What can you tell us about this poem?
This poem is part of a pamphlet titled The Fabric, inspired by lesbian babymaking.
The initial idea for this particular poem came when some friends moved into a house next door to the fertility clinic that gave me and my wife our pregnancies and our daughter. What a remarkable thing, to be cleaning your bathroom or whatever, right next to all that potential life. Many people had a hand in helping us grow our family, and the poems in the pamphlet aim to acknowledge “the village” of it all. The guy who gets paid to clean corporate fish tanks doesn’t know he’s part of our story, but he is.
What poets and poems are you in dialogue with?
I’m drawn to any poetry that can spin awe from domesticity. Sharon Olds is an olympian at it. With this series of poems specifically, I owe a debt of gratitude to Erica Gillingham’s pamphlet The Human Body Is A Hive, for reassuring me that there’s art to be found in sharps bins and stirrups.
What is your writing practice?
My brain likes the early morning. I fight the urge to bother my snoozy nightowl wife and, most days, make it out of bed before anyone else in the house to spend a bit of time scrawling by hand in a notebook with a cup of tea.
Sometimes the scrawls become poems. More often, they do not. I throw my notebooks out when they’re full. It’s a challenge to myself to trust that if the idea is right for me, I’ll remember it.
What poem do you wish you’d written?
Ada Limon’s Love Poem With Apologies For My Appearance. A gorgeous, stained, unglamorous, deeply romantic celebration of long-term love.
What song helps us get to know you better?
I’m not sure if this is cheating, but I have a playlist I made while writing the poems that would go on to form The Fabric. I couldn’t tell you exactly what pulls the tracks together, but I think the throughline is something to do with intimacy.
I’m a sucker for a voice crack, a bum note, analog fuzziness, Tirzah sounding like she’s singing directly into your ear.
Then you’ve got the lyrics: John Grant listing things from his childhood favourite candy store. Magazine’s “look what fear’s done to my body”. serpentwithfeet and Kelela reminding you “it’s not just me, it’s everyone”.