Siblings

by Bernard, Jay, Chan, Mary Jean, Harris, Will

Convened by Will Harris, ​Siblings is a roundtable conversation between four poets on writing communities, real and imaginary siblings, and first encounters with poetry.

Thinking through the lyric mode’s wayward directions — speaking sideways to peers and siblings, writing vertically to parentage, lineage, literary histories — these four poets talk to each other as makers and friends about the possibilities that poetry enables now.

​I grew up with dual realities, with the knowledge of another reality occurring elsewhere, and I carried that with me. Poetry was, finally, my way to access alternative realities – both at the same time! – and to speak beyond them...

With Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris, and Nisha Ramayya. Includes poems.

Genres: Poetry

32 pages, Paperback

Published February 29, 2024

Reviews

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jay Bernard: 'I was going to say that endless inner excavation is the poet's habit, right? It makes poets a bit weird, a bit different. A lot of the time our own wound is our material. But if you have a wound - to go back to psychology, I suppose - it's almost by definition a hole that never ends, because it is repeated with every cycle of thought. There's an impulse to endlessly repeat, endlessly pick at the wound and scratch at it and dive into it. But it never closes over as such, and even if it does, the shadow is still there. I think this desire to excavate is something to do with a return to those early years, early moments, in which I needed to describe how vivid and intense and over there life was, how it appeared to me, like almost statuesque moments. And that impulse comes from a certain distance from the world, which I have never gotten over.' (8-9)

[jq · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jay Bernard: "not all lonely children become writers."

Nisha Ramayya: "I'd somehow erased that from my story, what I say say about how I became a poet. And actually it's about friendship and humour and joy and being uncool"

Will Harris: "It makes me feel like the whole culture of bios in literature and the arts expresses a need for information that's replicable. You know, that other people can recognise and potentially do themselves. Like, this person went here and did that, is endorsed by these institutions. It's the language of power."

on the weirdness and unevenness of the horizontal

[Irene Aguilera · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The failure to speak, to speak clearly, to say something that will be understood. I feel that maybe that is the drive, just to keep trying and trying and trying again, in different forms or different words or different arrangements.’

Una conversación con sentido sobre literatura, hermanes y familia 🪶

[Francesca · Rating 3 out of 5]

only giving this a 3 because it was really short and i paid like £14 for it. it was great but the length made it feel gimmicky - i would have loved to read more discussions between these excellent poets!!