A Conversation with Ewan Hill '18
Interviewed by Julia Falkner ‘19
Could you trace a brief history of your relationship to poetry?
I’ve always written, that was just something that I had an impulse to do. But my first year of college, on a whim, I signed up for a slam in Pittsfield. I hopped in the college van and went to this museum where the slam was… Franny Choi was featuring that night, I had no idea who she was, but I had memorized my poem and I went and performed. Everyone was like “yeah, this is so great,” I did my poet voice, and it was all very impressive to my seventeen-year-old self. After the show, this woman who was probably 30 years older than me came up to me. I had read a poem about blushing. She said something along the lines of “that was a very important poem for me to hear, thank you for writing it.” That’s when I was like…. I’m connecting with strangers and the things I have to say are important. So I dove into whatever slam spaces and poetry communities I could find, and I’ve been running ever since.
What would you say about those communities to an outsider?
It’s so dramatic. Which I love, I’m a Libra. There’s something very lovely about all of the people who make their careers out of standing on stage talking about their feelings. That is such a stunning thing to me. I’m so lucky to be surrounded by people who do that it and make it their life’s work, and understand in a really deep way what poetry can do. Slam communities are weird… it’s like any community, there’s going to be ups and downs, folks who show up once and never come back… but the real community who stays in touch and shows up, is the most gorgeous part of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
There’s also so much support, especially with bringing new work to the stage. There are like a dozen open mics I could go to and say “this is new shit” and people would scream at me, you know? That’s so lovely… it also helps me to keep writing all the time. I want to keep producing work, for my friends.
And you organize in the community as well?
I was involved in a scene that was deeply unsatisfying. A lot of other folks in the community and I really wanted to push a great space into something that was phenomenal, but the person in charge wasn’t willing to do that, so I left. Catherine Weiss and I founded Pulp Slam. For the new year we moved to Northampton at The Roost, which is a super popular cafe, and they serve coffee and alcohol, and they’re accessible. They also make a mean mac & cheese brick. Running the show takes up a bit of time, but at the end of the day being an organizer connects me to the most wonderful people, and I love to connect them to these phenomenal poets who we host every first and third and Friday.
You just put out a chapbook titled Queer Skies. I was wondering about your work’s relationship to queerness.
I would say queerness manifests in a very explicit way. It announces itself, it’s in the title of the book. It has been really important for me to comb through my childhood and find queerness there, find the places where I was resisting the imposition of gender. I remember the day that I realized I had a crush on this person Emily, in the eighth grade. I truly, honestly thought I just wanted to be her friend, and two years later I came out and I looked back and realized that was the biggest crush I had ever had on a person. Out of that came a poem in here called “Queer is a Long Gut-Punch Heart-Eyed Run Around the School Track”, and in that poem I talk about Emily and tell our true story. Everything in here is true, which is such a wonderful place to write from, but it’s also scary. I have a poem that’s just an erasure of an email my dad sent me that was really upsetting. He’s been working really hard to understand and support me as I’ve come out as trans, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been hurting each other this whole time either. A lot of poems come from my most trans thoughts. In one I said to myself, what would happen if the gender binary just didn’t exist? This was probably after a really long day of being misgendered, of people asking a lot from me and not really looking at me. So then I wrote this poem, “My Trans Body Fathoms Safety as a House With an Old Gray Armchair”. I did kind of the same thing with “Sonnet for Menstruating Dicks”. I was thinking about what it would be like to have a dick, which is a really trans thought on its own, and then I kind of poemed it into existence. That was really fun to write.
I want queerness everywhere in my poetry. I want to paint it on the walls, I want the carpet to be made of queerness, I want it to hang from the ceiling above my poem children’s cribs. It’s great to have my poems get into the hands of other queer people who need the words. Folks who are struggling with whatever facet of this incredible collection of identities. So however I write about it, I want it to be a way that other people have access to. I just want to explore my own brain, you know? There’s some weird stuff. We have these lumps of connection, that’s what brains are, they’re connections.
You mentioned to me that poetry gives us permission to connect. Could you speak further on that?
It’s true that cis boys and cis men aren’t ever supposed to talk about their feelings, and it’s an important discussion to have. But it’s not only about them, it’s about everybody. In professional settings, in career settings, even at a party with your closest friends; there are at least one or two roadblocks in talking about the deepest and most important emotions of the day. Poetry acts in opposition to that. A good poem deeply embodies the hardships and the impeccable brightness we face. Not only the writing of poetry but the sharing of it allows opportunity for discussion about our colossal feelings. At Pulp Slam in February, I read a new poem on that open mic that was touching on transness, suicidal ideation, and deep loneliness. Those themes showed up in about five other poems that were on the mic that night. We were all so vulnerable with each other in a way that was was really healing. We have to be careful that it is healing, that sharing these deep things doesn’t feel forced or uncomfortable… especially the organizers, who are responsible for curating the space. But that’s just an example of my most recent moment of that connection.
Who should we all be reading?
Short answer? Everybody. I feel like my craft is a retainer, and the more I read and write, the better it fits. But some nights are more painful than others. I am really excited about the ways that other people are writing about queerness. Chen Chen and Tommy Pico come to mind. There is something so gorgeous about saying exactly what you mean in exactly the way you would bitch about it to your best friend. Right now I’m reading Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. This book is changing everything. We should all be reading Danez Smith. Hieu Minh Nguyen. Meg Day. Fatimah Asghar. I am super excited for Porsha Olayiwola’s book to come out, she just invented a new form. There is truly a poetry renaissance happening in Boston, anyone who lives in Boston and publishes a book, read it. But I’m sure the best poem in the world is buried in a sixteen-year-old’s diary.
Where is your writing life headed?
I feel like I’m on the cusp of producing so much writing that really good stuff happens. I’m about to be writing so much that I kind of spit out something perfect accidentally. I have been excited to play with form, with how a page happens. With the centerfold poem in Queer Skies, “Party”, in the first three sentences there’s an asterisk. Then that brings us to this whole other poem, which is still part of it. I’ve also started writing poems with footnotes. I write so many research papers and use footnotes, and they’re so handy. So I’m interested in them… the idea that maybe these details, someone will care about them.
What about your organizing life?
We have a few features coming up at Pulp Slam that I’m just over the moon about… one of them is Ashley August, she’s so funny and such a presence on stage, she’s an actor as well. That’s going to be the 20th of April. This summer we have Raych Jackson as well as Lydia Havens and Olivia Gatwood. I have this very sweet vision of Pulp Slam in the summertime, at the Roost, with the doors open and breeze coming in and diesel noises from the street and good good poems. That’s all my heart wants.
I also want it to be a space that trans people want to come to. I really want to be the radical trans kid in cute boots that welcomes everyone else, that makes belonging an easy wish.
Sonnet for Menstruating Dicks
I could erect a dick with the blood I shed each month.
Wouldn’t that be cute. To watch the muscled spout
of me make a dick instead of take one. Raise it
like a statue, carved from my lung-stone, my collapsed
breath breast pressed smooth enough to trick
the woman out of me. Strangers have seen this motor
and answered it with sir. They speak and a dick dick dick blooms
gentle. I’ve built a kingdom for all the dicks I haven’t had.
An empire of dying light. My dicks are the north star
that went out before I followed it home. Astrology dicks.
Horoscope for the holy ghost. Brother to the haunt.
Spooky how something not-there can simmer between legs.
As if this bleeding were more than an engine for gulping
quiet. As if this mouth could lose, and lose, and grieve itself full.