across cultures, actually, not just in the US say. So that interests me too. Like, what — how does — how do we get to such a rupture that we can no longer speak to each other? So what we do in that workshop, we read and we talk about, you know, what are the politics of who gets to speak and who feels comfortable speaking, who feels — who is listened to, because — and that was the other thing is that in these moments, I feel I can no longer speak sometimes, and to these political — these very difficult situations where — and not just political environment — whatever they are, all of them, you know, how do we speak to these situations? David Devine: Yeah, or, and, or maybe it’s not the ability to speak, it’s the ability to understand that who you’re speaking to might not receive it in the way that you’re intended, you know. So, like, it’s — it’s hard to question something when you know somebody already thinks you’re gonna — you suck, and they don’t like you. And, yeah, oh, you’re that. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. David Devine: It’s like, well, like, what I like to think about is ultimately, we want the same thing we want. We want to live our lives. Eleni Sikelianos: Yes, hopefully. David Devine: We want peace. We want thriving economies. We don’t want war — you know, there’s like climate initiatives, and we want countries to work together like people at our level just want to enjoy life and learning and growing and start families and have enjoyable experiences. But it’s not as easy. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, well, I mean, there’s these — these larger, insane forces that don’t — that are, you know, working against life, let’s say, right? And that’s a like, yes, we would think the basic thing is, you know, we want to — we want to live. We want to be — have, you know, be able to eat, to be able to be — and all of those things. And it’s not so much not being able to speak, but be able to be heard about the — because the thing is, is that poetry is a public act, even if we feel it privately, there is this intention. You know, Gertrude Stein said, I write for myself and others. So, yeah, there’s this intention — so what — how does the poem then operate in that too, as a speak, it is a — you now Naropa — David Devine: Sounds vulnerable. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, it is so vulnerable, one hundred percent vulnerable, actually. You have to lay your soul bare and yourself bare all the time. David Devine: And like, who wants to lay their soul bare? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. I know. David Devine: That’s not easy. Eleni Sikelianos: No, it’s not. David Devine: You can be rewarded, or — Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, thinking about those things, we do a lot of listening exercises, following Pauline Oliveros, deep listening where, you know, sometimes we have our backs to each other, and we start giving a tone to the breath, and then we start tuning in to other tones in the room, or we go outside and we listen to bird song, and then, like the whole fabric. And the other piece of the sort of listening that I’m interested in is that what Bernie Krause calls the biophony, which is the whole fabric of -- of sound, which isn’t just animals — human animals and more than human animals, but also the wind and so forth. And he has this theory that, like bodily forms, sound also evolved to fill certain niches. So each animal, kind of, you know, found an odd — David Devine: There’s like a frequency range in which they live in. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, totally. And that is fraying badly as humans take up more and more space and noise space too, you know, and these are these things that you know clearly, it’s affecting, say, marine species, and people don’t want to admit it, right? David Devine: You know, I’m a sound engineer and a sound designer and electronic music guy, so music is very important to me. And what I’ve realized it’s like, sometimes it’s like, the note you’re playing, the spacing of the next note, like everything is so important. So even the — the not making a sound is just as important as a sound you’re making, there’s — there’s so much precision within it and flow. But then you can, like, insert your emotion, and it’s — there’s a complex thing going on. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, totally. David Devine: It makes some music really relatable and enjoyable to experience. Eleni Sikelianos: Absolutely, and so then when we think about, say, the world outside the studio or creating that music where animals are creating that exact biophony, right? And then suddenly there’s a lawnmower and the cricket can’t hear the mate or whatever. So we were thinking about those things and thinking about, yeah, how to actually corporealize these experiences of deep listening and then also voicing to each other, and voicing and listening at the same time. So those — and then we also explore poets who are using like Charles Reznikoff, NourbeSe Philip, Layli Long Soldier, Svetlana Alexievich, who’s a journalist more but who are using other people’s voices, and, you know, talking about, how do you do that? What are the ethics? So we have a big range of things we do. David Devine: I see. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, and it’s weird about those lawn mowers, they always love waking you up in the morning. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah they do. They woke me up yesterday. David Devine: Wait like two hours. Eleni Sikelianos: I know. 100 percent, yeah. David Devine: All right. I really like the little direction we just went with sound. I always love sound and all that stuff. As I’ve been getting deeper into my craft of sound design, I’m realizing, like, the frequency is super important. So when you’re hearing bass music and you have like, high fidelity speakers, I almost see the interpretation of dancing. Like it seemed like dancing has evolved too, because of how we can change sound and how we can manipulate certain things. There’s some rules that are broken. There’s this technique where you can add like, 40 compressors or something, and it extracts this, like, this really, like stuff you’d never hear, and then they put it in electronic music, and you’re just like, let’s go with it. So it’s really interesting. But what — Eleni Sikelianos: That sounds cool. David Devine: But what I’m curious about, is, like, you know we’re talking about, like, the climate of the Earth. But I’m curious, like, what is the climate of writing? You know? Because in nowadays, there’s this environment where there’s social media, there’s different avenues of like, how to put your work out there? I guess you can get out there more, but there’s, like, just short bursts of being out there. Like 15 second videos, is our attention span, I guess, and so, like, long novel writing can’t really capture a bigger audience than, like, a 15 second video, I guess. So poetry is short, so it could get you. But, when your students graduate, what kind of environment are they walking into? Like, what are they trying to do with the — the writing degrees that they get or the directions they’re trying to go? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, poetry is shorter, except that it’s actually using this — this medium, this human technology of language, in a way that we’re not used to it being used. So not everyone can be open to that. So I mean, I think one of the reasons people get kind of upset about poetry is that it’s using this medium in a non transactive way. And so, yeah, I just wanted to say that. And actually, I would say for my students, I never came to poetry to, I mean, if you come to poetry to make a million you better figure something else out, you know? And I think I’m part of — I was born in 1965, I’m part of a generation where most poets were not coming into it to get a teaching job. It was we were coming into it because, often, because that was the — the thing we had to do, you know, it’s the love of the thing. It is different now. And I think also in the US, there are so many MFA programs, you know, over — I don’t know what numbers we’re at now, over 300. So there are a lot of people graduating with MFAs out on the, let’s call it poetry market. So that — there’s kind of a flooded market. There’s a lot of noise, I would say. But what I hope my students to come out into the world with is like a solid practice that will sustain them psychically, spiritually, mentally, and that will allow them to, you know, a way to be in community with other poets and other living and dead. So a sustainable practice that way. But also, they’re coming out — and I teach at Brown in the MFA as well as undergrad program. Brown is, you know, we accept, I think what maybe about one — just a little more than 1% of our applicants. So we got a really high level of applicants. So they’re — these are people who are going to be publishing right away, too. And you know, they’re doing all kinds of things out in the world. They’re — some of them are, you know, working at the Poetry Project or running reading series or working in bookstores. So, yeah. I mean, there’s more of a push to professionalize when — in the MFA program. Naropa didn’t have that at all. Push was to go out and make a difference in the world, you know? I resist that push to professionalize a little bit, but I know that students are hungry for it, so I try to accommodate that as well. David Devine: Yeah, I’m just thinking about this too. So AI can write poems nowadays, but what’s weird is it’s extracting from what already exists out there, from human minds. Eleni Sikelianos: Right. David Devine: So — Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, and actually, in Europe, you can actually, as a writer, you can sign up to not have your books available for AI, whereas in the US, we don’t have that option. A lot of Laird’s books are already being metabolized. David Devine: I mean didn’t they used to call that plagiarism? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, I know. I mean, the thing I’ve been thinking about lately because I was in Greece before coming to Naropa, and a friend of mine is a translator for a living, and she was saying she can tell — sometimes they’re using AI. She translates a lot for, like, museum catalogs. She was just translating Henri Cartier Bresson’s bio, but there was some that had already been translated. And it would say things like, it was born in 1908. So that — and so that’s so interesting to — so what I’ve been thinking about is thinking about the Industrial Revolution and what you’re losing, this was something my great grandmother was obsessed with. You’re losing things that have been touched by hands, and you’re losing the in — like the variation, right? And so AI, writing is going to lose kind of, like, the — like, the textures of language, right? That a writer puts in there. David Devine: The intricacies. Eleni Sikelianos: Totally, yeah. So it’s not going to have the same — David Devine: The phonetic intricacies. Eleni Sikelianos: Yes, that too, for sure, phonetic as well as language choice, like micro language and some tactical choices, you know? But I mean, we are in a moment — I mean, if we want to talk about decolonization, we are so colonized by the machines right now. David Devine: Ooh, okay. Eleni Sikelianos: So, I mean, here I am, you know, I’ve got my phone right here, I’m looking at it, our brain — even you were mentioning social media, which is such a great tool, but it’s also one that, you know, we know that it’s addictive. We know that it’s messing with us. So — David Devine: And we know they build it to be addictive totally. So they can have more ads — Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. David Devine: To be viewed. Yeah, just keep you on there. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. So that’s something I think — you know, what do we do in this moment? I mean, Anne Waldman once said to me something like, we have to keep our minds strong. And I think that’s right. David Devine: Like Anne Waldman. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, totally. And so I think actually reading poetry and novels and engaging with art and community, those are ways we keep our minds strong. David Devine: Well, yeah, you’re not using a device or a technology to create enjoyment in your head, and you’re using the ability to think critically and abstractly to enjoy what’s going on up there. Because our brain, you know, my brain, doesn’t shut up. Like, I go to sleep and I’m like, shut up, it’s time to go to bed. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: But sometimes I’m just like, wow, I feel really stoked that I have the ability to think insanely, creatively constantly. And sometimes I’m just like, okay, it’s time to quiet the head. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. I mean, coming back to what I want my students to go with, I want them to go away with that capacity, actually, you know. David Devine: Okay, yeah. David Devine: I mean, your brain’s a muscle. You gotta flex it. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, flex, flex. David Devine: So before we move on to more questions, do you want to share the poem with us or anything? Eleni Sikelianos: Sure. Yeah. I’ll share one from my most recent book, which is called your kingdom. And the kingdom I’m talking about is the animal kingdom, which is your kingdom and my kingdom and salamanders’ kingdom and cockroach’s kingdom [LAUGHS]. So — and I was inspired in this book by watching a couple of salamanders crawl over a log in California — David Devine: Pure inspiration. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, 100 percent. And remembering from my zoology class at Santa Barbara City College, learning that amphibians were the first to invent shoulder girdles and hip girdles as they made that transition from water to land. And so just really feeling that, that you know my — every time I roll my shoulders, I am — I am relying on millions of years of salamander ingenuity, let’s say. A couple books before this I had been really focusing on extinctions, on specific animals, continent by continent, and I wanted to find a joyful way to keep engaging. So this was a joyful way for me to think about, yeah, what we’re carrying around all the time. So this is one of the shorter poems in that book, and it’s called, polishing my animal mirror. I was polishing my animal mirror – no moths appeared there in the single crystal genetic light in the dark mirror candle night I was polishing my animal mirror, examining my animal teeth a snake appeared in the mirror’s thin gravel drive- way, someone had run over, had flattened it into permanent s-shape in the animal mirror my incisors were not fangs but surely they could still tear meat Yes the cat Yes, the bear I was polishing my animal mirror practicing noninvasive knowing and wondering about control the magic kin magic skin of this animal mirror ‘Don’t worry, that’s just me,’ you say to yourself shining like a violet ground beetle under a stone Seastars are near vertebrates over to the left coelacanth on the far side riding toward you and birds Reptilian branch aflame on the plain In the animal mirror mollusks are inching toward earthworms who touching themselves touch earth anew each time they move David Devine: That’s good. So the mirror is the reflection of — Eleni Sikelianos: Well, quite literally, like when you look in the mirror, what animals do you see, you know, and who else is in there with you? Like, actually, a bunch of them, you know. There’s a long title poem in that book — we’re going through. You know, earthworms invented hearts, you know or not, earthworms, but a kind of worm. So, yeah, when you’re — every time we’re looking in the mirror, actually, quite literally, we’re carrying all that like the bacteria and so forth, although those are in another kingdom. But — David Devine: That’s a wild thought too, to think about. You know, there’s not many times I’m looking in the mirror and I’m just thinking about the evolution of the exoskeleton of animals inventing shoulders and elbows and equilibriums of bipedal — Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, yeah, 100 percent. I mean, you can go through, yeah, a lot of the organs or some of those earlier animals and inventions. Lungs were like a swim bladder that was repurposed. And then yeah, and then the spine coming along. And we share that with a lot of you know, obviously all the other mammals and reptiles and birds, we share that. So, yeah, it’s all, you know, you — we share 70% of our DNA with zebra fish. David Devine: Zebra fish. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. So we’re not even, yeah — I mean, chimpanzees are in, you know, I can’t remember what it’s calculated at now, 95 or 98%. So it’s like, these are deep relatives. This is the deep lineage. David Devine: How come we’re not like zebras? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, how come. I guess it wasn’t that useful to us at some point. David Devine: Okay. Eleni Sikelianos: Yah, yeah. It’s just like the environment, the climate. You know, there’s probably so many things that factor into it. So as I’ve been learning about you, you know, you do have a lean in eco poetics. And what I’m wondering is, could you tell our audience, how do you define what eco poetics is, and why do you think it’s an important thing to write about and use as, like, a poetic leverage point? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, so I think a kind of a simple way to, like, distinguish eco poetics from nature poetry is that eco comes from the — the root word for house, and it also means, like governance of and so forth, like economy. So it’s sort of looking — it’s like whole systems, the house, right? Household Earth, as Gary Snyder called it. But like in a nature poem, the poet might be describing a tree, beautiful autumn leaves, and then the poet has an epiphany. But the poem actually stays in the mental and emotional landscape of the poet. David Devine: Yeah, you don’t have an epiphany in your elbow. Eleni Sikelianos: Right, yeah, right. David Devine: It’s in your soul, your heart, your mind. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah? Whereas an eco poem is kind of trying to think about the whole system and our — like the human animal is just another piece of the eco system, right? So the agency is distributed, rather than being only within the human and the speaker or writer of the poem and then the receiver of the poem. So actually, my translator into French once said, oh, she actually, in this epic poem, The California poem that started from that dream, she says, you made all this seastars and dinoflagellates the hero rather than the human. So, yeah, so it’s — it’s, um, it’s thinking about the human, not — and also, you know, subverting the human as — as the pinnacle and the chief observer and feeler and so forth. And now we’re knowing more and more about how other animals have pretty deep and intense emotional and psychic lives. You know, something that, during enlightenment, and in particular, that tried to refuse, right? Because we wanted to extract everything we could from them. David Devine: It’s so human to be like science is just now 2024 figured out dolphins have feelings, it’s like what? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that’s it David Devine: Maybe they’ve had them — Eleni Sikelianos: I think they have — yeah, I don’t think it took us to — yeah, so that’s it. I mean, for me, it’s a deep feeling I’ve had since I was born. My father worked in a zoo, and he used to bring home, when I — the few times I would see him, he would bring home a fox or a chimpanzee. David Devine: What? All right. Eleni Sikelianos: And so, yeah. And, I mean, I grew up in, I mean, we were squatting for a while in like a field. So I just was very close to nature. And that was my — that was one of my teachers, and one of my inspirations, for sure, watching monarch caterpillar and larvae and just experiencing all of that. So it’s not, it’s not something I’m using, it’s something that feels very deep in me. But I also do feel there’s such a — you know, there’s an incredible urgency we’re losing species, we’re losing plants, animals, all of these things that you know due to our activity. So it feels urgent and so that feels important. David Devine: Interesting. So another thing I actually know about you is you also — not also do eco poetics, but you also do, in your bio, you mix genre, and you also collaborate with musical artists. And I was thinking about that for a while. I was like, that’s kind of interesting, because if I’m a drummer and you’re a guitarist, collabing is in the musical context, but when you’re collabing with a musical artist in a writing context, it’s like two different realms of art come together to collaborate. So I’m curious, how do you do that, and is there, like, certain types of musical artists you like to work with? How does that flow like? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, well, I guess it comes back to that question about permeability that you know, thinking about the poem being permeable to other parts of the world and — and I guess in that same book, which is the California poem, I also started. I was carrying around visual aids, like postcards images, and I realized, actually these are part of the poem. So the hybrid work and the — and the sort of multi genre work was first in bringing in visual aspects into the book, and thinking of the book a little bit as an installation. So I guess we’re collaborating, and I’ve collaborated with filmmakers as well as musicians, visual artists, all kinds of artists really. Seems like another — David Devine: I would love to collaborator with — Eleni Sikelianos: I know. Yeah, totally. And it is very much a Naropa lineage, too. You know, Allen Ginsberg was collaborating with musicians. Anne collaborates all the time. Baraka was a collaborator. So that was sort of part of the ground I was nourished on as a poet. And so it’s just — it’s a very — it’s one of the most enriching and nourishing parts of my practice for me and I — the reading I did on Saturday, I did with my brother, who’s a guitarist, and his wife, who was playing ukulele, and they were both singing parts of my poems. David Devine: Oh cool. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: Yeah. I see it as, like, poetry is a dish, or, like, a side, and then a collaboration is, like, the meal. So you get, like, you get all the nutrition that you can from the collaboration. Eleni Sikelianos: And let’s not forget that actually, poetry was in its origins, it was sung and danced as well as spoken. David Devine: Yeah. Eleni Sikelianos: So yeah, I actually interviewed a guy named Bill Porter a couple podcasts ago, and he’s a Chinese translator of poems, and he talked about, like, some of the poems you can’t really translate anymore, because it was in context of singing and dancing, and there was, like, actual music that it went behind. So it’s — it’s almost like those, those poems are lost in history. So — Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. I mean, when we talk about lyric poetry that comes, of course, from the instrument itself, the lyre, yeah. David Devine: I just got to ask this. So you said something about, like you have a French translator, yeah, but you speak French/ Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, yeah, but I wouldn’t — David Devine: Why don’t you translate your own work. I don’t — Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, you need a very high level of language, especially to translate poetry, it’s not like, yeah, you gotta — you gotta be all in on the syntax, on the tone, the word, sort of the word clusters, like the family that you’re creating as you’re carrying it over. And I actually have a few translators into French. I have one that’s been working on my work for probably about 16 years. She’s done, I think, six books, and she is so — she is such an expert on my work, but she has to choose these bifurcating paths all the time in the poem. David Devine: Okay, yeah, because in my mind, when I think of translation, it’s like, I say a word, and then there’s a word in a different language, and you just supplement, you just add that in there. But I guess that’s — Eleni Sikelianos: That’s AI translation, I mean in a way. It’s like, it’s not — you get — it’s like, because you’re that’s the other thing you’re not just — David Devine: The syntax. Eleni Sikelianos: You’re not just dealing with words. If you think of each poem or book as its own ecosystem, in fact, that has tone. It has voicing in various ways, right? That’s something we talk about when we’re talking about listening and voicing. What is the voicing of this? How does it voice itself? Is it bringing in a lot of you know, does it have a southern inflection? Does it have language specific to this person’s region? So, yeah, all of those things. I mean, you got but, and then the poem itself is a region, right? David Devine: Okay, okay, a lot of things to think about. Eleni Sikelianos: For sure, yeah. David Devine: So what I’m actually curious about is what inspires you to write, because you’re a writer and being an artist, you know, you got to have your influences. You got to have your — what inspires you, and maybe it’s not even writing so much. It could be art, it could be nature. It could be your daughter. Or I heard you have two cats, and I love cats, like it could be your cat, I don’t know. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: But what has been inspired you lately, and how do you tend to find inspiration in your life to promote a poem, promote a writing or maybe even a workshop. Eleni Sikelianos: It has shifted a lot. I would say earlier on, yeah, for sure, reading other poets is one of the most inspiring things to do. And you know, just I remember that feeling of being 22 and reading poets, and then just like you want to write right away. And then sometimes it can be just like two words rubbing up next to each other. Right now, actually, for the past month or so, the words, memory enemy, enemy memory, have been rubbing up against each other. I don’t know what they’ll become, but it can be like, it’s often a sound and then a meaning, conflict or agreement. It can be things like that. It can be seeing visual art, seeing dance, seeing a movie. I would say, in recent years, I’ve done a lot of those things right. I’ve fed my mind in those ways a lot. It’s still reading is an inspiration. Lately, thinking about deep relationships, I guess that’s part of what was coming out — and science actually, is a huge inspiration for me, reading, you know — David Devine: Phenomenons. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, evolution, biology, etc, etc, sometimes just a little snippet from some new archeological dig or learning that ancient sea stars were — there’s a fossil record of ancient sea stars, regenerating arms, all that. David Devine: Salamanders and shoulder constructions. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. I just moved my mother out of her apartment that she’d been in for 30 years, and I went through all her boxes of stuff, all these scraps of paper, like seeing a life, filtering through a life is what I’m thinking about right now. So it just shifts around. Yeah, and I think at the moment, I’m interested in not drawing so much for now on other art forms, but drawing on life forms that are human life forms, let’s say. I’ve been working for a really long time. So I do also these kind of hybrid family ancestral encounters, let’s call them, and that’s been in part to deal with how difficult and weird my family is. I mean, my dad was a drug addict. He died of an overdose. He was homeless, so I wrote a book about him, that was the first of those, that includes prose, poetry, images. That’s called the Book of John, City Lights published that. I did another one about my mom’s mom, the burlesque dancer, that was just adapted as a play in Greece, just ran for the February to April, that was really a cool collaboration. I was more of a witness, because they were adapt — doing the adaptation. And I’m working on one now about my great grandparents, or now I’ve been working on it for 20 years, who I said in passing, had this idea of reviving the ancient Delphic festivals in order to bring about world peace. So I’ve been very inspired by them and this vision that art and in this case, mounting plays by Aeschylus in the theater with actors and costumes that that could bring about world peace. So that’s inspiring to me, thinking about like we could think of what they did as a failure, because clearly, they didn’t bring about world peace, but they created a space in the mind for us all to dwell. David Devine: Yeah, inspiration can be something in a development stage, or it could be something that just arrives all of a sudden, you know, like, you don’t even ask for it, and you’re like, ah, I’m inspired. I just got, like, bucket of water just dumped on you, it’s like oh, wow. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: Or an apple falls on your head. And you think about, like, gravity. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the important piece to that is that the discipline has to be there, so that when, so that we’re ready when the inspiration comes. David Devine: The mental faculties to — to unpack something in such a way that it sparks, it’s what we call inspiration. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. So you’re ready, right? You’re in the position, you’re in posture for it. David Devine: I hear that. Okay, well, I really appreciate our talk today. And before we go, is there anything you would like to shout out? Because I know you have 10 books, and you’ve talked about, like, I think two or three of them. So would you like to tell people about, like, your social media, how they can reach out. You’re obviously teaching at Brown. You come to the SWP every two years or so, as you say. But how can someone find you, maybe see some of your writings, or whatever? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, I have a website. So EleniSikelianos dot com. David Devine: Can spell your last name? Eleni Sikelianos: Oh, yeah. David Devine: Or your full name? Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah. And I just want to say that (name) designed the website, who’s a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School. David Devine: Okay. Eleni Sikelianos: So Eleni, E-L-E-N-I, Sikelianos, S-I-K-E-L-I-A-N-O-S, and Instagram is also that at Eleni Sikelianos. So, yeah, those are some ways, but I also want to say, buy a book, because don’t forget about — Patti Smith was one of the people carried along on the summer writing program literature, don’t forget about the book. They’re magical. David Devine: It’s true and it’s yours. You get to writing it. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah. David Devine: You get to like, hold it. There’s something about turning a page that just feel so badass, Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, the sound of it, yeah. [LAUGHS] David Devine: All right, yeah. Well, I really appreciate our talk. You gave me a lot of things to think about, and I like — I like the thoughts. So I really appreciate our time together. And also thank you for, you know, committing to SWP and Naropa being such like a long time faculty member and just lover of content and writing, and it’s just really nice to know that there’s people out there like promoting the things that are like, secretly, I don’t know that need — need a little bit of love nowadays. Eleni Sikelianos: Yeah, yeah, that’s there for us. Thank you so much for having me. [MUSIC] On behalf of the Naropa community, thank you for listening to Mindful U. The official podcast of Naropa University. Check us out at www.naropa.edu or follow us on social media for more updates.