What Tales These Fingers Tell
An Interview with Zilka Joseph
Amanda Larson recently had the opportunity to sit down with Zilka Joseph, author of Sharp Blue Search of Flame, after her reading on October 3rd, 2016, as part of Central Michigan University’s Wellspring Literary Series. Mrs. Joseph has also authored two chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, and was published in this month’s edition of Poetry Magazine. For more information on Mrs. Joseph, or to read some of her poems, visit her website at: http://www.zilkajoseph.com/welcome-1.html
Photo: Kennen White |
Amanda: What inspires you to write?
Zilka: I think just thoughts and observations and the way ideas just kind of pop into my head. I think as writers we’re constantly thinking about something or the other. That’s when little thoughts start brewing in my mind. I can feel words coming in, or I’m just thinking about something and those are forming into words, and I think that’s where my writing comes from.
I don’t know if I’m completely answering your question about inspiration, but I do get inspired to write when I’m reading. Sometimes, it’s those little thoughts, it’s those little reactions, or just a line that blows me away. I’m almost thinking in terms of a next line to that, or something that comes from that. Other than that, I would say things like nature and animals I’m very drawn to, and my writing refers a lot to crows and creatures and they seem to be very much part of the tapestry of my world and my writing. I would say reading, movies sometimes. But a lot of it is just, you know, I’ll read a poem and something will happen. Or I’ll be talking to somebody, and somebody quotes something, and then I think about it.
Amanda: Last night at the reading I was really taken with the poem “Mudras,” and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the historical context, and where the poem came from?
Zilka: So, mudras, the word itself means hand gestures, and each of those hand gestures can
specify something. It can mean a lamp, a bird, shadow figures that you use. These are like a set of symbols that is part of the dance language. Many of those mudras are common to several Indian dances. Some of the context can change depending on the region, and the history of the dance. But, the…mudras are fairly universal, within India, I think. Each of those gestures will signify something. Some of them will signify anger, and mudras go with facial expressions. If you look at photographs just of the hand movements, and say, oh this could be a flower, or, this could be a deer walking through the woods, or this could just be an abstract symbol of the universe, or light….so you can deduce what some of those things mean, even if you see them without the facial expression. But normally, if you look at the whole dancer, you see the facial expression. It depends on the narrative. For example, a lot of the dances are based on the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Many of the stories are already known to the viewer and the audience, even if they’re not very conversant with the actual classical symbols and form of dance. But the narrative will come through because there’s already a context that’s set…. All these mudras symbolize something, and they’re part of telling a story.
So, the photographs … that I wrote these poems to were just a series of hand movements and gestures. The first panel might have had like a lotus opening…even if you didn’t know the context, you could look at it and say, it looks like a flower opening. My poems kind of went along with that. I kind of wanted to give it the feel of an epic, therefore I had like “Speak then to me” or “what tales these fingers tell,” because it’s like how an epic often opens, even like Paradise Lost, or the Odyssey, the singer beginning to warm up and say ‘now I’m ready to tell the story.’ I kind of mimicked that in the first part, and then allowed words like ‘the waking,’ ‘the calling,’ so it was very abstract, but at the same time setting the tone for the beginning of the story, as you would like in a dance drama or something. The next one it was kind of a free form, like whatever the images were, of the mudras were. Those I didn’t interpret directly as what was equivalent of the form of the message of the fingers, and some were just abstraction. But, I made my own story up, what looked like butterflies, what looked like feelers, or what looked like buffalo horns, so I made my own sort of story in the second one. In third one, I think I concluded it with the dance image again, where a lot of the times we have Shiva’s dance, which is the thunder and the lightning, and the three eyes are very, very significant in Indian dance.
I use some of those things that are really common to the spiritual aspects of just Indian religion, the Hindu religion, and dance. I made that whole story, with the three eyes of lightning and the ten arms, because if you look at images of gods and goddesses, they’ll have an array of arms, each one holding something. If you actually look at the hands, you’ll see very often they’ll be in these mudras or positions. I kind of just took that base and then let my imagination do the rest of the work. I think I also mention tongues, myriad tongues, and I think I wanted to bring in the whole thing of sound and language and also because I knew these poems would be read to so many different kinds of audiences I wanted it to have these images of you know, tongues and arms and wrists diving. To bring in that energy of movement, also, with just very quick sketches of, or just single words, like ‘listen’ or ‘how deep this bowl’ or ‘how tall it stands.’ Very short little sentences to create an impression of dance.
Amanda: I know you just recently published your book, so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the publication process?
Zilka: Sure, sure. I’ll start with my two chapbooks, because I think that will be useful for people who are just beginning to publish, and send their work out. My first chapbook was published by Mayapple Press, which used to be in the Saginaw Valley area. Finishing Line Press is also very good at publishing new authors, and they do a good job of putting a book together. So these are the two that I have had experiences with and I encourage people to send, to look at what chapbook contests are asking for.
Look at what’s being published by some of the smaller indie publishers, and get a sense of, you know, is this your style, your writing. If they’re publishing poetry that doesn’t appeal to you too much, then maybe I would just explore some more and see if there is a press that publishes several kinds of styles and you say hey, you know, this might work.
I realize that when people pick up manuscripts to publish, they are looking for a kind of narrative, as opposed to just a collection of poems. Which, I think, earlier, that was still okay. I think people now really look for some form of narrative, that you’re building up some trajectory in the process of the book. There are a lot of good presses in the Midwest. I would encourage people to check those out.
As far as full length manuscripts, I fell into the contest trap when I first began. First of all, I don’t think I was ready, I don’t think I realized that my style and my voice were not something that would fit a lot the things these presses were doing. They were doing wonderful work, but again, it was like, I would read it and I would say, would these people publish my poems and my voice? I began to realize, no, that’s not going to happen, so I began looking elsewhere. And because Wayne State is looked up to in Detroit, and because I was connected to Detroit and the larger Detroit area, I always really wanted to be published by Wayne State. So, I would almost every year send them a manuscript, or every two years send them an updated manuscript. And it finally happened, so I was very pleased about that.
So most of the time, first of all, setting up your manuscript as neatly and cleanly as you can, following the instructions of the guidelines, whatever the guidelines say, because sometimes people just want to play with font, or put in a picture, or you know something that they’ve been used to, but I would be very careful about following you know the manuscript length, or you know, how many title pages they want, so just to pay attention to those things. But I really think the most important thing is to just get a sense of who they’re publishing.
The other thing I do if I send to contests, I look and see who the final judge is, even though who knows if your manuscript will ever reach the final level. Because a lot of the time it’s graduate students who are reading the manuscript. And if they are primarily readers of experimental verse, or a certain kind of writing, then I know from the get-go, it’s most likely not even going to go to the second level.
But I think it just saves a lot of time if you are more real about approaching this process…. I very often look them up through Google, very often they provide a link so that you can read about them. And then I try and read a couple of the poems that this person has written, or just the kind of titles of the books. Does mine have a poetic, lyrical aspect, or a narrative aspect? That helps me to not waste a lot of money. That has been helpful for me to sort of narrow my field a little bit. A lot of the time I try to see, I learned a lot from books and chapbooks that were already published. Because sometimes I didn’t know how to format my work, and I didn’t have anybody to advise me. I would just look at the way the contents were printed out, or how the acknowledgments were placed. Where did the acknowledgements come, were they in the back, or the beginning, you know? So I used a lot of the books as formats for me own work, when I began, because I really didn’t have anybody to teach me some of those basics. Those things were very helpful to me.
Amanda: The last question I have is what advice would you give to somebody who’s just starting out, writing and submitting their work?
Zilka: One is identifying a lot of writers, not just poets. Non-fiction, fiction, anything that really appeals to you, that really grabs you, and makes you want to go back to it and just read the language over and over. I think just immersing yourself in art, and poetry and writing does amazing things. Maybe you won’t get a poem out of it that night, or tomorrow morning, but these are all things that allow your brain to sort of absorb and think about. That I highly advise. The other thing is to not be intimidated when people around you are getting published and seem to be moving way faster than you. Begin to experiment by sending to smaller journals, local journal, Michigan journals. I know a lot of people set their sights very high, but I like to begin with what’s around me, get a sense of how that works. Don’t be afraid to get into the habit of sending out, and get into the habit of being rejected. I often tell my students, you know, sometime during the day, a couple of times a day, you might brush your teeth. It’s just habit. And you do it, and you say ‘okay, two have come back, I’ll send out three this weekend’. But keep that process going, because you have no idea which editor will like a poem that’s been rejected by fifty others. I think so much of it is a process, and reading, and just being as observant as you can.
Zilka: I think just thoughts and observations and the way ideas just kind of pop into my head. I think as writers we’re constantly thinking about something or the other. That’s when little thoughts start brewing in my mind. I can feel words coming in, or I’m just thinking about something and those are forming into words, and I think that’s where my writing comes from.
I don’t know if I’m completely answering your question about inspiration, but I do get inspired to write when I’m reading. Sometimes, it’s those little thoughts, it’s those little reactions, or just a line that blows me away. I’m almost thinking in terms of a next line to that, or something that comes from that. Other than that, I would say things like nature and animals I’m very drawn to, and my writing refers a lot to crows and creatures and they seem to be very much part of the tapestry of my world and my writing. I would say reading, movies sometimes. But a lot of it is just, you know, I’ll read a poem and something will happen. Or I’ll be talking to somebody, and somebody quotes something, and then I think about it.
Amanda: Last night at the reading I was really taken with the poem “Mudras,” and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the historical context, and where the poem came from?
Zilka: So, mudras, the word itself means hand gestures, and each of those hand gestures can
specify something. It can mean a lamp, a bird, shadow figures that you use. These are like a set of symbols that is part of the dance language. Many of those mudras are common to several Indian dances. Some of the context can change depending on the region, and the history of the dance. But, the…mudras are fairly universal, within India, I think. Each of those gestures will signify something. Some of them will signify anger, and mudras go with facial expressions. If you look at photographs just of the hand movements, and say, oh this could be a flower, or, this could be a deer walking through the woods, or this could just be an abstract symbol of the universe, or light….so you can deduce what some of those things mean, even if you see them without the facial expression. But normally, if you look at the whole dancer, you see the facial expression. It depends on the narrative. For example, a lot of the dances are based on the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Many of the stories are already known to the viewer and the audience, even if they’re not very conversant with the actual classical symbols and form of dance. But the narrative will come through because there’s already a context that’s set…. All these mudras symbolize something, and they’re part of telling a story.
So, the photographs … that I wrote these poems to were just a series of hand movements and gestures. The first panel might have had like a lotus opening…even if you didn’t know the context, you could look at it and say, it looks like a flower opening. My poems kind of went along with that. I kind of wanted to give it the feel of an epic, therefore I had like “Speak then to me” or “what tales these fingers tell,” because it’s like how an epic often opens, even like Paradise Lost, or the Odyssey, the singer beginning to warm up and say ‘now I’m ready to tell the story.’ I kind of mimicked that in the first part, and then allowed words like ‘the waking,’ ‘the calling,’ so it was very abstract, but at the same time setting the tone for the beginning of the story, as you would like in a dance drama or something. The next one it was kind of a free form, like whatever the images were, of the mudras were. Those I didn’t interpret directly as what was equivalent of the form of the message of the fingers, and some were just abstraction. But, I made my own story up, what looked like butterflies, what looked like feelers, or what looked like buffalo horns, so I made my own sort of story in the second one. In third one, I think I concluded it with the dance image again, where a lot of the times we have Shiva’s dance, which is the thunder and the lightning, and the three eyes are very, very significant in Indian dance.
I use some of those things that are really common to the spiritual aspects of just Indian religion, the Hindu religion, and dance. I made that whole story, with the three eyes of lightning and the ten arms, because if you look at images of gods and goddesses, they’ll have an array of arms, each one holding something. If you actually look at the hands, you’ll see very often they’ll be in these mudras or positions. I kind of just took that base and then let my imagination do the rest of the work. I think I also mention tongues, myriad tongues, and I think I wanted to bring in the whole thing of sound and language and also because I knew these poems would be read to so many different kinds of audiences I wanted it to have these images of you know, tongues and arms and wrists diving. To bring in that energy of movement, also, with just very quick sketches of, or just single words, like ‘listen’ or ‘how deep this bowl’ or ‘how tall it stands.’ Very short little sentences to create an impression of dance.
Amanda: I know you just recently published your book, so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the publication process?
Zilka: Sure, sure. I’ll start with my two chapbooks, because I think that will be useful for people who are just beginning to publish, and send their work out. My first chapbook was published by Mayapple Press, which used to be in the Saginaw Valley area. Finishing Line Press is also very good at publishing new authors, and they do a good job of putting a book together. So these are the two that I have had experiences with and I encourage people to send, to look at what chapbook contests are asking for.
Look at what’s being published by some of the smaller indie publishers, and get a sense of, you know, is this your style, your writing. If they’re publishing poetry that doesn’t appeal to you too much, then maybe I would just explore some more and see if there is a press that publishes several kinds of styles and you say hey, you know, this might work.
I realize that when people pick up manuscripts to publish, they are looking for a kind of narrative, as opposed to just a collection of poems. Which, I think, earlier, that was still okay. I think people now really look for some form of narrative, that you’re building up some trajectory in the process of the book. There are a lot of good presses in the Midwest. I would encourage people to check those out.
As far as full length manuscripts, I fell into the contest trap when I first began. First of all, I don’t think I was ready, I don’t think I realized that my style and my voice were not something that would fit a lot the things these presses were doing. They were doing wonderful work, but again, it was like, I would read it and I would say, would these people publish my poems and my voice? I began to realize, no, that’s not going to happen, so I began looking elsewhere. And because Wayne State is looked up to in Detroit, and because I was connected to Detroit and the larger Detroit area, I always really wanted to be published by Wayne State. So, I would almost every year send them a manuscript, or every two years send them an updated manuscript. And it finally happened, so I was very pleased about that.
So most of the time, first of all, setting up your manuscript as neatly and cleanly as you can, following the instructions of the guidelines, whatever the guidelines say, because sometimes people just want to play with font, or put in a picture, or you know something that they’ve been used to, but I would be very careful about following you know the manuscript length, or you know, how many title pages they want, so just to pay attention to those things. But I really think the most important thing is to just get a sense of who they’re publishing.
The other thing I do if I send to contests, I look and see who the final judge is, even though who knows if your manuscript will ever reach the final level. Because a lot of the time it’s graduate students who are reading the manuscript. And if they are primarily readers of experimental verse, or a certain kind of writing, then I know from the get-go, it’s most likely not even going to go to the second level.
But I think it just saves a lot of time if you are more real about approaching this process…. I very often look them up through Google, very often they provide a link so that you can read about them. And then I try and read a couple of the poems that this person has written, or just the kind of titles of the books. Does mine have a poetic, lyrical aspect, or a narrative aspect? That helps me to not waste a lot of money. That has been helpful for me to sort of narrow my field a little bit. A lot of the time I try to see, I learned a lot from books and chapbooks that were already published. Because sometimes I didn’t know how to format my work, and I didn’t have anybody to advise me. I would just look at the way the contents were printed out, or how the acknowledgments were placed. Where did the acknowledgements come, were they in the back, or the beginning, you know? So I used a lot of the books as formats for me own work, when I began, because I really didn’t have anybody to teach me some of those basics. Those things were very helpful to me.
Amanda: The last question I have is what advice would you give to somebody who’s just starting out, writing and submitting their work?
Zilka: One is identifying a lot of writers, not just poets. Non-fiction, fiction, anything that really appeals to you, that really grabs you, and makes you want to go back to it and just read the language over and over. I think just immersing yourself in art, and poetry and writing does amazing things. Maybe you won’t get a poem out of it that night, or tomorrow morning, but these are all things that allow your brain to sort of absorb and think about. That I highly advise. The other thing is to not be intimidated when people around you are getting published and seem to be moving way faster than you. Begin to experiment by sending to smaller journals, local journal, Michigan journals. I know a lot of people set their sights very high, but I like to begin with what’s around me, get a sense of how that works. Don’t be afraid to get into the habit of sending out, and get into the habit of being rejected. I often tell my students, you know, sometime during the day, a couple of times a day, you might brush your teeth. It’s just habit. And you do it, and you say ‘okay, two have come back, I’ll send out three this weekend’. But keep that process going, because you have no idea which editor will like a poem that’s been rejected by fifty others. I think so much of it is a process, and reading, and just being as observant as you can.