Karan

First thing one immediately and inevitably notices about your poems is how funny they are, but to not scratch that surface would be unjust. You are constantly juxtaposing the somber and the playful, the intimate and the humorous, the contemplative and the ridiculous — even (or shall I say especially?) when you’re writing about dark and serious subjects like loneliness, school shootings, financial disparities amid classes. What, then, does humor do for your poems? Is it a reflection of hope amid tragedy? Or a defense mechanism that helps to cope and deal with these tragic occurrences? In a lot of the lines, I also sense a deep sense of defeat beneath the surface. Is humor a channel that allows for engagement with these subjects? An ax that breaks the frozen sea of sorrow? Or a peel that protects the fruit? 

Leigh

Well, thank you. I am so glad you find them funny. I don’t consider myself a funny person, so I’m really happy that you can read my poems and get some humor out of them. It means a lot, even if the understated darkness in the humor, or as you say, “a deep sense of defeat” is flirting with the pushing through the soil, which I think, at times—more often than not—it does.  

          And I think you hit the nail on the head with the ending of your question. It most definitely is a coping mechanism. I use humor (or attempt to) in my poems to build a flimsy wall around my dumb heart. A maybe this is all only slightly real, even if yes, it’s very real that gun violence has been the number one cause of death for children for two years in a row. But if I write about it in a surreal and slightly light tone—or something so wildly absurd—maybe I won’t be as nervous taking my daughter to Target or Kroger on a Saturday afternoon.    

          I’ve worked in the social service field for about seven years. I’ve worked with those facing systemic poverty. I taught at an agency that housed teenage girls who were in DCS custody. (My time at the agency was the basis for my chapbook Daughters of the State, which is always a difficult little book for me to go back to.) The world is absolute shit. People are dying and then they’re dead. The world is burning, children are smearing their friends’ blood on them so the AR-15 thinks it already did its job, and though so many people care, so many, it feels, don’t.

          We are terrible at being people.

          Why the fuck should anyone care about a poem?

Karan

A lot of your writing — I am here also referring to both your full-length collections as well as the chapbooks — is surreal and absurd and I wonder if any of this is influenced by being around a child? My daughter has had a huge boom in her language over the last year and I find that hugely inspiring. In “It Is Evergreen to Say the Word Evergreen” you write: “When was the last time the moon was given a bath?” This is totally in line with how my daughter thinks. I am not comparing your thinking patterns to a two-and-a-half-year-old’s but there is an innocence, a spark of wonder required to think like that which the child naturally possesses. Does this resonate with you in some way?

Leigh

I honestly never put the two together, but it makes complete sense. I love that you opened this up to me. My three-year-old daughter is currently in speech therapy (she’s a little behind with making words words right now, but she’s doing really great and the speech therapy is working!), so a lot of her rambling right now is just hieroglyphics painted on a cave wall. But, there’s still the wonder. It’s in her eyes and the way she touches whatever gross thing she’s touching at the time. So when she looks at the sky, I also look at the sky. What is she thinking? I am always asking myself. I hope she’s wondering about the last time the moon got a bath or how long it takes for a stork to cross state lines carrying a baby, or will storks ever unionize?  

          So, yes, I will look at her as she looks at the sky, at the moon, and I might not know what exactly she is thinking, but she will say goodbye to the moon, and if I asked, Do you think the moon needs a bath? I’m pretty sure she’d agree.

Karan

You are working with language as much as with ideas. A lot of the surrealist absurdity occurs in playing with language — mixing phrases, estranging the clauses, arranging the lines and phrases in a particular sequence. Take for instance this line from “How to Build a Thirst Trap”: “Shave off all your hair and learn how to play poker.” Up until this line we have encountered single-clause staccato sentences (a simple series of instructions) so that when we read this line we are forced to think of cause and effect between these two ridiculously unrelated events, creating a sense of awe, confusion, and humor. At the end of “The First Line of This Poem Could Be Its Own Poem”, you write: “I keep forgetting to ask the moon what it’s always running away from. When I find out, I will have found out.” Both these lines are surreal/absurd but also sound so genuine and childlike. I sense authenticity in your poems, that these lines are not being constructed to sound clever but to go deeper into your own existence in the world. Why does the surreal and the absurd speak to you? What is it that you’re trying to say that can’t be said in any other way?

Leigh

I appreciate that you find an authenticity in my poems. I was told in the past that I was being “too clever” in my poems, and that’s something that has always stuck with me. My goal became to no longer come up with sentences that sound really cool and are fun to read but mean absolutely nothing. I want to write sentences that sound really cool and are fun to read but still mean something. I want my poems to live rent free in your head.

          I think to be genuine, we have to be a bit childlike. My daughter is the most genuine person I know. The world doesn’t deserve her. (I know I sure don’t.) I want that genuine awe that pops through her eyes when she’s playing with bubbles or singing that awful Baby Shark song. I really want to feel that way again. Where did it go? Who took it away from me? Did I throw it in the trash by accident?

Karan

You often refer to the act of writing the poem or the poetry biz (I usually dislike this phrase, but sense the same dislike in you, and hence using it ironically) within the poem. In Your Favorite Poet, you write about submitting to the Paris Review, buying the New Yorker, Narrative’s ridiculous submission fees, and your husband pretending (for foreplay) to be Stephen King writing a blurb for your book. More than a few of the poem titles in that collection are ridiculously long and self-referential, at once intensifying the humor of self-awareness and the ludicrous nature of ego. (This makes me think of this Leonard Cohen poem, which I think you’d really like! I feel that a lot of your work is in conversation with this poem.) How does this self-awareness about the artform contribute to the overarching message or experience you want readers to have with your poems? 

Leigh

I had not read that Leonard Cohen poem before, but I do love it!

          This is such a great question. It’s something I’ve thought about since I began publishing my silly little words in literary journals and then, luckily, in book form. The idea of there being a “poetry biz” amuses me to no end. Publishing makes me feel like a small fish being eaten by a still-very-small-but-slightly-larger fish. Or it’s the dead of night and I’m stumbling around in thick fog, and I can barely see the headlights, you know?

           I don’t understand the “poetry biz” and honestly, I’m not sure I want to. There is a very good possibility that these will be the last poems I ever publish, and that is something I am more than okay with.

          I think when I became self-aware of how ridiculously quiet we as poets are to the world at large, it opened me up more, especially my imagination. It allowed me to write about school shootings, the fear of keeping my daughter safe, the intimacy of damp sheets—it allowed me to write about all of that like no one else was reading it, which is probably because no one, or very few, were reading the poems. But as depressing as that may sound, it was the most freeing thing. I couldn’t figure out why I cared about impressing someone in the first place, especially if I don’t even know that that someone even exists?

          I have now read the Cohen poem three more times. 10/10. Would recommend.