JH: What made you want to become a writer?
AN: I have always been writing. Since I was like 4 years old I have always been making up songs or writing poems and stories and putting on shows for people or imaginary friends. When I was a baby my parents put a video camera in my bedroom for an afternoon and called the video ‘Allie takes a nap.’ It’s basically an hour of me mugging for the camera and walking around in my crib and singing to myself.
I don’t think it’s something I ever really decided to do, I’ve just been doing it. Something like ten years ago I started to take this shit a bit more seriously and got more involved in getting my work published and doing readings, but honestly it all feels like a compulsion. I wrote about this feeling of being compelled to write a while ago on htmlgiant and someone commented saying ‘you’re not a writer, you have an addiction.’ And that’s chill and all. Not everyone can be like me.
JH: Who and what are some of your biggest influences?
AN: Jean Rhys is my favorite writer probably but I don’t think I write anything like the way she did. I grew up reading anything I could get my hands on. School was kind of boring to me, and I spent a lot of time in class in elementary school just reading all the books on the classroom ‘sustained silent reading’ shelf. I read this one book about the phantom of the opera as a child from his perspective probably ten times. I spent gym period in highschool circling the gymnasium along the perimeter and reading stuff like Stephen King, Hunter S. Thompson, and The Godfather.
I think my biggest influences are things I mishear or things that get stuck in my head like theme songs to tv shows from the 90s and snippets of conversation and memories that play in my head repeatedly of which I can’t identify the source.
JH: What is the concept behind My Posey Taste Like?
AN: Okay, so. I guess I wish I was a musician. Like I really really wish I was in a band and I was the singer. I want to be able to write beautiful albums. I want to perform beautiful albums. I want to kick over mic stands and roll around on stage with a bass guitar and this is why I’m into performance. Straight readings are kind of boring. I want to unfurl for my audience.
I’ve said this before on twitter because it is sincerely something I think a lot, and I’ll keep saying it because I really feel like every time I churn out a new poetry collection that I am attempting to write my own version of the Bright Eyes album Fevers and Mirrors. I think it is one of the most perfect albums. The imagery and themes that keep coming up in different ways is just so fucking beautiful. I want to be able to craft an album like that.
I like to think of my poetry collections as albums. All of my poetry collections are concept albums. I tend to not write one-off poems as much as I try to write a collection, an album. There is always a feeling that I want to convey and while you can do that in just one poem it is a richer experience to show that feeling from different vantage points and from different times of day.
My Posey Taste Like is my version of the album Born to Die by Lana Del Rey. It’s not fan fiction. But in a way it is because it’s what I love about the album filtered through my own imagination. I got obsessed with the album hella late and would listen to it over and over again and I was feeling emotional one day and vomited out what became My Posey Taste Like.
JH: What is the concept behind You Could Never Objectify Me More Than I’ve Already Objectified Myself?
AN: The concept is my reaction to getting noticed on the internet after the release of my first chapbook, I Will Always Be Your Whore. It’s me dealing with becoming a public persona and what that means in terms of how I talk to people and how people talk to me. I guess it’s about identity and theft and not feeling like a real person but feeling like I’m someone any stranger can relate to or hate.
JH: The use of blank space is really powerful in both works. What elements did you want it to resonate in each of the works?
AN: Emptiness and loneliness and cleanliness and godliness. I don’t really think I talk a lot. I don’t think I ever really explain myself. The blank spaces are for you to determine what I’m saying. I love brevity and playing with people’s expectations and also failing to meet those expectations.
JH: Posey has a lot of real strong usage of juxtapositions like “my persona flat like Pepsi cola. My drama sighs like Topeka skies” ,“send me a note on blue lined paper. tell me to. send me a note in a digital format. tell me never.” and “limbo is a place on earth with you”; The imagery is moving and conveys warring dynamics and tensions. What undertow were you looking to convey with these lines and this sense of play in your language in the work?
AN: I was hoping you could tell me.
JH: You Could Never has some potent and rich elements of identity, persona, perception and object(ification). Some lines that really pop are “I don’t exist except for you”, “I’m thinking a lot about being a girl on the internet and honestly it’s breaking me,” “I keep a face like public transit” and “I am whatever you want except what I am”. What aspects of identity, especially online/public vs real life/offline are you exploring?
AN: I’ve become this thing. I don’t really know how to deal with it except just to fuck around with it. It’s like a mask.
I feel reluctant to really share any true part of myself these days. I think for a while I was doing a whole lot of making myself vulnerable for people who didn’t really deserve it. Letting people use me. And that was terrible to feel that, to feel like I was losing a part of myself, like a part of my soul was being removed every time exposed myself like that. So I started crafting an alternate identity. I’m just like, here’s this persona that I feel comfortable sharing with random people, online and off. I’m controlling this narrative. And even if people don’t like it, it doesn’t really matter. Because it’s not me anyway. It’s like a comfort suit, it’s like armor. It’s performance.
I don’t think it’s something I ever really decided to do, I’ve just been doing it. Something like ten years ago I started to take this shit a bit more seriously and got more involved in getting my work published and doing readings, but honestly it all feels like a compulsion. I wrote about this feeling of being compelled to write a while ago on htmlgiant and someone commented saying ‘you’re not a writer, you have an addiction.’ And that’s chill and all. Not everyone can be like me.
JH: You Could Never also has a fascinating shift and play on power in relation to dissemination and self in lines like “burn your words at my heel one letter at a time” and
“but don’t you get it the silences is part of the poem too
it’s everything I could say but won’t”. What elements of power are within the heel here and the things left manicured as unsaid? What deeper elements of persona and self resonate in these lines and the blank spaces?
AN: I would prefer not to say.
JH: What are you working on right now?
AN: Getting my life together.
On September 22nd I am debuting an oakland-based variety show featuring music, poetry, interview, and comedy called be live about it. Joshua Kent Fowler of Nomadic Press is co-hosting with me and it’s going to be a monthly series. We’re going to broadcast the show via That Lit Podcast which I’ve been neglecting horribly for the past 9 months.
I usually have a lot going on and I never have enough time. I feel like if I didn’t have a lot going on all the time I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I was talking about this with my mentor and friend and publisher a razor and he said you know, that’s pretty common in PTSD. I don’t know what to say about that. I just feel like I have a lot of ideas and I want to do them so I do.
I keep writing chapbooks. I’m writing one right now about Nancy Botwin and Lorelai Gilmore. I really love TV like good television and there’s a lot of it and I really don’t care if you’re going to judge me for watching television. You can absorb culture in a lot of ways. I guess television resonates with me because it takes a long time to go through an entire TV series. Like when I’m reading a book I never wanted to end if I’m enjoying it. I have a bad habit reading a book up until the last 20 pages and then putting it down for a while because I just don’t want it to end. With TV you can be a part of an imaginary world for a really long time. Like you can be stuck in it for months. That’s extremely appealing to me.
