Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Irina Tall from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
Irina Tall: Nature inspires me, I often listen to birds… I have a jar on my balcony where I pour food, and then I watch how birds eat and communicate.
One time a hawk flew to the balcony, a large female, she hunted sparrows and caught a few. She ate them right on the balcony, and then cleaned the feathers for a long time.
Sometimes I go to exhibitions, and more often I am inspired by the films and books I have watched.
I probably wrote a long and incomprehensible phrase, but I really love birds of prey. At night, I often look at the stars, I like their distant fire, the moon month … I want to imagine a different life on them and I start to find out that it is possible that there is a person living there like me and he has the same thoughts, the same life …. and I sit down and draw some kind of worms with human heads, fish in which, instead of a body, a naked skeleton and several human heads.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
Irina Tall: One of my series of works was inspired by Yaoi Kusama. I love bright red, I saw her work, and then a year or more passed and a series about eggs matured inside me, when I drew, I thought exactly that the egg is a circle shape, only it was changed a little. I often imagine abstraction when I draw some object or person.
Once when I went to the museum, I was struck by the portraits of Angelica Kaufmann. And as a child, I tried to repeat the self-portrait of Zinaida Serebryakova, she depicted herself in front of a mirror when she combs her hair, then this gesture seemed to me like a stretched bowstring, after I compared this gesture with the famous archer Mikas Cherlyunis. In imitation of this artist, I later made a series with raspberry drops, where a bird, a human head, a web, a horse grew out of each.
I really like Egon Schiele, perhaps this is my idol.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
Irina Tall: A kick moves me very well, sometimes a creative stagnation occurs… And then you realize that your whole state is like stupidity that has rolled over you, and you just have to watch… and then a hop and something starts to move you. It’s good to get kicks, after one such kick, I took part in fifty projects in a year.
Sometimes my friends or just strangers make me move, sometimes even one phrase helps. Once I saw a manager who was buying a piece of cake in a store, I saw how she communicated with the seller and I noted that she had artistic abilities, and then the thought came to my mind how many obstacles she had to overcome in order to achieve the position in which she my depression, which sometimes rolls over me, has evaporated somewhere. Episodes like this keep me moving forward.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
Irina Tall: Oh, I have two methods of work. First, I just sit down and do it, no matter if it’s lines or spots. Second, I watch people, go somewhere to watch a performance or an exhibition. And inspire what they see.
Since 2021, I started making monotypes in ink, I had thin paper and I thought what I could do with it, from this the series “Ghosts” was born (it has five chapters and is not yet fully completed). I think that you don’t need to watch how others draw and imitate them, you need to invent something of your own, even if it’s not very successful at first…
I like to read books, I like mythology, I often draw some mythological creatures.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
Irina Tall: Now I am working on a project dedicated to Judith, at least in the story that I want to portray is the legend of Judith and the head of Holofernes. Giorgione has a famous work on this subject. It was this work that first inspired me.
In my project, Judith becomes a heroine placed in a kind of parallel world, from where people travel to everywhere where there are colonies on Mars, Venus. And where she is a girl from the highest aristocracy kills a high-ranking person who raped and killed. Probably this official is a kind of blue beard, since most often women become his victims.
I’m also doing a project about famine and war… These are even two different projects, but it’s hard to talk about them, at least talk about them. I have sketches, but they were not easy for me.
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
Irina Tall: I like Handel’s The Four Seasons, Mozart, almost all classical music in general. When I watched the movie “Interstellar”, I was struck by the music, and then I found out about the composer Hans Zimmer. I constantly turn on and listen to concerts from YouTube by this composer.
Once I was at a performance by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and literally fell in love with his works.
This is probably a difficult question about books, I like Czeslaw Miloš, but I’m like a lazy artist, but I read them all. At one time, I was struck by the non-linearity of the narrative, some kind of hidden philosophy in the erotic, by Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.
One of my favorite books is a book about Roman emperors.
Now I am subscribed to many mailing lists of English and American magazines that publish contemporary authors. I enjoy reading short stories and poetry.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
Irina Tall: My self-portrait is the Siren, the essence that wears a mask and where you can see the essence in the slit of the irons.
I believe that the main thing for a person is to move forward and it doesn’t matter in which family you were born, you just need to work hard and work.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
Irina Tall: You can see my works on social networks, I have an Instagram: @irinanov4155, @irina369tall
Lately I’ve been into collage. And for International Women’s Day, I made a collage with the image of a little mermaid. Probably everyone knows Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale about the little mermaid, I wanted to show a different image, an independent and complex girl who, when faced with something, does not give in, but overcomes. I consider the image of the prince in this story to be weak, or rather, he is a weak person who cannot make a decision, and then the girl makes the right decision, she refuses it and returns to herself.
Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Amy Guidry from our tenth issue.
Amy Guidry working on a recent acrylic on canvas painting.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
Amy Guidry: Galleries, museums, nature, animals
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
Amy Guidry: There are many artists I admire, but based on many personal reasons I relate most to Frida Kahlo. I admire her for creating beautiful, intriguing art despite what life threw at her.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
Amy Guidry: The natural world in general inspires my work.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
Amy Guidry: All of my paintings begin as a thumbnail sketch. Sometimes I have an image in mind, other times it may be a concept that I’d really like to cover through my work. Either way, I do tons of thumbnail sketches, which may just be slight variations from one to the next or they can be wildly different. I go through this process just so I can flesh out an idea until I feel like I have the “one.” I save all of these sketches because I’ve actually created subsequent paintings from ideas that I didn’t feel strongly about at the time. Just looking at them with fresh eyes can lead to something new.
Two Polar Bears share an eye, view of the world.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
Amy Guidry: I’m presently working on a painting for an upcoming show at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco. This group exhibition is titled Beyond the Horizon and features works inspired by star patterns, planetary bodies, and the monumental myths that inhabit the night sky.
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
Amy Guidry: I’d highly recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. For artists, I’d recommend Leonora Carrington’s exhibition, which I have to enjoy online, going on now at Recoletos Exhibition Hall in Madrid. I haven’t kept up with new music lately but I’ve been listening to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
Amy Guidry: As an artist, one of the more influential genres for me has been Surrealism. With my “In Our Veins” series, my style was becoming progressively more surreal, and I was looking to challenge myself technically and conceptually. One of the themes explored with this series is animal welfare. It’s an important issue for me on a personal level, but I also feel that it is a significant part of the future of our environment. They go hand-in-hand. “In Our Veins” explores the connections between all life forms and the process of the life cycle. This includes the interdependence of the human race to each other and to the rest of the animal kingdom, as well as the planet itself. One cannot exist without the other, therefore it is of the utmost importance that we care for each and every living thing. Of course, I believe this is important not just for the survival of the planet, but also out of a moral and ethical obligation as well.
One of the “trademarks” seen throughout the series is my depiction of animals. I wanted to emphasize their importance and do away with the notion that animals are “less” than humans. So, each animal- be it mammal, bird, etc.- has been endowed with something we consider a “human” quality. For example, some animals such as wolves, have more “human-looking” eyes or the animals are posed in a strong, maybe domineering, manner, or they have a facial expression that could be considered “human.” Above all, even if they are depicted in a state of distress, the animals featured have a strong presence.
Surrealism allows me to delve into environmental issues and animal welfare, creating strange worlds that reflect the current state of our planet. I’ve been inspired by imagery that comes to mind when first falling asleep or through free association. What seems illogical can come to life through painting. Truthfully, I do feel like what I paint is a mirror-image of our reality, though. Maybe a Through the Looking Glass reflection, but a reflection nonetheless.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Niels Noot from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
Niels Noot: I think that for many who create there is this internal drive of I have to do this or I will go crazy, and however cliché that might be, I believe that is the case for me as well. This may sound quite paradoxical looking at that I just came out of a creative block that lasted almost half a year. With a new project I suddenly started – without a plan or idea – I am getting out of it. There is just another obstacle in my way now, that obstacle being the question of what my, or rather our responsibilities are as writers, artists, creators. And it is an obstacle I am slowly finding the answer to through the current text I am working on. Writing was initially a way of dealing with things for me personally, it was the personal I wrote about, but now my focus has shifted, and I find myself writing more about what is going on around me, in my city, country, the world. Édouard Louis was once asked about the political or societal aspect of his work, and his answer came down to ‘’How can I write about things that are not political, while there are so many bad things happening’’. In that light, it was a certain luxury I afforded myself to let the words I was able to put on a page not be about how action is needed. Now I do not afford myself that luxury anymore – it has now become the public through the personal. I would still go crazy if I would not write, but now it is because the guilt of inertia or inaction would be too much.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
Niels Noot: I There are so many great people who do truly amazing things everywhere, and I am trying to surround myself with the people that stimulate me, who constantly make me reconsider and reinvent my viewpoints and ideas. I will have to highlight some people around me, such as my dear colleague at Simulacrum Magazine Marta Pagliuca Pelacani, with whom I curated and edited the documenta issue, who has unending curiosity and the will to follow up on that curiosity. There is of course Jérémy Bernard, who, together with the rest of the editorial board, is fighting against the capitalistic tenets of publishing through Loose Dog Magazine and its admirable non-hierarchical and anarchic publishing practice. This has shown me the possibilities and has pushed me to start my own publishing practice. I cannot mention all, but in order to highlight some independent magazines that deserve the limelight, one cannot forget Arts of the Working Class and Solomiya Magazine. You can’t go around them in Europe during these times of war, upheaval, and social issues. They do a great job at standing up for those who need it, and continuing to highlight the beauty in the mess, the people.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
Niels Noot: No natural entities for me, unless you can call a big frustration with the world right now a natural entity.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
Niels Noot: What I love about the creative process is that it always changes. I was talking to a writer recently who is also a father, and he said that when you are a father you cannot wait for inspiration to come to you because the ‘creative time’ is more limited. I, on the other hand, still have that ‘luxury’ of being able to wait around, so I change my surroundings and experiment with what events or things trigger any ideas, sentences, or words even that I can work with, and I try to make the most out of all this time I have right now.
Every time a work of mine appears somewhere it is such a big honour. Knowing that there will be people reading it – maybe, hopefully, it will have a positive influence on someone; knowing that all the late evenings and cigarettes and frustration and drafts are appreciated. Of course, it is, in some way, a wonderfully self-congratulatory and selfish thing to attach much meaning to a publication, posting it online and all, but that YES among the NOs does help occasionally in order to keep going.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
Niels Noot: Definitely! As mentioned briefly before, there is this new project I started working on, as a part of the collective publishing practice I started (MIASMA). The project is called The Complaint Project, and what we are trying to do now is collect as many complaints as possible and publish these, make them available in public spaces for people to take and read – or use as toilet paper if they disagree with the complaint. The complaints can be as small or as big as you want, they can be anonymous or with your name in full display. We launched the website recently and the complaints are rolling in, I wrote a manifesto, how cliché. But what happened is that for a long period the project just stood still, due to my inaction, and that was frustrating. So what I did was start this text, I don’t think there is a name for it. It is becoming a bit of a monster in the way it diverges everywhere. Perhaps it might become an exhibition text if the project comes that far, perhaps it disappears in the drawer, but for now the complaints are coming in and they are great to read. It shows that people are good, the kids are alright, and even though our western society looks so polarised on the surface, you see that they are very much connected in the problems they encounter. The whole topic of the complaint as a concept, and the urgency attached to it, calls for a theoretical framework in the ways they function nowadays. We might not always realise it but the conceptual object that floats in bureaucracy called the complaint illustrates and almost embodies some vital issues going on right now. Ourcomplaint nowadays is one against a certain entity or problem, but it always functions within and plays by the rules of those same entities. It has become a tool of appeasement, that is effectually futile, for people who can afford the time and futility in order to calm their minds. And that is where we come in, we skip the bureaucracy, we skip the filtering, and make all these complaints public and available for everyone who wants to. In very simplistic, and perhaps controversial, semantics we are practicing offline cancel culture of the commons – if cancel culture even exists.
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
Niels Noot: Recently I have gone a little bit down a Foucault rabbit hole, so that is where my mind goes immediately. It is really interesting to learn about and recognise the power structures guiding – or fooling – us right now. Next to the classic Foucauldian power theory and how spaces influence us in that way as well, it is enlightening to read The Order of Things.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
Niels Noot: For the editorial and curatorial work I am involved in you can always take look a look at MIASMA (miasma.nl & @miasma_mag) and Simulacrum Magazine (simulacrum.nl & @simulacrum.magazine). Regarding the rest, The Complaint Project can be checked up on here miasma.nl/complaint-project, and everyone is always to shoot me a message @nielsnoot in case I am slacking with my work.
Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Ash/ley Frenkel from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
Ash/ley Frenkel: I love little moments: the sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes of the everyday, of an intimate encounter, a meal, a memory. A playful exchange or a fun thought-provoking prompt or question also really get me going.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
Ash/ley Frenkel: I avoid having idols to avoid disappointment, but Anthony Bourdain’s deep sense of wonder, caustic wit, and appreciation for food as a vessel for community and culture is a combination that I don’t think I’ll ever quite get over.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
Ash/ley Frenkel: Things like love and lust and water and light, as cliché as it might sound, continually draw me in and remind me that we live in a moving fluctuating rhythmic world. This answer just makes me sound like a weird horny plant… but if the pot fits.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
Ash/ley Frenkel: For poetry, my notes app plays a not insignificant part, at least as a place for early ideas, to get things started. My journal also acts as a gathering place that I pull from. And I cannot understate the importance of cafes, especially for editing. Sitting in a café, setting that time aside and letting the small noises of the place and people lull me into rare focus, plus a little coffee and pastry, oh yeah.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
Ash/ley Frenkel: I perpetually have too many ideas floating around and have a few ideas for zines that bridge writing, photography and collage in fun ways, but they’re very early on so that’s all I’ll say. I do plan to expand on the book I self-published last year and organize some sort of meal with performative and interactive elements, but that’s also very much in an ideation phase.
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
Ash/ley Frenkel: I hate recommending music to people, but as far as books go, I have many, many opinions. These are just some. There are always more:
Cooking as Though You Might Cook Again by Danny Licht
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia Butler
As far as visual art goes, Pixy Liao is creating really compelling photography that takes collaboration and partnership and gender and fucks with it all in really exciting ways. And an oldie but a goodie, but if you haven’t done a close-up deep dive of the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, you should consider it.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
Ash/ley Frenkel: I love to bake and cook for people and I like to laugh a lot, snorting and all.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
Ash/ley Frenkel: I am in deep need of a new website, but for now Instagram is the best place to catch me @cardamom.communion
Tiny Spoon: Do you have photographs or images you would like us to share?
Ash/ley Frenkel: Here’s a picture of the erotic garden, the chapbook/zine I self-published and handbound forty copies of in 2022. Inside are twenty poems inspired by different fruits and vegetables, with prompts for the reader to interact with and move through different facets of love, lust, and whatever falls in-between.
Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.
“Offering 3 (black mountain) “
“Heart Opening”
“Rock Form 4”
Bio: alexandracatalina uses traditional silversmithing techniques combined with clay hand-building to make sculpture that evoke a landscape, in which the feeling, memories, shapes, and colors of a place are distilled into a type of totem: an object of beauty, mystery and silent power.
Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.
“Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not n1”
“Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not n2”
Bio: Born in 1987 in São Paulo, Brazil, with a degree in Digital Design, Shee (Sheila Gomes) began her work in visual arts at the same year she graduated from college. Shee has been showcasing her work in a variety of exhibitions, collaborations and projects, with curated works featuring international books and magazines.
Edythe Rodriguez is our May 2023 Tiny Spoon Resident! You can sign-up for her workshop here. We interviewed Edythe about her creative visions, inspirations, and writing tips!
Her LIVE, donation-based workshop, Actually, The Poems Keep the Score: Writing Memory, Family, and The Shifting Self, will be held on May 20th & 21st from 12-2 PM MST / 2-4 PM EST.
Workshop Summary: In this generative workshop, we’ll be writing/righting the past. Through childhood vignettes and investigating our complex family histories. By centering remembrance. By healing past our traumas and the people who handed them to us. We are unlocking and remaking memory. The workshop is donation-based, no one will be turn away. Donate on our website to register or send us an email: tinyspoonlitmag@gmail.com today!
TS: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you? Do you follow any rituals or creative exercises to spark your writing process?
Edythe: I love a good writer’s cliché. Small internet cafes, matcha lattes and a lit candle. I have a neo-soul writing playlist and everything. I think my favorite one is writing when I’m not supposed to be. When I’m up against a deadline or at work, I sneak off to write. My pen works better under pressure, sometimes.
TS: What inspired you to begin and maintain these practices?
Edythe: Writing (and reading) for me was always an escape from something else. I think that’s also why I wrote so much about world building and refuge. I use my poems to create safety and live in another moment when the current one doesn’t feel bearable.
TS: Does your writing intersect with other creative practices?
Edythe: I’d say it intersects with the idea of poet as witness and all the other art forms I get to admire. Going to museums. To art shows. To plant shops. Look at a pink princess philodendron and tell me you don’t want to write a poem about that.
TS: If your work was a song, what would it be?
Edythe: Every song LaRussell ever made.
TS: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends who have been influential to your work?
Edythe: Sonia Sanchez. Amos Wilson. Lucille Clifton. Shakeema Smalls. Marcus Garvey. Ashia Ajani. Amiri Baraka. Danez Smith. Tonya Foster. M. NourBese Philip.
TS: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
Edythe: I feel like spirit moves in my work. And it moves me to begin the work in the first place. I’m also a Virgo sun, Pisces moon, Leo Rising. Just enough earth to ground the work. enough water to put my heads in the cloud, to lose realism in service of the impossible. And enough fire to burn us all in the making.
TS: What is on your reading list this season?
Edythe: Concentrate by Courtney Faye Taylor, Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, and (I’m suuuper late to this beauty) The Sobbing School by Joshua Bennett.
TS: Can you share your philosophy on sustaining creative communities?
Edythe: This became my favorite part of being a writer and being able to grow a whole family from the page. Black women writers are truly my safe space and getting to commune with the people that I center in my work is so invaluable to me.
TS: What advice would you give to emerging writers?
Edythe: Read. Explore. Be inspired by your own small, everyday greatnesses. And advice is less valuable than you think. Be your own North Star.
TS: What projects are you working on? Can we find you at any upcoming events, etc.?
Edythe:My chapbook We, the Spirits is forthcoming with Button Poetry at the end of this year / beginning of next so stay tuned for that! The best way to keep up with all my things is on Instagram @edythejai.
TS: Where can people learn more about what you do? (website, social media, etc., if you wish to share it)
Edythe: I’m on Instagram and Twitter at @edythejai and on my website www.edytherodriguez.com.
Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.
“Catcalling is Not a Compliment”
“Untitled”
“Peony Pussy”
Bio: Caitlin is a multidisciplinary surrealist completing her master’s degree at the University of Sunderland.
Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with E.A. Midnight from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
E.A. Midnight: The two things that primarily kindle my creativity would be music and my environment. Both of these things help create a safe place for me to write. I often feel like writing is exploring (or sometimes dredging up) challenging things inside me, so feeling protected is critical for creation.
Much of my writing is done with music on – sometimes carefully selected playlists and other times just kind of whatever is randomly on in the house. We have a record player and almost always have something (from Mars Volta to Blind Willie McTell to Yo Yo Ma) playing. I grew up in a musical family, so I can’t imagine a creative life that is separate from music. Often, it helps me tune out; kind of as if the music helps create a conduit between me and the work. It’s like this auditory safeness that surrounds me while I write, and that allows me to go deeper into searching, into creating, and into curating my writing.
The other big thing that helps me be creative is the space where I am when I am writing. I don’t have an office/studio or anything, but I do have a little desk in the bedroom with all my little tshatshkes, notebooks, and books. That is my favorite space to be creative. I hung this empty frame on the wall above the desk which serves as a reminder that writing is about looking through. I do a lot of my more structured creative writing there. Being tucked into that little nook helps me focus and remain motivated.
Sometimes I will be out on a hike or out climbing somewhere and an idea will hit me, so I always bring a little notebook with me wherever I go. Also, whenever I am out trail running, these wild thoughts and ideas will pop into my head, so I have learned to bring along a digital recorder just in case. These methods don’t always pan out, but it’s interesting to look back on all the same. Always have a way to capture what comes out of your head.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
E.A. Midnight: Wow, yes, so many. The following authors all blow my mind with their writing and inspire me with the ways they transcend our understandings of reality. Here they are in no particular order: Sarah Veglahn, Samiya Bashir, Katie Jean Shinkle, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Amina Cain, Shira Erlichman, Han Kang, Teresa Carmody, Victoria Chang, Brittany Ackerman, Courtney Faye Taylor, Hillary Leftwich, Erika Wurth, Sarah Manguso, Eugenia Leigh, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, Anne Carson, Kaia Solveig Preus, Piper J. Daniels, Claudia Rankine, Jes Davis, Joan Kwon Glass, Ariana Reines, Elvia Wilk, Heather Bartel, Layli Long Solider, Selah Saterstrom, Steven Dunn, Maggie Nelson, and many, many more.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
E.A. Midnight: I am drawn to large expanses. When I lived back east, it was the Atlantic Ocean. Now it’s the mountains. I love feeling small in the space of this world. I love being reminded that my time (and frankly, importance) is so tiny. Thinking like that helps release me from the performative dance that creating art can be. It takes some of the pressures of making “the right thing” away and lets me construct the thing as it needs to be. It allows me to just write.
In addition to moving my work, large expanses and nature appear quite heavily within my writing. I spend a fair amount of time outside, as it is a significant part of how I balance my mental landscape, and as such, I try to be aware of the natural environment and honor it within my work. My hybrid memoir manuscript, that I have been submitting to presses, looks at landscapes outside the body as a framework for understanding the ones within.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
E.A. Midnight: Thank you for asking about this. I am deeply honored that two of my poems, “mundane object: the faucet” and “mundane object: leftovers” appear in Issue 10.
“mundane object: the faucet” I wrote (the initial version) one night during the early days of the pandemic. Each day then was so slow, so horribly boring, and as such the passage of time was marked with very basic activities, like brushing my teeth. But because everything was so drilled down to silence and isolation, it was so easy to fixate on the details of each moment. Each activity opened up into either an adventure or a catacomb. I tried to tap into that with this piece. I focused on the hyper detail of everything that happened, that I was thinking about while brushing my teeth, that I saw. I wrote all of it down. Then I stepped away for awhile. When I returned to the piece, I began crossing out lines or words (I write everything on paper first) that felt redundant or unnecessary. What’s left is these bones. The bones are the most critical elements of what the piece is trying to tell. I sit with each line and think about what it is doing, what it is trying to say, and then add back in what it needs to be supported. Finally, I put the piece into the computer and began to play with the spacing and formatting. This aspect is really critical to the work. Sometimes I will get an idea of the formatting during the creation, and it will flow all over the page, but usually that happens once I see it on the screen, imagining it as a final object, seeing it become the fullest version of itself. For “mundane object: the faucet” I saw the movement of the words across the page like the spit dribbling from the mouth, the water flowing out of the faucet, the position of the body as it goes through cleaning motions. That movement of the words performing as a kind of choreography with the reader; I shift, you shift, I pause, you have room to move past me.
Occasionally, the work does not move. It instead roots. The dance “mundane object: leftovers” participates in with the reader is more sonic than physical. The blocked texture of the poem forces the narrator, the other person in the piece, and reader to stay in a tight box through the stream of consciousness event. The tight formatting makes you want to break out, get away, leave this experience – which you know is no good for you – but you don’t, the musicality of the lines keeps you in the repetitive hum, you stay stuck. I did follow my similar pattern of dredging it down to the bones, but other than that what I wrote in my notebook is fairly similar to how it exists now in Issue 10. I spent a fair amount of time reading this one aloud to ensure that the sonic flow worked. Sound patterns and how the sound of a word can create an emotional expression is something I am very much interested in literature, so I tried to honor that in this piece. For example, the soothing “lo” (pronounced L-uuh) sounds of “lovely” and lost” in the line “it is lovely to get lost in the lineage” draw the reader in and create a texture of safety. I also played a lot with repetition as a net to catch the reader in, to hold them in the poem; a sensation that might feel comfortably containing at first, quickly grows constrictive [I know, I know, I am playing with the sonic quality of the words even in this interview, I can’t help it]. In the line, “she washes her hands, her arms, her face” the repetition of “her” in this line (and the subsequent ones) pulls the reader in close to this woman, they become intimate and safe with her in the confined area of the empty restroom. That is of course until a few lines later, where she walks back to the table and is now being watched, the “her” moves from an intimate safety to performance and judgement.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
E.A. Midnight: I have several projects that I am working on at the moment (because for me it is really helpful to not stay stagnant in only one project, having many options creates many paths), but the one I am most excited about these days is this hybrid-fiction narrative I am working on called, everything moves. This story pools around a literal flood that encompasses a college campus in Western North Carolina, while following three different characters, one of whom is the water itself. This work seeks to dredge the background of the landscape into the foreground of the narrative, allowing the river and its inhabitants to become participants in telling a story of the ecological and metamorphic change to a deep communal truth about what is real. I love the way fiction appears suddenly in my brain and I just write and write and write and watch the story evolve as I go. I don’t typically story board or plan; I just sit down and see what happens. This one has been really interesting because I alternate between just creating and doing in-depth research into topics, like rare Appalachian mussel species, so there has been a lot of learning along the way. I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
E.A. Midnight: Just one! That is so hard, but I have been reading a lot of speculative eco fiction and nonfiction lately as research for my fiction narrative, and this one particular book has really resonated with me. It’s called The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard. It is such an interesting and unique look at climate change as the product of one’s two bodies: our every day one and the one that is in a seagull’s stomach or a sperm whale pod’s migration. I really enjoy it. Also, Han Kang’s story “The Fruit of My Woman” is brilliant and incredible in the way it shifts through the fringes of reality.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
E.A. Midnight: I feel like I have talked a lot about me here, but I would like to say to other writers that it is vital that you honor what is in your soul through your writing. Whether what you write is just for you or work that you want to try and submit to presses and magazines, do your best to be your authentic self.
Through the years a lot of people have told me that if I wanted to be published, I needed to stop merging my writing with my art (paintings and photography), “just write poetry” they’d say. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. Some of my work is just text, but a lot of it incorporates other mediums, and that is because it is what the piece or project needs. I don’t think on one level, my brain moves through multiple fields to understand things, and I think a lot of people are like that too. A photograph that merges with text might speak even deeper into a person’s reading of a poem, and that makes it even more powerful. It takes time and research to find the right places to honor your vision, but it’s worth it, because the most important thing you can do for your work is respect what it needs to be.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
E.A. Midnight: I do have a website, www.eamidnight.com, which houses links for and thoughts behind all of my creative work, as well as services (such as editing, photography, and web design) that I offer. I am also on Instagram (@e.a.midnight).
Do you have photographs or images you would like us to share? (Personal portrait, artwork, book covers, etc.?)
Sure! In addition to writing, I love to paint and take photographs on my 35mm camera. I will include one of each here.
This painting I made in college. You can’t tell especially well from this photograph of it, but the canvas is quite large (about three feet wide and five feet tall). I took this abstract painting course, and we tried out all these different techniques to create abstract art and learned what it meant for us. Our final project was to build the frame, stretch the canvas over it, and then paint. This was mine. I forget what I titled it, but I remember thinking about how it was my representation of the relationship between the natural environment and a city; I was thinking very specifically about where I grew up in New York – the quiet beaches and desolate ocean being so close to the loud and polluted city. When I was creating this piece, I listened to a lot of music in my headphones while working on it (particularly Fiona Apple, who I was really into at the time), and that guided my brush strokes (which is cool, now that I think about it, music very much is a guide in my writing, and it is interesting how it has always created this generative space for me). I also played with water (this was done in acrylic, which you don’t typically use water with), to create the drip, wetness patterns on the left side. I enjoyed using the different colors and textures to invoke a feeling of depth and otherness that I so often feel in nature. The heavy dark line at the bottom is symbolic for the incursion of not natural into natural (the black stain of civilization on the environment). This piece took me about three weeks to create, and afterwards I gifted it to my dad.
Here is a 35mm photograph that I took and am rather attached to. I caught this scene on my Minolta back in 2008 when I was living in D.C. It was taken while at a stop light from the passenger seat. I saw the word “MAGIC” spray painted onto that wall and needed to capture it. I knew I couldn’t convince the car’s driver to pull over so I could frame the photo better, so I simply pulled the camera to my face, adjusted the lens, and snapped through the window. I am not sure if it was because of the film or the window, but a glare was caught in the middle of the image. It feels like a ghost. I love this photograph because it’s a great reminder that you can find something special anywhere. Anything can create a spark. I try to look at it every day and remember.
Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.
“Let the skeletons out of the closet”
Let the
skeletons
have a
tea party
on your
shins
Let them
tango
over your
toes
Let them
sing
Italian opera
From the
tip of
your nose
So long as
the neighbors
never studied
in Sicily
never
vacationed
in Rome
Bio: Bethany Jarmul is a writer, editor, and artist from Pittsburgh who loves chai lattes, nature walks, and memoirs.
