The Rupture Point: Conversation with Abigail Chabitnoy
I don’t want this to be a cultural critique, or to garner attention as a poet only because the background seems exotic. I want the work to stand for the work.
I don’t want this to be a cultural critique, or to garner attention as a poet only because the background seems exotic. I want the work to stand for the work.
I waited for Nathan to pass his gaze over me and smile, fumbling for a compliment and finding none. Instead, he put a hand over his heart and dropped his jaw. “And look at you! My god, Andy—isn’t she the spitting image of Björk?”
“When I teach, my analogy is that fiction is a huge tree while poetry is a bonsai. It’s immensely helpful to toggle between working on different scales. Fiction helps me infuse my poems with narrative. Poetry makes my fiction more deft, descriptive, and concise.”
“I’m excited by the nature of genre, like gender, to eschew formula and boundaries. I think since the world is on fire, our words are getting hotter, more urgent, more unrepentant.”
“I do feel (and this helped me persevere, in completing the collection) that stories of trauma endured and resisted by people of color, particularly women of color, have been silenced so many times that there is value in telling these stories, however imperfectly.”