Saturnalia Books: First, my friend and I were looking at GRE vocabulary practice questions, and “apocryphal” was one of the multiple-choice answers! I helped her get the right answer because of your unique book title, Apocryphal Genesis. What does the title and titular poem name mean to you for this collection?
Travis Mossotti: I don’t know how many times I’ve told some version of a story where there’s no definable, knowable, publicly available way to validate the story as true. Hearsay, eyewitness reports, my own memory? I think the title poem is interested in these things and sets some kind of a premise for the rest of the book.
Really, I’m fascinated with the idea of singular truths, parallel truths, relative truths, half-truths, mosaic truths, and competing truths. Capital “T” Truths and lowercase “t” emotional truths. How we all carry some iteration of a spiritual life that runs alongside our concrete physical existence in a world that pulsates with versions, variations, amalgamations, conflagrations of truths. How the wildest theories can give rise to a new personal reality—born from the tiniest kernel of truth.
SB: Religion comes through as a focal point with your book title, Biblical section names, and many poems’ references to scripture and God. And yet, it doesn’t feel like a religious book. I wish I could just read off your poem “Apocryphal Genesis” to fully show how it humanizes the creation of the world by describing its destruction through global warming, while God is “laying two-dollar pony bets” and drinking bottles in paper bags. What inspired you to include religion as an integral element in your book while also centering humanity?
TM: Poetry is not a religion, but I can’t shake some of the overlaps, like how poets centralize poetry foundationally in their lives, or the governance structures and the schisms and power dynamics and hierarchies and canons that result. How work gets praised and curated and shared.
I’m also fascinated with the magical elements that permeate both religion and poetry. The parallel between alchemy and metaphor, for example, or how the ordinary and mundane are capable of transcendence. The sublimation of the flesh into pure spirit and the word into sublime imagination.
SB: In your poem “Universal,” you contemplate how generic your poems need to be to achieve relatability. You decide to just lean into your own life through poetry, whether that’s using your wife’s name or writing about where you got your wheelbarrow. Interestingly, some of these poems address the speaker as “I”, and some as “you.” What are your thoughts on drawing the line between your experiences as the writer and ours as the reader?
TM: It doesn’t matter if you’re the writer or the reader; being a human is strange. The fact that we walk around and pretend that ordinary things are normal is also strange. Like breathing! We breathe each breath every waking and sleeping moment. Constantly breathing. Through our nose holes and mouth hole or all three! Some 98% of human existence can be summed up thusly: we are born and we wake up and go to school or work and eat meals and entertain ourselves and have sex and pay taxes and go to sleep and eventually die.
I focus on moments of the more-or-less ordinary human experiences in a world that the writer and reader actually live in. I like to put things together and see what happens. Sometimes the second person anchors the poem in a certain way that feels right for the poem. If I’m lucky, I manage to stay out of the way of the poems and let them show me what they’re up to.
SB: “Animal Manimal” stands out from your other poems. It’s sentence after sentence of fun phrases and words that veer into the gross and unusual, with lines like “camper, saunter, / scamper, and stauncher. Loons / and logic and messy meconium.” Do you enjoy exploring more experimental poetry like this, and what made you decide to fit it into this collection of poems that are stylistically so unlike it?
TM: I know a poem like “Animal Manimal” pushes a boundary or reader expectation a bit further to the frayed edge, and yet, I don’t think the result is an accurate measure of intent. I rarely start off with a plan—It just sort of happens during the composition. I write under the premise that every poem is an experiment. I mean, writing a villanelle is experimental. Syllabics or afters or prose poems—all experiments.
I try to remain open to poems of all stripes and try to let them come into being. I also try to not think too hard about whether or not a poem belongs in a collection. I start with the premise: if the poem hits, it hits. If a poem wants to make it into the collection, it’s still going to have to audition just like the rest of the poems and make a case for why it wants to be there.
And even then, editors are going to have some thoughts about whether a poem belongs or not, too.
SB: Any projects you’re working on that you’d like to share–Anything with writing, teaching, or I saw in your author’s bio you’re working in biodiversity and animal conservation?
TM: I’m the program coordinator for Poetry in the Woods and we’ll be back again this spring at AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) for a poetry hike at Runyon Canyon! Registration (with rideshare options) is up on the website.
I’m currently working on a collection of poems titled Wildfire. I recently won the Wales Poetry Award and will be using a week-long retreat this winter or spring in the south of Wales at the writing cottage at Literature Wales’ Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre to put the finishing touches on it.
Travis Mossotti’s previous collections are About the Dead, Field Study, Narcissus Americana, and Racecar Jesus. He’s been the recipient of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, the May Swenson Book Award, the Christopher Smart – Joan Alice Poetry Prize, the Alma Book Award, and others. Mossotti currently serves as a Biodiversity Fellow in the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University. He lives and works in St. Louis.
https://www.travismossotti.com/
Interview by Leah Boris
