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Ep. 19. Victoria Adukwei Bulley, 'The Ultra-Black Fish'
110 Plays1 month ago
In this episode I talk to Victoria Adukwei Bulley's poem 'The Ultra-Black Fish' from her collection Quiet (2022). You can also read the poem at Granta.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber & Faber in the UK and in North America by Knopf, Penguin Random House.
Episode references:
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
- Saidiya Hartman, Waywards Lives, Beautiful Experiments
- Kevin Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet and Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
- Layli Long Solider, Whereas
- Rickey Laurentiis, Death of the First Idea
Follow the show on Instagram. Find Victoria on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds. In today's episode, I talked to Victoria Adukwe-Bulli about her poem, The Ultra Black Fish, from her collection Quiet.
00:00:29
Speaker
Victoria is a poet, writer and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, Lit Hub and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book Quiet won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Close Reading in Poetry
00:00:54
Speaker
Okay well welcome Victoria it's so nice to see you. Thank you Chris I'm really happy to be here thank you for having me. So today we're talking about one of your amazing poems, The Ultra Black Fish, from Quiet, which I've got here, which is still is a very beautiful book.
00:01:09
Speaker
Before we get into that, though, how do you feel about close reading? What are your thoughts about it as a practice and endeavor? And how do you feel about us close reading your work together today? I really love close reading. I really, it's something that I've loved since I was in high school. Like I remember um specific lessons that we do on, you know, the poems that we were studying at the time, whether that was Carol and Duffy or whether it was like sort of later on at like sixth form level where we were doing like the war poets. I really, really loved and remember looking forward to those lessons and
00:01:47
Speaker
bringing my books with the underlinings that I'd made and the notes that I'd made and just like the the amount of marginalia that I would have around a poem. Yeah, it was something that I was always really proud of. So I feel like close reading as a kind of method is yeah, just a a really good way of practicing your sort of skills of noticing um and like sharpening your poetic lens and really also becoming aware of your own poetic voice because what you notice and what you are struck by, i think is also informed by um how you might write.
00:02:24
Speaker
So yeah, I think the two feed each other and I really think that close reading is a kind of way of being in a deep relationship with a text that's not superficial. And I don't think you, I don't think everybody has to always read in that way, but I think it can be really great if you,
00:02:38
Speaker
are dealing with a poet who you know plays with sound or like plays with etymology or plays with irony and kind of like references to all manner of different things. I think it can be really fun. Yeah, it's like a sort of, it's bit like an Easter egg hunt.
00:02:53
Speaker
Do you know what i mean? Like you're sort looking for little jewels. Yeah. Yeah, I've got thoughts on that. But also, but do you enjoy doing this with your own work or is it much easier to do with other people?
Poetry Feedback and Noticing in Literature
00:03:04
Speaker
I enjoy... hearing people's feedback, people's other people's close readings of my work, primarily because I, it's just really enlightening because often the best thing about that is that you, someone comes to you with something that they've noticed and you're like, oh, I didn't even realize I was doing that, but you're right. do you know what mean? ah More often than not, I,
00:03:30
Speaker
I find that it becomes a way of affirming just how much you can do without knowing that you're doing it. So yeah, I quite enjoy that. I quite enjoy that. Yeah, that's exciting.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's really interesting. You said the word noticing. We've been talking about this a lot at work recently. i partly teach literature, as you know, but the other part I do support for other like academics and their learning um and development.
00:03:55
Speaker
And one of the sessions was about noticing, right? Like noticing what you do as a practitioner, as like a teacher and noticing what students are doing, what you're doing. And that diet that idea of just paying attention, not with like a super specific aim in mind, but a seeing, right? Just like picking up on stuff, I think is like a really nice word.
00:04:13
Speaker
And then I saw a book about noticing in the bookshop the other day. It's like a brand new book, but it's just called Noticing. It was like, okay, it's just like an interesting framework.
Reading and Interpreting 'The Ultra Black Fish' Poem
00:04:21
Speaker
So we're going to talk about The Ultra Black Fish, which I think was published at Granta first, right?
00:04:27
Speaker
And then appeared in this book, Quiet, which everyone should go by, obviously. I'd love you just to read it for us first and then we can talk about it. Mm-hmm. The Ultra Blackfish.
00:04:41
Speaker
200 metres down, the light stops. Many deep sea creatures alive at this level of the ocean have developed the ability to create light for themselves.
00:04:54
Speaker
This is known as bioluminescence. Others, on the contrary, contribute to the darkness by adding themselves to it.
00:05:07
Speaker
ultra blackfish are one example and in 2020, 16 varieties of these were captured. The level of pigment in their skin was so high that it was found to absorb 99.956% of the light that touched Karen, marine biologist,
00:05:27
Speaker
percent of the light that touched it karen ah marine biologist came across them by accident.
00:05:39
Speaker
Instead of hauling up the deep sea crabs she had been searching for, net produced a fang-toothed fish that wouldn't show up in a photograph.
00:05:51
Speaker
Held, later, in a tank under two strobe lights, the fish became a living black hole with no discernible features beyond the opacity of its silhouette, as though it had cut itself out of the image and left.
00:06:13
Speaker
Scientists believe that the fish developed their invisibility to aid them in escaping their predators. Another theory suggests that the obscurity of ultra black fish enables them to more successfully catch their prey.
00:06:32
Speaker
It is likely that both ideas are true. Commentators have also speculated that the chemical structure of the pigment could serve the development of military and defence technologies.
00:06:50
Speaker
Nothing was said, however, about how ultra black fish find and enter into relations with each other.
00:07:02
Speaker
Nonetheless, their existence alone is evidence that, invisible as they may be to others, they are by no means strangers to themselves.
00:07:15
Speaker
Thank you so much. It's lovely hearing you read that and the pacing of it before even like getting into the in and internet because there's so much so much I could say about this poem. But like striking just on the page is like this is one dense stanza, right? For those people listening who haven't who can't see it. Like that's the first thing that strikes me, especially there's quite a lot of poems in this book that are kind of broken up.
00:07:39
Speaker
um They're in sections, they're apart, right? You've got a couple of other redaction poem that we can come back to because you do a kind of version of redaction here as well. But really the kind of like the substance of the poem on the page is like the first thing that strikes me.
00:07:53
Speaker
There's something about the like... I don't know, I imagine if this were broken up into like stanzas or lines, how that would look. But there's something about like the solidity, the kind of like fullness of the pattern that I think is maybe like underlining what you're saying about presence and visibility and blackness and texts.
00:08:12
Speaker
I wonder whether like, because it feels like one of those poems that just kind of comes out, right? Like it one and but it's so deliberate and like calm. and I'm like, okay, there's no way that Victoria wrote this in one foul swoop. But maybe you did. Maybe it came out in its solid form.
Poem Structure and Language Choices
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it is one of those poems that came quite quickly. And it's actually relative to its position in the book. it's It was one of the last poems that I wrote that went into this book.
00:08:41
Speaker
And I had really just stumbled ah across this, these, these fish, like I'd stumbled across this um news article. And how did I get there? I think I'd been looking for, I'd been looking for the blackest known substance. And I knew that there was something called Vantablack, but that's a synthetic black um pigment.
00:09:04
Speaker
And so in that search, that was how I discovered this news about these fish. And I was like, oh, wow. and And so ultimately the the structure of the poem really does chart my becoming aware of this this this news, this discovery.
00:09:20
Speaker
And the poem, I think, tries to both mimic some of the language of the news articles and also enact a kind of commentary about the angle from which the articles are written And so I couldn't think of any other way to structure this than as to just, like, I didn't want it to be a prose poem because I think that would have felt almost too casual because i I think that what's poetic about this poem is not necessarily what I've done, but the way that the fish exist and have existed.
00:09:56
Speaker
I find that that's the poem. So I think if I had made it into a prose poem, that would have been kind of like making it a little bit too mundane. but So I wanted a kind of middle middle ground where it's just a block of text.
00:10:09
Speaker
and i And I always do love paying attention to line breaks. So sometimes it feels quite lucky when you're able to structure something in a block and have it feel quite equal. um But yeah, it really is a poem that I think came out in the way that it exists now. It didn't have that many different drafts before this.
00:10:29
Speaker
I love hearing this. I love hearing about how like a poem comes into being, but yeah, like there's something much more, I don't know, the the idea of like the substance of the poem and the way it unfolds, as you say, like there's like ah almost a movement, the lines kind of get longer by the end, kind of, but even just that, like this kind of like, there's a,
00:10:50
Speaker
They're not very strict ends, right? There is an organicness, I hate that word, but like there is an organicness to those line endings that don't feel like you're having to cut a particular moment. And rather you do have some amazing ah line endings here that do some really good things. Like the first one, right? 200 meters down the light stops, full stop. Like the full stop is in is that emulation of that stop, right? And you kind of think, that's a really interesting way to begin a poem.
00:11:16
Speaker
Right. The idea of the light stopping or even like, you know, we've gotten so far down. And I think that's like a really it's not like a resistance, but there is a kind of friction there as ah as an opening. And then many deep sea creatures alive at this level of the ocean.
00:11:30
Speaker
Then we start to play with those endings of the ocean have developed the ability to create. light for themselves. And I just love the idea of ending on create, right? Because they could be creating any number of things, right? Like we know you're talking about light, but which is why again, like I think this poem, as so many are in this book are about creation, not just the kind of literary act of creation, although that I feel like that's there, but creation as like the space of like worldliness or world building or like world making, if you like.
00:11:57
Speaker
So I think like having that on the third line already opens the poem up about something. Yeah. I mean, even like looking at it now, as i and I think this is a good thing. I think it's ah it's a healthy thing if you look back at your work with time having passed and are like, oh, not sure about that.
00:12:17
Speaker
And looking at this poem now, i okay, yeah, the first line, 200 meters down, the light stops, full stop. Okay, nice. And then many deep sea creatures alive at this level. Okay, because I wouldn't, you could put level of the,
00:12:31
Speaker
of the ocean, i don't know. But the bit that I'm like, ah is the ending on create, because I could have put create light, and then you would have left that hanging, and then you land it for themselves.
00:12:43
Speaker
And I might have ended that line with create light, if I were looking at this again today to edit it But I also do think that I agree with what you're saying about that, you know, there's a lot going on here about like,
00:12:57
Speaker
creation, it's not just about um what they literally do, but but what the act is actually for, which is about the creation of selfhood or the creation of like seeing one another or an alternative world. So Yeah, I'm glad that it doesn't look like it sticks out like a sore thumb because now sometimes I look at some of these poems and I'm like, oh, that's a bit messy.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah. No, it doesn't at all. Like, just that I just love the idea of, like, develop the ability to create. And I was like, oh, like, that feels so, like, open, right, as an idea. Yeah.
00:13:31
Speaker
Also like light for themselves, which you could read in two ways, right? Like that means like they can create light, but also it's like for them. It's like not for any, you know, like there's there's a tunus there, which already, which you play with like as we get further down as well.
00:13:45
Speaker
And then you do that. This is known as bioluminescence, right? Like you shifting to that um scientific e register,
Scientific Perspectives and Poetic Irony
00:13:52
Speaker
right? Or the journalistic one, however you want to phrase it. And that's like italicized as well. And I'm really ins interested in that, ah like as though to be like, this is a technical word.
00:14:01
Speaker
But almost like I'm not actually interested in technical words, right? I'm interested in like what's beneath them. Yeah, because I think when I think about bioluminescence, that is the only, it I just can't really think of any other context then than deep sea creatures. And I know there are such things as like glow worms,
00:14:22
Speaker
and fireflies. But when I think about bioluminescence, I think about the deep sea creatures that really glow and look like you know neon. and And I also just think it's a really beautiful word, like bioluminescence. It's not hard to say it. just it It just feels like it belongs in italics.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, and yeah, it's the only italicized word in the whole thing. but But it's interesting that after that, I guess in a way by italicizing it, the reader might think, oh, we're going to go into bioluminescence, but then we just do a swerve.
00:14:56
Speaker
So I think maybe that's the the purpose that that also serves. And that's also something I might not really thought about. But when I read it now, again, like this close reading thing, it's so nice to be like, oh, I see what did.
00:15:08
Speaker
I don't remember doing that deliberately, but I see it. yeah Yeah, I mean, look, we noticed that it doesn't matter if it was conscious or otherwise. And there's there's a couple of, not like not to swerve away too much, but like there are a couple of like theoretical references in this book, In Quiet, that you make. One's Kevin Quashie, who I want to come back to, whose work i'm obsessed with.
00:15:28
Speaker
But also, like I don't know whether Alexis Gums' Undrammed was on your reading list when you were writing this poem or not. Yeah, like I think reading that book really, i really love her her practice, her praxis. I really love the way that she does a kind of what people would call nature writing, but doesn't just let it sit within the realm of like of nature of writing. She is really embedded into the world and thinking through gender and thinking through race and thinking through queerness. And I think the way that she does that in a way that doesn't feel haughty,
00:16:01
Speaker
it feels very much like I am one of you. i am, I am among, I am nothing actually without um the people who I read and the people who I'm in community with. And I'm, and I'm learning from nature. i don't see myself as even a kind of steward. I'm just in and amongst, you know? And, and so that kind of poetics definitely does inform the kind of ideas that this poem is is working through. um so yeah, like it's it's it's definitely animating but the ideas of relation that are in this poem.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, like it was just sudden, like I was like, we're in the deep sea, we're thinking about like blackness, we're thinking about selfhood. And I was like, undressed, because I've just written about this book recently um in my new stuff about like oceans and queerness and stuff. So like, it was just like on my mind.
00:16:52
Speaker
And there's just so many quotes in here. Like i can, she says on page 18, I can hear what i cannot see yet, right? Like the resonances of like sound before understanding, right? And or like visibility. And I was like, this poem is all about like what can and can't be seen and what exists beyond the seeable, both the literal seeable, but also like imaginatively so, which is why was thinking like even bioluminescence, right? Like even the beauty of that word is part of like the bio part, right? Like there's kind of like, it's not a,
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, and and it's like natural luminescence it's not outside or something. And then the next time you put like others, comma, on the contrary, comma, contribute to the darkness.
00:17:34
Speaker
And like that parenthesis feels almost like a kind of using again of that kind of scientific vocabulary right like but it also slows us to you know you could easily start the line with on the contrary others contribute to the darkness but like others on the contrary which makes us pause on others first right and like the idea of otherness and even like on the contrary feels like the the move you're doing in this poem right like actually on the contrary no like it's this whole other thing that you're missing Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And it it's it's kind of also just meant to be a bit, I love i love a little bit of a shady register.
00:18:11
Speaker
you know what mean? Like, it's just, I love a bit of shade, just like low key sort like others on the contrary. conscious You know, and I think because, you know, bioluminescence is beautiful. Like these images that we can find of these fish and um creatures that glow, like it's stunning.
00:18:29
Speaker
but it's not the only form of beauty that exists in the natural world. And so this kind of like, oh, others, they're like, oh, these guys are doing something really different, completely different.
00:18:42
Speaker
And that it's it's, I guess that kind of like contrarian-ness that I'm interested in or like, the yeah, like also thinking with like, you know, Saidiya Hartman and waywardness, like this, this like, what is that? Like it's, you know, bioluminescence is on our register.
00:18:58
Speaker
but But this kind of ultra black situation is even, you know, as the rest of the poem goes on to explore, it's not really understood, you know? So it's like, don't what they're doing, but they're doing something very different.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah but like it's like the poem is alerting us to like difference right that that there are not always ways to capture quote unquote all the things we think we might want to capture right and I even like the on the country contribute like I love that alliteration there to the darkness by adding themselves to it like there's such like a different like you're not going to get that in a scientific journal but you but it is a sense of like adding oneself to the darkness like again it's it's like a fulsomeness right in this poem it's no It's not blackness or unseeableness as negativity, but as like fuller.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and And also, yeah, you've helped me to become aware of a kind of, ooh, maybe a juxtaposition or a kind of like paradox going on because we go into others on the contrary, and then we go into contribute by adding themselves to it.
00:20:01
Speaker
And it's like, okay, so you have, it's it's set up as, you you know, these fish or these other beings in the deep sea, are doing something different, but actually they're not actually doing something different.
00:20:14
Speaker
They're actually enmeshing themselves further in their environment. So that so are they contrarian? are Like contrarian to who? Do you know what mean? So I think the poem is kind of testing your,
00:20:27
Speaker
where you're situated as the commentator is asking you to be like,
Language and Perception in Poetry
00:20:31
Speaker
who's looking? Like so who's speaking, you know? So yeah. Yeah. The speaker of the poem is not clear to me. And that's, there's something good about that. There's something very like, like it's a very stable speaker, right? Like we know what they're saying. Like there's no, like all the language is clear, but like who they are and where they're speaking from, like that's a whole other story. Right.
00:20:50
Speaker
And I really appreciate that. And the first kind of moment you get something like that is, and the next line one example and in 2020 16 varieties and rather than writing and you use the ampersand right which i know is like lots of contemporary poets do it but like it's it's the first marker of oh there's there's something typographical that's different right that i don't know like it's something to think about and then the next line 16 varieties these were and listeners on the page it says discovered but it's crossed through and then you've got captured afterwards
00:21:21
Speaker
And as I say, we've already had a kind of redaction poem earlier on in the collection. So it's almost like you've primed us for that. But that's one of the redaction poems where you don't see the words that are blacked out, right? Like you don't see them all. Whereas here, they kind of cross you, like you can see discovered.
00:21:35
Speaker
And then the speaker is like, no, no, let's be more specific, captured. And I really like the idea of kind of leaving in the alternative language. Because so far you kind of played with how we narrate this fish and like what language is the speaker choosing? But here you're leaving both options almost to be like, I don't know, there's a kind of ongoingness of that editing or rethinking somehow.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I really, you know, I really, um i think, some of my favorite, I guess, styles or poetics are those that really bring the reader along with the process of writing um in the sense that I love feeling like I'm discovering the poem whilst the poem is discovering itself.
00:22:23
Speaker
And it's almost like the poem is growing legs and starting to walk, then growing wings or like, you know, all of these different ways that the that the text is itself either correcting itself or arguing with itself or a little bit confused.
00:22:36
Speaker
And I thought, I always knew that I wanted to do something where I was saying that discovered is not the word because I didn't want to go into that language. But I thought, oh, if I can keep it there, if I can strike it through,
00:22:50
Speaker
then I can make it clear that I've made a decision and I can make it clear that we still say that without thinking. I even said it earlier, I said discovered earlier. you know So I'm trying to, I guess in the poem, speak in a true voice that is iss still susceptible to having to self-correct. you know And I didn't think it would be as impactful if you just wrote if if I just wrote captured. you know it wouldn't really have the same impact if it didn't show it's working So I wanted to keep it in there. If it was blacked out, you wouldn't really know.
00:23:22
Speaker
you could probably anticipate. but I thought this was the best way to handle it. Yeah. And I guess off the back of that, like the poem is starting to tell us like language and like we know this, but I think we forget this.
00:23:35
Speaker
The language shapes the world, right? Like in so many ways, the words we use, like arrange how we see things. And I listened to podcast yesterday where some people were like, oh, well, I don't think that's true. It was like a book podcast. And it's like, well, language isn't everything. And I was like, okay, but like actually the words we use are shaping our understanding of the thing. And I think by leaving both in you're saying,
00:23:54
Speaker
look, ah you could use a different option here and it would change everything. It would change everything about what we understand about this book. Yeah, no, completely. And I'm really fascinated by that as a concept in terms of how, in in the thesis that I just submitted, there's a reference I make to a book and it basically talks about how metaphor structures society and culture, like these specific metaphors that we that we live with and and are encultured into, they have devastating effects.
00:24:24
Speaker
And so I think, yeah, language is not, it's not to be taken for granted at all. Yeah, exactly. And then in your funny, sly way, you you give us, skin to light is found to absorb 99.956% of the light that touched it. you're like, okay, we're back in that scientific register. And Karen, a marine biologist, I don't know how you feel about that now, but like I laughed out loud the first time I read it. And like, ah it just felt so on the nose, but in a way that was like,
00:24:51
Speaker
like I know this is on the nose but like let's run with it because then the next line made the discovery is crossed out and came across them by accident is there and I just love like that passivity right like the change of like no no scientists aren't discovering just like oh they happen to see something they didn't intend to.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah yeah yeah it's I mean to this day And I, you know, I don't know anything about, I don't know much about law. I think what one of the reasons why the register of this poem has, is is so kind of like a little bit neutral, a little bit clipped, a little bit formal is because this woman is actually called Karen. She's not.
00:25:35
Speaker
oh, Karen, that's her name. Oh my God. And so I knew that, oh, Victoria, you're going to do it. Don't do it. Am I going to do it? I'm going to do it. Do you mean? was like, look. She did it. The only way I can write.
00:25:50
Speaker
I did it. Girl, I did it. The only way I could write this poem is if I tell the truth. right because Because this is what happened. This is what happened. I didn't make the rules.
00:26:01
Speaker
Her name is Karen and this is her research. And I just thought, you really can't you can't make this up. And that's the great thing, I think. And it's a really humbling thing, too, because, you you know, we can go off and we can write our poems and But I think the real poem in life is always going to be so much more poetic. And it's poetic that it just so happens that her name is Karen.
00:26:23
Speaker
Now, i'm not I'm not making a value judgment about her and her work. I'm trying to state the facts and say, this is what happened. She wasn't looking for these fish, but she um came across them.
00:26:37
Speaker
and And here's the research. And here is the commentary that later comes in from how these fish could be used. This is all true, but I do think it was kind of ironic, you know, um but I didn't make it up.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah. It's too perfect. i love I now love it even more. that That's actually her name. I love it even more now.
Scientific Narratives and Identity Exploration
00:26:57
Speaker
Instead of hauling the deep sea crab, she'd been searching for her net produced effect. Like even that like her net produced effect. Like it had nothing to do with her, right? Just like, this is just an accidental thing.
00:27:07
Speaker
And then there's like another swerve held later in a tank under two strobe lights. again, what you did earlier, right? Like word, comma, later, comma, you get another one there's like parenthetical bits, which again puts emphasis on the word held, right? Not later held in a tank because that would put the emphasis on like duration, right? But instead like held and not just it's like living in a tank or like in a tank, like held and held gives me capture. It gives me like force.
00:27:39
Speaker
It also gives me like the hold, right? To go back to the guns book, right? And thinking about like the sea as a space where so many people have lived and died and drowned and et cetera, right?
00:27:50
Speaker
And the idea of like the hold is like a space of like capture and like with the poem is kind of capturing the fish, but then almost like letting it free by the end, right? There's this there's a certain kind of relinquishing. I just think that's like really striking bit of language after the kind of playfulness of that bit about Karen and etc.
00:28:07
Speaker
Yeah yeah definitely because I think yeah the the Karen thing is is funny and ironic but but I think the truth of the poem is in the fact that this is this is the process. This is the protocol that was followed.
00:28:27
Speaker
The fish were observed in a tank. They were placed under strobe lights. And, you know, I'm, I'm not someone who's like, Oh, like, you know throw science out the window. I think science is amazing, but I think the poem is also trying to notice what science does and discoveries are, see, I've just used it. um You know,
00:28:47
Speaker
Knowledge is something we can come into ah contact with by accident and that's okay. But there are also procedures in the poem that literally happen that are not pleasant for the fish. Like I'm sure they didn't enjoy that, you know? So, and and and then there's the metaphor, I guess, develops from how those procedures are, you know, they relate to not just how fish or other creatures are treated but these are recognizable experiences for human life as well so yeah yeah exactly and like hell's an attack under two strobe lights right there's even like a it feels violent too the fish became a living black hole which is like a really intense little phrase break with no discernible features beyond the opacity of its
00:29:40
Speaker
silhoua Again, like a really interesting break, right? Like I wouldn't expect it to be the word at the end of the line, but like beyond the opacity of it, we have to like wait for what that opacity is.
00:29:51
Speaker
And then as though it had cut itself out of the image and left, which is like one of my favorite lines in the history of your writing, like that is a line. It gives the fish some agency again, but also like,
00:30:05
Speaker
cut itself out of the image like also reminds me of the artwork as well right like almost like out of the poem like you could you could it's like the fish is extracting itself like I don't want anything to do with your poem I don't want anything to do with your photograph you know yeah yeah it it kind of um that line also i don't know which cartoon but I feel like I have memories of like cartoons where characters would sort of like cut around themselves and then you just have like the silhouette left there and honestly I wish we had good cartoons because I feel like growing up watching like Tom and Jerry and all of these cartoons you know they all had their problematics as well because they were made in like what 1940 or something but there was a kind of irony and a kind of inventiveness and a randomness that I think was really good for the brain yeah and the idea of a
00:30:56
Speaker
the idea of a cartoon character sort of removing itself from the frame or the image really pays it it then makes you think oh like they're not just running away they it's kind it I can't explain it but there's something there that I think is like oh there's Where did they go? They didn't just run away within the cartoon, they cut themselves out.
00:31:19
Speaker
It's crazy, I can't get my head around it. Well, it's like, yeah, it's the breaking of that fourth wall, right? Like in those cartoons, it'd be like, actually, I'm not i'm not part of this. Yeah, as pulling down the like the framework of like what we think we're looking at, which again is what this fish is doing, right?
00:31:34
Speaker
You know, scientists believe that the fish developed their invisibility to aid them in escaping their presence. Like also invisibility, but like to whom, right? Like just like we can't see them, but like, okay, they may be visible to each other. Another theory, Brake, suggests that the obscurity of the ultra black fish, and was like, oh, obscurity, like the multiple meanings there, right? Like not just, not like visual obscurity, but like, that again, this otherness thing.
00:31:59
Speaker
enables them to more successfully catch their prey it's likely that both ideas are true so you're kind of going through these arguments i'm like okay but where are we actually going though like the speaker is like leading us somewhere which you were suddenly on board with the speaker's kind of playfulness i think by this point and commentators have also speculated that the chemical structure of the pigment could serve the development of military and defense technologies. That's where like, okay, now the poem is really kind of pushing harder, right? That like, now we're thinking about the use of the fish to humans, right? Not just, not just for themselves or not just like for scientific knowledge, quote unquote, but rather like, what can it do for us?
00:32:38
Speaker
and And like the violence of that is is even more heightened. Yeah, it's, and I think the register hasn't, still hasn't really changed that much.
00:32:49
Speaker
And so I would be curious to see how different people experience that line about like the military and defense technologies, because ultimately it's like, I'm not saying this is bad. Like I never say that, but, but I wonder how it lands with people because it just, for me, when I read that article or those articles, cause there were several, found it so disappointing.
00:33:12
Speaker
I just thought, oh, can we not think of anything better? Like, is that the best idea? The best idea really? and just felt really like a failure of our ability to exist in a kind of wonder. Because again, these fish were discovered, discovered, quote unquote, by accident.
00:33:30
Speaker
And it could have been a case of how amazing is this? But then the commentary that follows of it that follows it it it kind of goes into this language of war and I just think that's so disappointing.
00:33:46
Speaker
And like military and defense right like it's a like it's it we're back with with like human violence right like it's like of all the things we could imagine like we're not just capturing the fish and treating it violently but then using it for our own violent ends and the poem is like no nothing was said however Right. And this where the speaker is almost like coming forward, right?
00:34:08
Speaker
About how ultra black fish find and enter into relations with each other. of the at fish find alliteration like gorgeous and enter into relations with each other.
00:34:19
Speaker
Just, okay, no, no, we're not doing war. We're not doing like just scrutiny. We're doing relationality. Just this beautiful like softness in the sound as well. They're like enter into relations with each other. Nonetheless, the codes of S's, their existence alone is evidence that.
00:34:35
Speaker
And this line also, you had one, two, three, like there's a quite a few commas in here, right? That really slow us down. Their existence alone is evidence that invisible as they may be to others.
00:34:46
Speaker
They are by no means strangers to themselves. Like that last line like really takes me out. And this is something you explore throughout the book, right? Like in one framework, this person or this creature or this idea is one thing.
00:34:58
Speaker
But like that assumes there's only one way of looking at the thing. There's only one perspective, only one framework. And it is usually a white framework. It is usually a Western framework. It's usually like a dominant, like patriarchal framework. much And actually it's what about, what are the fish to each other? What are the fish to themselves?
00:35:14
Speaker
There's such a generosity in that final part. They're like, because by the end of the poem, I'm like, oh, God, this is where we've ended up. Right. But actually, poem kind of rescues it in a way and says, like, no, abundance, life, mutuality, relationality. Yeah. and And I'm really curious. Like, I could have tried to end the poem with a question, but I thought, yeah.
00:35:36
Speaker
no, like I don't want to ask the question because if I do that, then I'm forcing the reader to also ask the question. But I'm like, no, I want the reader to be curious. i want the reader to also wonder with me how these fish see each other.
00:35:50
Speaker
Like we don't know because nobody was interested in that. Nobody seemed to care how these fish actually find each other. If it is so dark down there and if the fish are also so dark,
00:36:04
Speaker
Make it make sense. ah And it's just like using that metaphor of darkness and thinking about the world that we live in and the ways that again, like the world is just constantly primed for like the military, the defensive, like this language of war and like the kind of like carceral nature of life.
00:36:24
Speaker
It's like, oh, our imaginations have been curtailed by the by these structures. such that we can't even just ask a most basic question.
00:36:35
Speaker
How do these fish find each other? and to use that then as a metaphor for how do we find each other in these dark times? Like, how how are we going to, how do we do it? And it's a shame because I think the poem that the poem I would love to write is the poem about how they do that.
00:36:52
Speaker
But i don't I don't know how they do that. And I'm not saying that we need to go extract them again and find out how things work. But I think the cu yeah the the curiosity is is um is the anti-poem to what's going on in and this poem.
00:37:08
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that that then took me back to Kevin Koshy's work, right? Like I know you referenced his book on quiet in like in the book, which is like obviously quite central to it. But I was also thinking about his other book on aliveness, right? On black aliveness.
00:37:22
Speaker
And it kind of opened with, like, I want to imagine a black world where blackness is the totality of being, not blackness in relation to, but blackness as the totality of being. And...
00:37:33
Speaker
that like that's what the the ending said to me right like blackness as not in relation to like what could like lightness or what can be seen or like human eye or but like blackness in and of itself unto itself outside of the constrictors of what like blackness might mean and like that and is where this poem suddenly like opens up for me so i think yes you could write a different poem with where you have the answers to that kind of final bit but almost the speculation of that final bit feels as important if you like Yeah, definitely.
00:38:03
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah, because I think, I guess there's that space of we don't know. we don't know how these fish find each other. We don't know really.
00:38:15
Speaker
you know, it's it's it's so, we've we've been through so many hundreds of years of domination and capitalism and extraction that even to be Black doesn't mean to have a knowledge of this this kind of relation that preexisted all of these structures.
00:38:36
Speaker
So we don't know. but i think that, yeah, the the wandering and the the wandering wondering with an a and the wandering with the O, they are the kind of praxis that I think the poem wants to gesture towards.
00:38:51
Speaker
And it is to to at least suggest that there are completely other modes of existence like bioluminescence and being seen and being neon bright is also can be great but there's more there are so many different modes of being and living from which we might find a kind of like sustenance in this current point that we're at on earth. That's a beautiful place to end that part I think.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah this is such a good poem. ever Everyone needs to go buy this book my word. I also want to now talk to you a little bit about your writing and some other things.
Writing Practice and Inspirations
00:39:28
Speaker
We talked a bit earlier about like how this poem came into being but like do you have a writing practice like a regular setup? Do you have like a mode of doing it Are there, you know, are you drinking coffee?
00:39:41
Speaker
Is it daily? You do by hand or on computer? Like I want to know all the things. oh I guess I do have a writing practice in that even since the age of like definitely seven, I began keeping a journal and i haven't often seen journaling as part of my writing practice, but I think actually, no, I need to give it credit because it was, it wasn't something I was doing to to do like creative writing, but it was certainly creative creative life writing, like definitely. and And I think that that kind of very regular act of, oh, I've got to write this down and I've i've got to write it down because I'm trying to understand it.
00:40:20
Speaker
and And also if I can find beauty in it, then i then I kind of, if I don't understand it, then I at least don't mind looking at it. You know, so that is a practice.
00:40:31
Speaker
And that's my most consistent practice. I don't get to journal as much right now, but it's always a part of me. I've always, always had a journal consistently throughout these years. And i don't have a wake up at this time.
00:40:45
Speaker
I need to though, ah because i'm I'm working on a novel now and I'm this time, like this September till December, I'm like, you need to get this thing. finished and I think that will require of me a very daily practice that is oh like emails are not going to get in the way of that like that's you're not going to write this thing with what's left of you at the end of the day no it is your day it's going to take some of that but as for right now I don't really have a practice I'm definitely a nighttime person like I love ah love writing at night
00:41:18
Speaker
I don't know what that is. I just, even if I've dedicated a day to something daytime, there's always the feeling that something else is waiting at the door, but at nighttime, nothing is, nothing is doing that.
00:41:31
Speaker
But I also find, and i I say this in workshops a lot, I i read, I try to read theory. Theory really is metaphorical. Like I find like Quashie's work, all of his books,
00:41:44
Speaker
They're just, I think some people can write in such a way that makes you just want to write and you can just visualize things. Koshy is one of them. I think Sadia Hartman is one of them. Yeah, like theory, I think is really exciting because it's kind of thinking about the world, but it's also still quite imaginative.
00:42:06
Speaker
And that's where I think the poetry comes in because then I'm like, oh like I have an image now and I can use that image. to test theory and that's kind of like my relationship.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I find that if I wanna refill my kind of like my bucket, if I wanna refill my cup, I read, try to be in engagement with theory.
00:42:28
Speaker
And I find that when I'm not writing poems, um that's when I read poems, but when I'm writing poems, I read theory. It's really interesting. I try and take turns.
00:42:39
Speaker
That's fascinating. And in this nighttime space, like I'm imagining like low lighting. i'm imagining like, you know, that i i also the quietness of an evening is just beautiful to me.
00:42:50
Speaker
ah you Do you handwrite or you tight are you a typer? I will type. Yeah, I will type. There'll be times when if I'm out and about, i my i enjoy like making notes in a little tiny notebook.
00:43:05
Speaker
but But that wouldn't really amount to a poem. that Those would be little sketches of things that I would then at the laptop flesh out. Journaling is always by hand though. Like I would never journal on my laptop. I always journal by hand and that that feels good. That feels important because you have to commit to it.
00:43:25
Speaker
You have to really just push, yeah, say the thing and then it's there. Whereas on the laptop you can just... you know you can just delete it i really find it difficult to write creatively by hand because i'm like i don't want to put this down this feels too definitive right um i like the hesitancy of typing on that have you got any i know you do some teaching like do you have any creative tasks that you get students to do that you would want to share like think or like tips or the kind of ideas that people could try out so every other month um i do a workshop with faber academy
00:43:58
Speaker
and it's called Start to Write Poetry. It runs from 10 a.m. a to 4 p.m. It's all online. And one of the opening exercises that I run, that I do in that in that session, is to, I ask the participants to transcribe a dream that they've had, a dream that has stayed with them for a long time. Nothing traumatic, nothing nightmarish, unless it's like interesting and not um troubling.
00:44:22
Speaker
and I ask them to do that in the second person or the first person. And I think that's for two reasons. Having a dream that one remembers is kind of like you're the expert, but no one else has that, that text, that kind of those those set of images, they're entirely yours. So you're the expert.
00:44:44
Speaker
And then writing it in second person creates a kind of distance that then I think can be helpful because I think especially like in like British culture like we're taught to be so bashful about speaking about ourselves and like saying something that happened to us or we're also taught to be bashful about something that we think is a bit strange we'll be like oh that's a bit weird and then we'll just back away from it and I think that writing in second person takes the pressure off because you're no longer saying i you're saying you
00:45:16
Speaker
And I think, you know, I always tell participants that look like you can do this with anything. like You don't have to write anything in the first person. You can change the tense or the subject position. You can change it so that it makes it easier for you to write it and then you can switch it back. um So that's somethings something that I'd recommend.
00:45:35
Speaker
And if you don't have a dream, you can think about a film, but you a scene from a film that's like, so much a part of you now that you can write about it. That's amazing. I mean, most of my dreams are weirdly film like references. So like if that kind of overlaps, I'm always like, why does that feel like I'm dreaming a David Lynch movie? But anyway, like that's, that's my brain. Okay.
00:45:57
Speaker
Do you have any books you would recommend to listeners? Like anything old, new, not yet out, things that you go back to, anything you want, as many as you want. I love, I love to read a book.
00:46:09
Speaker
where I'm like, oh my goodness, I just have to, all i need to do now is quit, just quit, because it's just so good. And I really felt that way with Lely Long Soldier's book, whereas I just, I'd love to feel that way again. i'd love to feel the way I felt reading that book. ah I'd love a book that would do that to me again, because there's something about how that book opens. And it's almost as though The text is, the terms of the text are building themselves. Like it's introducing itself to you. The the kind of language and the terms of relation that are gonna follow, we start with the building blocks.
00:46:47
Speaker
So the first few poems in that book are quite imagistic and quite small. And then we just, it just escalates. And by the end it's just devastation, but it's also not just that, but it's like, oh wow, like I feel tired.
00:47:01
Speaker
And um there is a book that is coming out in the US and hopefully this will get home here too. This is called The Death of the, well, it's called Death of the First Idea by Ricky Laurentiis.
00:47:15
Speaker
Ricky's first book, Boy with Thorn, came out in 2015. That's like 10 years ago now. At that point in time, Ricky, his pronouns were 2025, Ricky has transitioned.
00:47:29
Speaker
And this whole book um it really charts her journey through gender and through masculinity and how it just breaks things down and it's funny it's sad it's confusing it's one of these books where I'm just like oh I don't think I'm I don't think I'm smart enough but I kind of love that feeling I can't yeah I just love that feeling like oh so you know there's Greek references there's all sorts I'm just like oh my goodness this is crazy so yeah I think um
00:48:01
Speaker
Death of the First Idea Ricky Laurentiis. I'd really, yeah, I'd mention that. Those are amazing. I will link to both. Even if in the UK, you can find a way to buy it somehow. I'm sure you'll find way.
00:48:14
Speaker
Both of those are amazing.
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:48:16
Speaker
ah Victoria, thank you so much for your time today. It was such pleasure and so nice to see you again. Thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun. Thank you for listening to this episode.
00:48:26
Speaker
Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube. And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes. It's really helpful to us.
00:48:43
Speaker
You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.