AND COULD THEY HEAR ME I WOULD TELL THEM (SOMMER BROWNING)
Bio: Sommer Browning is a poet, writer, curator, and artist. Her latest book is Good Actors (Birds, LLC; 2022). She's the author of two other collections of poetry, Backup Singers and Either Way I'm Celebrating, as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book, You're On My Period (Counterpath), and others. In 2017, she founded GEORGIA, an art space in her garage in Denver. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art have appeared in Hyperallergic, Lit Hub, Bomb, jubilat, Chicago Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is a librarian.
Book Title: Good Actors
Press: Birds, LLC
1. What is something that surprised you during the writing, editing, or publishing process for Good Actors?
The other day I was working with my friend Aaron Angello, a poet, actor, and director, on turning Good Actors into a performance piece—maybe a one-woman show if I’m not too terrified to admit and actually do that. While we were going through the book page by page, I noticed for the first time a definite tonal shift about two thirds of the way through the book. Around that point, the book feels like it trades its comedic pithiness for a more concentrated examination of the language around being a writer, mother, wife. I was surprised I got so serious, or maybe not serious, but grim? Sad? At one point in the book, I mention that I want the book to be a very, very serious joke book. And while I do, I did, I guess I didn’t know that Good Actors actually was, like life, a very, very serious joke book. One of the best things about paying attention to language so much, to me, is being able to generate 100 meanings from things, to change your mind, to reverse that change, to leave all the meanings behind, to run toward the ones that feel best—and in the end, come to no conclusion other than, Damn, the human mind is wild.
2. How might you describe the “experiment” or challenge of this book? What form, procedure, sound, or mystery enlivened your mind while writing?
There is an experiment that I conducted on social media weaved into the book. I posted on Twitter and Facebook, “If you tell me which Twilight Zone episode you remember best, I can tell you what your problem is.” To me that was a funny non-sequitur, but people responded with their most remembered episodes and so I told them what their problems were. I decided to take it seriously—Your problem is: You use one standard to evaluate the behavior of others and another to evaluate your own, and this causes you difficulty in relationships—rather than—You oversalt the marinara. Hundreds of people responded with episodes. And lots of people loved getting a read. It was part horoscope, part generic talk therapy, partly a reflection on my own problems, and partly inspired by the episode which if I didn’t remember it, I went back and watched it or read the synopsis. It took the better part of a week, honestly, to respond to everyone.
I was also editing Good Actors at the same time and I really loved this Twilight Zone experiment, it seemed to have some energy beyond itself, some meaning in the culture, some significance. Transforming art or culture or taste into a diagnostic tool of pop psychology seemed funny, interesting, and scary. It was a great companion to the tone and trajectory of the work I was arranging for the book. So, I threw it in there, first as a section (that didn’t work), and then as a kind of repeating chorus. I do think it works like this, weaved through, though I had great doubts before several other trusted souls told me it worked.
3. Can you discuss an edit, idea, response, or interaction with another person that helped this book find its way in the world—aesthetically, materially, visually, structurally, spiritually…?
I can’t really think of one right now.
4. Is there a physical place or space you associate with the poems in Good Actors?
No, there isn’t really. That seems weird. Maybe because I wrote the book over the course of five or six years waiting in line at the DMV, in the car, at bars, in different houses, in airports—so many places. It’s fun to think of all the places one ends up writing. I might call up this thought—that writing happens everywhere—when I want to remind myself I’m a writer again (I forget a few times a year).
5. What’s something that feels difficult about having a book—or this book, specifically—come into the world??
I pose the question several times in this book, Is publishing a kind of permanent record? Yes, and that’s scary. There are definitely, already, a few things I would love to edit out of the book. But I also think, no, it’s not a permanent record. For one reason, of course, everything is impermanent. But another one is, I don’t want to think about art that way. (Is this just a way to eschew the responsibility of an embarrassing line break?) I don’t make art to project my dumb ego into the future, I make it because I like thinking and making and I want to connect with people. None of those things requires much lastingness. God, I don’t think I believe anything I just wrote in answer to this question…being given a space to pontificate about what I want and why I want it (I’m talking about this interview) can just bring out the worst in me. I’m sure that part of the reason I write books to project myself into the future and that is some colonialist bullshit.
6. What do you appreciate about the press (Birds, LLC) that published this book?
I appreciate the attention they pay to poetry and language. All of the editors really love poetry. Truly. They love it more than I love it. And they certainly know it and understand it better than I know it and understand it. This interest and love is the bedrock of the press. They publish interesting and unique work, they take chances, their poets are all kinds of people with a wide variety of things to say, they care about covers, and they work with me on edits and arrangements. I worked most closely with Chris Tonelli on all three of my Birds books and they are much better because of him. Last time I hung out with Sampson Starkweather (another editor) and Chris they were teasing me about how my first book, Either Way I’m Celebrating, was called something horrible at first like To Exquisitely Dream on Wafers and Dinner Plates, and they talked me out of that.
7. Do you recall the most recent small press (micro, indie, DIY, university) publication you’ve recommended? What made you want to tell someone about it?
I think this would have to be Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall on City Lights. It was published in 2019 (I usually read about three years behind, constantly catching up). My friend Erin wanted a good book of what, poetry? No. Nonfiction? Not really. Fiction? Nah. And this was not all of those things. It is great, it feels different, it’s moving, beautiful, smart, weird. Many of the things I love.
8. What adventures are you looking forward to, thinking about, or practicing now?
My child’s father just died. So, there is a lot of pain in our home right now. I am looking forward to not feeling like how I feel now. I’m looking forward to looking back on this.
9. Who will you gift a copy of Good Actors to? Or where will you leave it for someone to find?
I want to leave it somewhere where someone will read it and it won’t just end up contributing to the work they have to do cleaning up the place. That makes me want to just put it in the trash can for them so they don’t have to pick it up off a bench in the Capitol when the building closes. I think I will add it to the next fake library I see, maybe at IKEA or a bar that’s decorated like an office.