Devotion Chats
Monthly conversations with writers & artists I adore
“Being yourself... you wind up realizing you are a planet.” —Joy Harjo
I love when a conversation, or a piece of art, or a conversation about art, returns me to myself. Or maybe it isn’t a return, which implies something lost, but more like turning up the volume. Do you ever feel like that, how a friend reaches for something in you, a dial on a car stereo, and just turns it up?
Some conversations feel like windows down, wind in our hair on the road. Art and friendship sustain me. How a sustain pedal holds the notes, allows them to ring out longer, even after the keys have been let go.
Once a month, I’ll share an interview/chat with another writer/artist/thinker I adore. May’s conversation will be with the writer & artist Hua Xi. I’m moved by their incredible poems, investigations in spatial history through poetry, and love of clouds. Here’s one of their poems I love, “Everything Lies in All Directions”:
I’ll drop interviews with brilliant writer/artists/thinkers monthly, for the Devotion Chats part of this newsletter. Today, I’m looking back and sharing excerpts from a few short interviews from 2020. Those of you who subscribed to my blossomwilt tinyletter back in the day might remember these:
You can experience some of Marjorie’s gorgeous paintings, oil on canvas, in person at Woodwalk Gallery in Door County, Wisconsin on view May 28-July 25th, or enjoy a glimpse online. Marjorie’s relationship to color and texture and landscapes, that intimacy and depth, is felt on the canvas and when she plays the piano. Here’s Across the Road #1:
Nanya has since dug into that “I of the underbrush,” and taken up the invitation and challenge of “I,” like in these four poems in Waxwing.
From “10am on Market Street”:
Walking to the bus stop, you feel your categories close in, encircle, when what you want is their convergence. —Nanya Jhingran
I love the way the speaker of these poems lets us in on their thinking and questions about self, the city, and looking, and what they see.
Alishya has a gorgeous diptych of paintings, “THICKET OF THE HEART,” on view at RedLine Denver starting this weekend, April 29th though May 11th. I’m really moved by Alishya’s art and thinking on grief, somatic memory and the physicality of making art, and liberation.
These are just a few of the brilliant artists/writers I admire and adore, and I’m excited to share chats with more in the coming seasons. For one last look back on thought&heart-provoking conversations, I had the gorgeous, bewildering experience also in fall 2020 of interviewing the former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, just days before the election. You can watch that here. I love what she had to say about art-making, change, unknowing, and being human. In that conversation, I reference a different interview, in TIME, in which Joy Harjo said, re: what advice she’d give to poets, advice that applies, also, to living:
“It’s about learning to listen, much like in music. You can train your ears to history. You can train your ears to the earth. You can train your ears to the wind.”
One of my favorite podcasts for great conversations/interviews is Between the Covers. Do you have a favorite interview? Drop it in the comments.