CH: That makes sense. I guess there’s two things going on here for me. One of them is the way poetry has a transformative aspect to it, as a relationship between a reader and a writer. And then the other thing which is the metaphor in that poem about digestion and metabolism, and that being a process of production and reproduction.
EG: Because it’s about that in the framing – because the body is not digesting or metabolising the cherry tree. The cherry tree is growing inside though, so it’s like something else is going on. But I kind of like the idea of having something that’s like called one thing and then actually other things are going on. So, it doesn’t feel like a contradiction.
CH: Well, yes, it’s both of those things. Being digested and the body rejecting something …
EG: Or two life forms kind of independently growing from the same life force or something.
CH: Yes, I see what you mean. I mean, I think that’s what love is.
EG: A cherry tree growing inside you …
CH: Yes! I thought about love in that poem because I was writing a pamphlet about love and work at the time, and I was thinking about how love is a co-construction, a process of building something. And this takes many different forms, not just romantic love. I wrote about how sex workers make and remake worlds together through shared labour. I wonder what you think about the idea of love and co-construction and how love relates to poetry and writing.
EG: I think the co-construction really rings true for me. Love takes parts of where it comes from but forms its own thing. So, the person I become at various points of life, in love with different people and different kinds of people, are different each time. It doesn’t take away, though. It doesn’t go when that love goes, but there’s a kind of … I wish I knew more about science so I could map these onto a scientific process. Anyway, some scientific thing that happens in that co-construction. And then, coming back to the poem, I think anyone who is compelled to write poetry feels that it’s not something they have particularly chosen because it makes no sense to write a poem. Unless you can’t not write a poem.
CH: There’s the compulsion to write.
EG: But also, to realise that compulsion you must find time for it. This is where my interest in time started, along with my interest in Marxist feminist poetics: this idea of stealing back time and writing poems takes up time that is not …
CH: Not supposed to be spent in this way, it was/is supposed to be spent for work …
EG: Maybe … like reproducing the self … so instead of doing your laundry, you’re writing a poem or instead of doing your job, you’re writing a poem.
CH: Or even like working on your relationship … and writing a poem instead …
EG: Yes, my compulsion to write often comes on strongest when I’m meant to be performing domestic tasks or mundane knowledge-based labour. That’s the time I could write a poem … as moments of stolen time.
