Abram: Hello, I'm Abram Van Engen. Joanne: And I'm Joanne Diaz. Abram: And this is Poetry for All. Joanne: And today we are delighted to welcome Katy Didden to our podcast. Katy Didden is the author of The Glacier's Wake, which is the winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize from Pleiades Press, and Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland, published by Tupelo Press in 2022. She is one of my favorite poets and certainly one of my dearest friends. I am so excited you are here, Katy. Thank you for joining us today. Katy: Thank you so much. I am delighted to be here. I am a super fan of Poetry for All. Usually when I'm listening to you both, I'm driving from Indianapolis to Muncie and I just hear your voices with visions of the huge blue sky over cornfields. So it's a very different thing to be here with you. Abram: Today we're going to be talking about a very different vision, which is a volcanic eruption and a lava flow. So shall we begin with the reading of this wonderful poem “The priest questions the lava”? Katy: Sounds good. So, I'm going to see if Joanne will join me in reading this, and Joanne, would you be open to being the priest? Joanne: Yes, I would. [The poem can be read here: https://poets.org/poem/ore-choir-priest-questions-lava] Katy: [Poem] Abram: Well, let's begin by talking about where this comes from. So this is an erasure poem, which means there's a text behind the poem that you're drawing from to create the poem out of. Can you tell us a little bit about what that text is? What's that source text behind this poem? Katy: The source text is from a book called Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano that Covered a Continent in Darkness and it was written by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe. And I researched the 1783 eruption in Iceland and this book gave an overview of the events that happened. The passage that I selected from the book featured a priest named John Stein Grimson. And he was actually famous. They called him the fire priest because he was an eyewitness to this eruption. The eruption lasted for eight months and it was just absolutely devastating. Abram: Eight months. Eight months that it continued to erupt? Katy: Yes. And because of the velocity of the eruption at first, the particles made it up into the troposphere. And so it dispersed across the entire northern hemisphere. And it blocked sun rays. So it had all kinds of effects. First, it caused this dry fog and a very hot summer as it was erupting. And then, because it was blocking the sunlight, it brought on extraordinarily cold temperatures. It lowered global temperatures and it had effects all over the world. It caused a famine in Japan. It lowered the Nile. It devastated indigenous populations in Alaska. It froze the Chesapeake Bay. And this priest was writing from really close to the source of that eruption, the Lackagigar Seam, and gave an eyewitness account. He was also a naturalist, and he was an excellent observer of what happened. So this passage talks about how he gathered with his parishioners, and they all thought that the lava was going to destroy the village. And they thought this might be the last time that they would be in the church because the lava was advancing. And he stayed with them and I think the account is that he gave an extra long sermon. And then this miracle happened or something scientific happened, which is that glacial melt or the pattern of the rivers came and diverted the lava flow so that instead of flowing towards the village, it piled up so the parish was spared and so they nicknamed him “the fire priest” and they call that mass “the fire mass”. Reading about how people came to terms with this massive global climate change, what I was really studying it as was, you know, how did they survive and how did they find consolation or what were their reactions to facing something so devastating? Abram: Can I ask, so there's two voices here and is the priest's voice drawn from that sermon or is it drawn from the larger sort of biographical witness account of this volcano? Katy: Right. I did read his autobiography, but I chose as the source text somebody else's kind of summary account of that. And that is because I wanted to demonstrate that I'm at such a remove from it. I mean, this is a major traumatic event and what I wanted to represent was how I'm trying to get back to it. So much of this book is indexical. The text itself is pointing to another text. It's almost like a translation. And, in this case, my text is pointing to a text that's pointing to another text that's pointing to an experience. And I was interested in representing or in showcasing those levels of distance, particularly, you know, trying to figure out or trying to understand what happened. And I'm also interested in how a work such as Steingern's autobiography has so many afterlives. I guess that's what Walter Benjamin would say. And how it is itself this inherently translatable thing. Joanne: You know, we've talked in this podcast about the ethical choices that poets make when they create an erasure because there are political and historical considerations whenever you make that choice to cut out or excise the erasure material from someone else's text. Right? So I love the way you're talking about this, but also I'm interested in what you say about translation and how so much of what we say about climate change as humans might feel insufficient. But I love the voice that you create in this book for lava, which is such an innovative thing throughout the book. In each poem lava has so much to say, right? So maybe we could just talk about that voice. Why does lava have sentience in this collection? Katy: The choice to write in the voice of lava is in conversation with my first book. I really started the practice of assigning creatures and features sentience in my first book, The Glacier’s Wake. And I think the origin story of that is that I visited the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia, and I remember feeling that it was alive. It had this sort of breathing quality and it was moving. And so that inspired a series of poems in the voice of the glacier and the process of writing in voices. So in my first book, I have a glacier, a wasp and a sycamore and the process in writing in those voices was so generative. And I knew I wanted to write in the voice of lava. So it was actually the lava that led me to both the form of erasure and to Iceland. When I was looking for a form to represent the voice of lava, I thought of erasure because I imagined the process of ink moving over a page as the way that lava moves over land and leaves features in relief. So by adopting that voice, it gives this kind of perspective on what is human. And so because I would connect it with deep time, and it's a force that happens, you know, this cosmic force, you know, it happens across millions of years. I think it's thinking of a rock record and the time that we see when we read a rock record put next to the lifespan of a single human or even all of what humans are. It just gives this really radical distinction, but you know, we are so caught up in the human timeline, but what does it mean to step outside of that? Abram: Some of what Lava says then in relation to that, what you just described as, as deep time. I mean, the last thing Lava says here is “Nothing lasts. Bless that. / Mosses assemble in the ash”. And of course, mosses assemble in the ash over a long period of time. It's not a short time. And then “What's beneath is fire- / the word abides there”. So there's a very different sense of time, and maybe we should begin at the beginning and think about how these two voices are speaking to each other. Are they responding to each other? Are they speaking past each other? I'm just sort of curious how you imagine the dialogue between this priest and this lava. So the priest says first “Fire poured over us a formless rage. / Who'd name that love? / Who'd flock to such a god?” And lava responds “Marvels unscroll over a thousand tongues / and love alive in that naming.? Katy: I would start with the interviewer, in this case the priest, and as far as I would get to the questions, so these first three lines, as far as I would get in the source text, that's as far as I had to find Lava's answer. So it's a retracing of the exact same amount of space in the source text. And again that's pointing to kind of the infinite nature of a text and how, even though I'm using the same source material, I'm finding radically different language depending on the voice that I am listening to. Once I find the question or the series of questions that I want for the first pass, I start right there and often I'm to the letter trying to find, you know, I want to use as much material as I have, because you can really paint yourself into a corner. And so then I would find the next question and then it would become a puzzle of, okay, how can I use this available material to find the lava's response? Joanne: You're talking about the constraints of erasure, but yet there's something so generative about that for you, right? Yes, you have very few choices you can make, but you know what really interests me is that even though you're dealing with a source text, this is a Katy Didden poem. So for example, in the final stanza when lava speaks, “Nothing lasts. Bless that.” That “ah” sound “Mosses assemble in the ash”. That consonance that picks up across those words. You're so attentive to sound when you write poems that aren't erasures. And then even in your erasures, I'm hearing that attention to sound. Katy: In this form, because it is so constrained, a lot of the decisions were made, and I was surprised by how consistent the voice is. A lot of practitioners of erasure will go down to the level of the word, but I went down to the level of the letter and that gave me many more options and, in particular, it let me have the ability to rhyme. Abram: I'm super curious about the relationship between name naming and love that the priest's first question there. Who would name that love? So you see this volcano erupt, you see this lava flowing, and the priest says, you know, who'd name that love? And the lava responds that love's alive in the naming. Katy: I was thinking about the question you might hear people ask very often, you know, how could all this suffering happen, you know, how could there be a God if so much suffering exists? I was trying to answer that question, and I was thinking that maybe, how would lava respond to that accusation? And I think that it is in the way that people respond or in the way that people come to language and how language is a means of connection and and trying to honor the experience or to share the experience or to put things into a language that lasts over time. It did seem like that’s an act of love Abram: And to connect that to what you were saying before about the priest's sermon and this, according to the account this sort of surprising effect that it has as they're having this mass, as they're doing this sermon, as the lava is approaching, they somehow feel no fear. So it's in the process of forming words around this tragedy that somehow they begin to lose their fears. And so that brings us to the priest's next question. “When we cried out, / what made us lose our fears?” And the Lava's response is all about these words “All verbs out-heaven death”, which I just think is an amazing line. “All verbs out-heaven death. / I move to move.” It reminds me of this writer I like named Frederick Beechner and he's got this book called Godrick, which is about a crazy old saint. And he talks to the river. They have this relationship, he and this river. And at one point he's going on and on about this river and he comes to this conclusion. He says, “What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was set next to life would scarcely fill a cup.” When Lava says all verbs out heaven death, there is this idea that no matter what death might claim, there is more to life than it, than it can ever capture. Katy: Oh, that's such a beautiful interpretation. I've got tears in my eyes. Joanne: Well, and what an interesting line because out-heaven is the verb and the sentence is about the verbs. I don't know. It's an amazing sentence. Like it's so weird. It's just such a weird, profound articulation of that idea. It's wonderful. Katy: Well, you know, that also comes from when I heard Forrest Gander give a talk at St. Louis University, and he talked about a Spanish translation of Genesis. “In the beginning was the word”, and his version is “In the beginning was the verb”, which I loved. I think about that almost every other day and how amazing, you know, as poets dedicated to a life in rhythm, that rings so true to me, that rhythm is all, that rhythm is so transcendent and is so connected to life Joanne: Also that next sentence that follows it so “All verbs out-heaven death. / I move to move.” I think about that sentence a lot because I think about inertia a lot. What do you do in the face of catastrophe? How do you keep hope as, as part of your story? And I think some of it has to do with, of course, belief and values and all kinds of mental and emotional things. But some of it has to do with just keep moving. Abram: Let's move to the third back and forth then, out of four. And this is what the priest says, “Intimate to me, / God calls through the gloom. / What spared us?” So that's the next question. I mean, this is structured by a series of questions, as you say, it's a kind of interview. And Lava responds, “The only refuge: bodies. Ashes / passed through the lungs. / The persistence of tenderness.” And I think, you know, we talk a lot about surprise in poetry. And for me, when I look at Lava's response there, when you think about bodies, ashes, ashes passing through the lungs, everything looks like mortality, everything looks like the end. And then the last line suddenly turns. What is, what is lasting through all of this? Tenderness. That's the lastingness. And it reminds me of all these things that Lava keeps saying, that it's verbs out-heavening death, that it's marvels on scrolling through a thousand tongues, that love is alive in the naming, that these communities are going on in the midst of tragedy, and it's the going on, the persistence of tenderness. That's the answer. It's sort of like when people talk about, you know, theodicy and this. Deep problem of how do you explain God in a world of suffering and so on? One of the sort of consistent answers I hear is not to explain it, but to say that God is present in it and that the response is not to make sense of all, actually, it's all working out for good, or actually you think it's evil, but it's good, no, it's simply to say that God suffers in the suffering with you, that there is a persistence of tenderness that proves the lastingness of this community. Katy: I am so grateful to have you as a reader of this poem, Abram. I feel like I am learning so much from your readings of it, and I find it very, very moving. Moving, no pun intended. I think also the other side of that is embodiment. And yes, there's the movement and the language but in fact, the movement and language are contained in bodies and, and the form of the poem also, and that the forms themselves are what allow us to continue Joanne: The final question from the priest is “No one unsees such death. How do I pray now?” Like he really doesn't know, he's really struggling with his own faith. And then Lava says “Nothing lasts. Bless that. / Mosses, assemble in the ash. / What's beneath is fire- / the word abides there”. And I wonder why you land there. Abram: I mean, I love the way that it loops back to the beginning. So if you think about the very first line of the poem, “fire poured over us a formless rage”. And if you think about Genesis 1 and this idea of creation, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form. And deep and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep”. That's how Genesis begins. And if you think about the link between that and John 1 where it says “In the beginning was the word” and that's John's response to Genesis, right? He's thinking about the way the beginning began with word and here at the end of the poem moves from that formless rage, which we get the same sort of beginning in Genesis 1. The word, what's beneath is fire, the word abides there. And that word is creative. It's new life. It's giving form. And also in that new life, we can see it assembling in the ash. The mosses are beginning to form again. The word is producing, and the world is taking shape again. So I see this kind of loop in the poem from this formless rage to the way that words give form. Katy: I'm seeing so many things I wouldn't have seen. I think I'm intuiting, but that's amazing. Joanne: Oh, this poem, man. It's a beauty. It really is. It's so profound. Abram: Yeah. So before we close and read this poem again, I think one other really important item here that we haven't even discussed yet is the fact that this poem does not come alone. It is not just a set of words. It comes with an image. Can you talk a little bit more about the image that accompanies the poem? Where the image comes from and how you see this relation between word and image, text and image? Katy: In many ways, I feel like erasure makes transparent what's already inherent in most writing poetry that it often comes from elsewhere, or we're influenced by rhythms of other writers, and this gave me an opportunity to actually show how I am reading the source text and how it is influencing the rhythms of my writing. And I wanted to make sure that I showed that, but as you can imagine, it would be really difficult to show how I'm finding both sets of voices. And Kevin Tseng, my collaborator and one of my dear friends, he's the one who discovered how to represent the layers that I was finding in the process. You know, we were sitting together one day and he, in two seconds, did this layering effect where he put it over photographs. In this poem, there are layers of grayscale. So one layer of grayscale is for the voice of the lava. The other is for the voice of the priest. And there are these little moments of bright white where the voices use the same letters. So he is able to give this sense of layering by the way that he set the poem. Abram: So clearly to get the full experience, people should go check out the book. I think that's the conclusion of this dialogue, right? Let's go look at the actual book to see the image, the text, all of it working together, the different colors, the different layers. I mean, it really is a masterpiece of collaboration, but also, I mean, we have talked in this podcast many times that poetry is not just oral, that it is also visual in many ways. And this brings it to the fore even more stunningly. So shall we read this poem again? Katy: I’d love to. Abram: Would you like to be the priest or the lava? Katy: I think if you wouldn't mind being the priest, I would love to hear that. Abram: [Poetic priesthood] Katy: [Poetic fire] Abram: Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Katy. Katy: Thank you both so much. This was such a delight. I just could talk to you all for hours and hours. I had the best time, so thank you so much. Abram: Thank you. To learn more about Katy Didden and Ore Choir, you can visit our website at poetryforall.fireside.fm and please remember to visit the Tupelo Press website if you'd like a copy. Joanne: And please remember to subscribe to Poetry For All wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, if you like what you're hearing, we hope that you'll share a review and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Abram: Thank you for listening. And thank you, Katy, for joining us today. Katy: Thank you both. This was a delight. Thanks so much.