Parker Hibbett: I also think finding it through poetry has been
a healing process. Yeah, as a black body, as a queer body, I've been
taught not to trust, trust my body, or like, trust its instincts, its
feelings. And High Jump was so important to me when I did it,
partially because it was all about me trusting this sense of my body
and its own sort of rhythm that it knew better than I could.
Seán Hewitt: Welcome to The Glimpse. I'm your host, Seán
Hewitt. Gustav Parker Hibbett is a poet and essayist. Their first
collection, High Jump as Icarus Story was shortlisted for the T.S.
Eliot Prize. Their work has appeared in Guernica, Adroit, The
Stinging Fly, and Poetry Ireland Review, among many others. Gustav
Parker Hibbett is our guest today on The Glimpse.
In Gustav Parker Hibbett's poems, we are let loose into a world of
transformation and flight, though Parker is always aware of the
forces of gravity, pressure and the ties that bind us. With a daring
gymnastic ability to adapt the forms of their poetry and a
glittering intelligence just as at home in the world of Greek
mythology as in critical theory, music and athletics, Parker's is a
poetry that lifts up the self, the body and the world in which we
exist for brilliant and powerful examination. Stylish, tender,
playful and rigorous, Parker is a poet whose poems have the ability
to remake themselves and to remake us along the way. Parker, welcome
to The Glimpse. Thank you so much for being here.
Parker Hibbett: Thanks for having me, and thanks for such a lovely
intro.
Seán Hewitt: You're very welcome. I want to start by congratulating
you. Your debut collection, High Jump as Icarus Story, which came
out this year, was just recently shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot
Prize, which is the biggest prize for poetry in the U.K. and Ireland,
so well done. It's such a brilliant book, and it's threaded through
with a sort of coming of age narrative. I think it's such a
beautiful exploration of the way in which we are kind of pressurized
and molded into, into people, and what we can do about that, how we
might kind of explore our own metamorphosis and how we might
change ourselves.
I wanted to start by asking you, you know...one of the things that
really struck me when I was reading your book was the way you pull in
mythology and athletics and music and critical theory and so many
other things to talk about transformation and the way we exist
in the world. I wonder what it is about poetry and metamorphosis
that, that seem to go so hand in hand for you.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I've actually done a lot of thinking about this
recently, because I think I feel so much more at home in poetry than I
do in many different types of prose. I don't know, and there's
something about poetry where... I think part of it's the lyric "I," I
think the lyric "I" is a little bit more, I think, flexible in holding
a self in a way that maybe borders, like, fiction and non-fiction. But
then I also think that poetry, more than any other form, is like open
to formal and linguistic experimentation.
Seán Hewitt: Yeah, yeah,
Parker Hibbett: Which means that it's just like, it's open to, I
think, evidencing or making manifest, like, transformations.
Seán Hewitt: Yeah. I think there's something about the way poetry,
particularly your poetry, moves. That seems to —you know, I keep on
wanting to make kind of circular gestures with my hands, but I'm
thinking of kind of unfolding things and unraveling them and
re-raveling them and remaking them. It seems to go hand-in-hand with,
with transformation. I wasn't going to ask you about the lyric "I", but
now I want to. What is your relationship to that "I," that
speaking voice in the poem, and has it changed over time?
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I think it maybe changes every time I sit down
to write, and I think that's why I feel really at home in poetry is...
I think there's that, the "I" from poem to poem can be a different
angle of yourself, and you get to sort of exist fully in that angle,
and think through that angle.
Yeah, I think, with the poems in this book, there was this, I think
gathering of mass, if that makes sense, where it slowly had to sort
of build itself as making me comfortable, I think, writing in a
way that I was able to have that relationship to the lyric "I." And
then I think once I accumulated enough mass there, enough poems
that I had sort of written that way, that relationship felt really
natural. And I think still feels quite natural.
Seán Hewitt: Yeah, I love that idea of an accumulation, particularly
because it could be the case that an "I" speaks for us in a totality.
You know, it's expected to perhaps represent us at all times, which
is, of course, kind of impossible. And I like the idea that when you
start a new poem, you start again. You kind of essay your way forward.
You try another angle. You come at a different direction. And there's
a freedom in that, because you don't have to sum everything up,
but also a freedom in that you can be a different part of yourself.
And I wonder if, you know, looking back over over the collection that
you have now, do you feel that you have got a more pluralistic sense
of the "I"—that is the speaker of all of these poems? Is there
something kind of choral about the book?
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I think I would definitely say that, because
I think a lot of the poems were written not necessarily with the
intention of being put together in this way. Like, that all sort of
came together as it came together. So it's been interesting to, like
read the book since it's been like a physical, completely together
book because, yeah, there is this, I think, chorus of selves that I'm
quite proud of. I think.
Seán Hewitt: I think you should be; it's such a great book. And I mean,
you know, writers, I think, are often asked about other writers who
inspire them. But for the subject of your poem this week —and also a
lot of the poems in High Jump as Icarus Story—I wanted to talk to
you about music. Do you feel that you take inspiration in any way
from music, whether that's the musicality or the emotion of a song
or a singer's voice? And do you listen to music as you write?
Parker Hibbett: I do. I think, I'm trying to maybe cool it with this,
but I'm one of those people who, like, has to be listening to music
almost every idle [moment]. So if I'm like, in the office, working,
I'm listening to music. If I'm writing, I'm listening to music. If
I'm making dinner, I'm listening to music. I think I've had this
relationship with a lot of songs, a lot of artists where I'm really
interested in rhythm and, like, the sound of how things work. I think
I've developed this very personal sense of how, how I think my
writing should sound. Yeah, it feels really good to trust that
sense and then have that be validated the way that it's been.
Seán: Yeah, yeah. But I think that that is, you know, so evident
in your poems that they come with a beat, and you feel them pushing
towards the place that they're going to; you know, there's a
momentum to them. You know, I don't want to stretch the metaphor too
much, but I think there's something in the body that is rhythmic, and
as the title of your book, and a number of the poems in the book
refer to "high jumping," I can't help but think that you must be
someone who was attuned to rhythm. You know, you need rhythm and
momentum for both of these jobs.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah. I also think finding it through poetry has been
a healing process. As a black body, as a queer body, I've been taught
not to trust, trust my body or like trusts its instincts, its feelings
and High Jump was so important to me when I did it, partially because
it was all about me trusting this sense of my body and its own sort
of rhythm that it knew better than I could.
Seán Hewitt: Yeah.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah.
Seán Hewitt: There's something kind of primal about it, perhaps, which
I love for you, that you found that kind of freedom in the voice and,
and the rhythm, and it comes through in the poem so, so
strongly. You know, that there's something instinctive and primal
about needing to find that rhythm in a voice, in a way of speaking,
that is definitely yours and definitely free of the sort of
doubt that is trying to ground it.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, yeah.
Seán: So one of the poems that you're going to read today, your
own poem, is about one of my favorite singers,—she's having a
renaissance again. But Joni Mitchell, I feel, half-raised me.
(laughter) And, you know, when I was listening to Joni Mitchell as a
as a teenager, I kind of stopped by the time I got to this album. I
don't think I was ready for the sort of experimentalism of Don
Juan's Reckless Daughter. I preferred the acoustic-y...Hejira
was kind of as far as I got. But the poem that you're going to read
refers to the album artwork for that album [Don Juan's Reckless
Daughter] right?
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, and it was something she did, like for a
series of years. Like, the first instance was at, like, a Halloween
party, then on the album of Don Juan’s Restless Daughter and then
kind of just continuously, like she'd sort of trotted out as this
thing that she was really, I think, artistically, proud of.
Seán: Yeah, yeah. It's, it's very strange. So give us the
context for what we're talking about here.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah. So I similarly was obsessed with Joni
Mitchell's music. I think the first record that I bought was Blue,
like... I was in there. It was just my soundtrack for so much, I think,
in the way that— I don't know—you can come to a book and you could
think, like "The whole world is contained in this book." I really
would come to, like, Blue or Hejira and be like, "The whole world is
contained in how she's talking in this, this album."
And then in grad school, a black friend of mine was like, "Hey,
like, I don't know if you know this, but the whole, like,
blackface thing," and then— I don't know— it, I was really, I think,
hit really hard by that in this weird way, because it felt like
someone who had been so close to me had hurt me in this really weird
way. Someone who I thought had seen me so clearly had, like, costumed
as me.
Seán: I think, you know, that there is something that you can't
doubt about the immediacy of that sort of pain and disappointment,
because, as you say, we connect with singers and poets and writers
on such a deep level, because they become part of who we are, you
know, and we feel that they're kind of echoing inside us. And then to
see that they're not quite that, that person, and that they're
actually taking a, sort of, what feels like a direct aim at you, and
to let you down and hurt you must have been a really, actually
discombobulating experience.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I think the weirdest thing for me about it was
that people have sort of brought it up to her in interviews. I think as
recently as, like, 2015, people have sort of asked her about it,
and she's really stood by it, like, refused to apologize, refused to
believe that there was anything wrong.
I was reading the Anne powers biography of her. She wrote: "She
didn't just cross a line. She refused to acknowledge its
existence."
Seán Hewitt: Right?
Parker Hibbett: I thought that kind of encapsulates it. I was like,
whatever about maybe not knowing or not realizing when someone brings
it up to you as that you've done this thing that has hurt people
potentially, and you sort of refuse to acknowledge that hurt, like,
what?
Seán Hewitt: Yeah, kind of baffling. And especially, you know,
when we connect so closely to the voice in those songs, which is
vulnerable and empathetic and hurt and expansive, and all of these
things that feel like the sort of person we want to be beside. To
have that, you know, really stern dismissal is crazy.
I was looking at the album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, and I see
the album artwork on Spotify. It's changed now, which... it's just
like a wolf now, strangely enough. But Parker, you know, you've
transformed that experience, which is so full of disappointments and
pain— but also much wider cultural and historical questions— into the
most brilliant poem. I wonder if you would read "Joni Mitchell
dresses up as me" for us.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah. “Joni Mitchell dresses up as me.” Dark-felt fedora
and sunglasses; little black-haired moustache; afro wig; skin the hue
of walnut wood painted over face, neck, hands; gold chains; earrings;
jewel-toned blazer— I am the sort of man an artist wears to sing in,
dons to shed herself: puffed-up, pimpin', perfectly impermanent. I
am beautiful, she says: the wisp of something Negro in the twilight
timbre of her mezzo, piano riff of black bird wings, noble sorrow
turned arpeggio. My brass bravado grand enough to make her troubles
soulful jewellery, leave her feeling freer, deeper, natural. She
loves that I am the friend she's never had to worry for, the man who
jives and jukes so centrifugal that my noose is dew drops slipping from
a crocus stem, who grooves so fast the cops can't catch my saxophone.
Seductive, tragic, lovely Joni says she loves my self- possession, how
it feels to possess me.
That's part one, and then part two is: When she leaves me in a pile at
the end of her bed, turns back into herself for sleep, I up and walk
the streets, the jagged jazz clubs, alleys of the white imagination,
trail smoky grace notes in my wake. Dance with other bodies, muses,
curios on break from metaphor: Saartjie Baartman back from endless
exhibition; the Zealy seven cut, emancipated,from daguerreotype:
Alfred Renty, Drana, Fassena, Jack, Jem, Delia; Caliban, Othello. We
end most nights with candles, whiskey tumblers, playing cards at
bars with little tables where we laugh off all that makes our
eyelids heavy, stay for hours and the minutes before morning dawns.
Part with kisses on both cheeks, reminders of the kind of love that
stains us lipstick-red, until we see ourselves again.
Seán: That's so strong, and this poem is kind of riffing off
dress-up and these "costumings of the self." You know, lines like,
"I'm the sort of man / an artist wears to sing in" which is such a
brilliant line, and the idea of being free from metaphor and seeing
ourselves again, it made me think, you know, that this is a poem about
the gaze, in some ways, and various gazes being seen from without and
being seen from, from within. And I just wondered if you could speak a
little bit about how you're navigating those, those gazes in
this poem.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I think I initially sort of had the two parts
of the poem together, and I think was very interested, maybe
principally, in that, that gaze element. What it all came down to,
sort of, for me, was this idea of the way that I think people might
see me, or that I think many different types of marginalized
people have to be sort of hyper-aware of the way that people
might see us in these bad ways, and how that, I think, just, like,
dominates our thoughts. And I think I was interested in the idea of,
like, when she goes to sleep, and Art Nouveau is just off to his own
devices, as an opportunity to be in this space where he and all of
these other sort of historically metaphorized and exhibited and
violated black bodies are able to, I don't know, exist, seeing only
themselves.
Seán: Yeah, yeah. "Art Nouveau" is the, what she calls the alter
ego, right? This black-face alter ego on the album artwork. You know,
one of the things that this poem does and many of the poems in your
book do, is, you know, they're really concerned with the interplay
between the self and history, or a singular and a collective
imagination. And, you know, these are really big things to get inside
a poem. And I just can't help, in some ways, marvel at how you get
them in. How do you approach such a big subject within a poem, without
it collapsing the poem? Because it never does with your poems.
Parker Hibbett: I don't know. I think weirdly with this one,
especially, I think, almost focusing on something else, like,
knowing that that was what I was in there writing about. But I really,
especially in the first part of the poem— in ways that at the time I
was maybe like, "am I enjoying this too, too much?"— I got really,
really into the sound and like trying to set up these line breaks.
I think thinking of the poetic line as this, like fabric that I was, or
the sentence as the fabric I was stretching over the poetic line
and, like, making that as tight and as smooth as possible, and making
all the, all those little moments. I think having that to focus on meant
that, I think I was able to hold the sort of bigger ideas, because
there was, there was another engine, also sort of driving,
driving the way that the poem moved.
Seán: Yeah, it feels like an engine. It feels like there's so
much surprise and energy available in those line breaks, you know,
even the one where you split, "she loves my self-," break,
"possession." And there's something so jugular about that that line
break that feels that it pulls the poem. "With an engine," is a lovely
way of putting it. Parker, we're going to take a quick break now,
but when you come back, you're going to tell us a bit about
another sort of mythical creature, which is a goat's head, the lion's
body and a snake for a tail.
Cathy & Peter Halstead: We hope you're enjoying this second season
of The Glimpse. It's just one small part of the Adrian Brinkerhoff
Poetry Foundation. We're the founders Peter and Cathy Halstead.
Our goal is to make great poetry more accessible to everyone, and we
do that in a variety of ways, through partnerships, our film
series, this podcast and our website, brinkerhoffpoetry.org. We
hope these works will lure you into a parallel universe, the way a
Möbius strip brings you into another dimension without leaving
the page you're on. Thank you so much for listening.
Seán: Welcome back to The Glimpse. So, Parker, you've chosen
a poem by Donika Kelly as your inspiration. Will you tell us a
little bit about what drew you to this poem first?
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I think there's just this, this charge,
like, I think she's doing something really exciting here. And it's
something that I think that has really inspired me in my own
writing. This sort of mythology made personal, yeah? And mythology
made not just personal, but, like, intimate and moving and shifting.
Seán: Yeah, and we were talking before about that the kind of
energy of form in your poems. And this poem feels to me like it has
such energy in its form. Would you read it for us? It's called
"Chimera," right?
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, "Love Poem: Chimera" I thought myself lion and
serpent. Thought myself body enough for two, for we. Found comfort in
never being lonely. What burst from my back, from my bones, what lived
along the ridge from crown to crown, from mane to forked tongue
beneath the skin. What clamor we made in the birthing. What hiss and
rumble at the splitting, at the horns and beard, at the glottal
bleat. What bridges our back. What strong neck, what bright eye. What
menagerie are we. What we've made of ourselves.
Seán: I feel like you need to take a breath after reading that
poem. You know, when I first read it, it really took me by surprise,
because it was almost as if there was this kind of creature emerging
out of it, breaking out of this poem, and it took me a while to
recognize what was happening in the poem, and then I was getting bowled
over by the end of it.
Parker Hibbett: I have like exclamation points written in the
book next to "What bridges our back," and then "what menagerie,"
line break, "are we?" Just, [exhales]
Seán: Yeah, I was staring at that line, "what menagerie / are
we?" And I was trying to figure it out, you know, why is it so good?
And I, I kind of came to this idea that there was... "bright eye,"
"menagerie," is a kind of rhyme, and then "menagerie/are we" is a
kind of rhyme, but it's, it's kind of a changed rhyme. You know, "are
we" doesn't rhyme with "bright eye," but with "menagerie" in the
middle, they both rhyme. Do you know what I mean? There's some
trickery going on in this poem, which is...
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, it works so well on a sonic level.
Seán: Amazing, and I think it just has a soundscape that, that
just keeps fizzing and kind of detonating in places. And, you
know, it feels like it's almost gymnastic, like dancing and moving
on, on the page. Was it something about that movement and the kind of
soundscape of it that drew you to this poem?
Parker Hibbett: I think so. And I think it's those lines, like, that
hit really well. But as mentioned, I love, I think, all of the poems,
all the, the love poems that kind of sequence throughout the
collection. But there's something about this one, and it was, it was
almost intangible, like, I couldn't exactly describe why this one, but
it was just, I think, that sort of double valence of the, the "what,"
like, how it sits somewhere between question and statement, which means
that as you're reading forward you're kind of, it's kind of taking
shape as it moves through each of those sentences.
Seán: It is. It's kind of, it's kind of shifting the poem, and it's
just kind of inching its way forward in such a surprising
grammatical way. "What bridges our back. / What strong neck, what
bright eye"— something of it reminded me of "The Tyger," the
William Blake poem, you know. I had, "What the hammer? what the
chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?" You know, I wondered if
there was something of the monstrous vision of "The Tyger" in
the back of the monstrous vision of the chimera in this poem as well.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I'm sure that before and in the process of
writing this book, she must have sort of read just a lot of, like,
animal or monster poems.
Seán Hewitt: Yeah.,The book is called Bestiary, right?
Parker Hibbett: Yeah,
Yeah. It also seemed to me, you know, to be a poem about hybridity.
It's about community or interdependence. I'm gonna butcher
the line if I don't look at it, but "Thought / myself body enough for
two, for we. / Found comfort in never being lonely," You know, and
the whole poem kind of breaks open that certainty or the or the
stubbornness of the idea of self-sufficiency, you know—it has
to break out of itself. I think in that way the, the poem kind of
becomes a metamorphosis poem, you know, in the same way that, that
yours, so it fits so so well alongside the poems in High Jump.
What is it that kind of drew you originally to the mythology and
these myth-making poems? Has that always been a kind of obsession for
you, or has it come later?
I think I always, as many adolescents did, that, had that
sort of Icarus obsession, just... I think I was really interested in
the idea of this transcendence and then like, failure, which in turn,
sort of evidenced, like, not a failure of him, but a failure of
the world that he was in to hold him or something. Which I think
speaks to a lot of sort of adolescent growing pains,
especially for any sort of marginalized kid. There's this,
like, fierce desire to, like, become...I don't know. So I think
Icarus was my sort of entryway into a lot of stuff. But then it became,
like... the labyrinth was sort of a heavy focus.
Seán: Right? Because the Minotaur kind of shows up in your
book as well.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah, I feel like Minotaur was another big one from
that kind of set of mythological figures. And then I read H.D.'s
Helen in Egypt, and that made, I don't know, this like, enormous
impact on just what you could do with myth. H.D. does this thing
where she frees Helen from her myth without really confining her to a
new one. She gets to exist in this like plurality of the lyric "I",
like... she is poetic, opaque in like a Glissant way, like, thing
and she is free. Like, the details are fuzzy, it stays, like, hazy,
and it's...oh my god. So I think that sort of helped ignite a lot of
stuff.
Seán: Yeah, I think, you know, there's a way in which the myths
are always there as a sort of opportunity to transform our own
experience through this kind of fund of, of stories and ideas that
are common language between us, you know. And and it seems that you
know, in this poem "Chimera," it's transforming what might have been
a, you know, a poem of ordinary experience into a poem of quite
extraordinary power. Because the chimera gets at the heart of, of
contradiction or hybridity in ourselves and in our emotions as
well, and it... you know, if anything, this poem feels like it's
in a in a locked battle between two, two forms of the self. I
wonder you know, did you say this one comes from a sequence? Are they
all love poems?
Parker Hibbett: They're all, there's a sequence—it's kind of
spaced throughout the book—but there are two "Love Poem:
Centaur"s: there's a "Love Poem: Centaur" with a capital "C," "Love
Poem: centaur" with lowercase "c." I think this one is in this
interesting space of, again, that sort of contradiction, where it's
like somewhere in between talking about self-love and, like, I think
you can also read it in some ways, about sort of the space that opens
up between two people in a relationship.
Seán Hewitt: Yeah.
Parker Hibbett: I think that has that double valence. Some of them
are sort of more explicitly, like love poems to someone. "Love Poem:
Centaur" starts, "Nothing approaches the field like me."
They're all sort of like this electric movement. She kind of,
like, I think comes at all of these, from these different, I
guess, like kaleidoscopic, maybe, parts of sides of a prism or
something,
Seán: Yeah, I think kaleidoscopic or, or kind of
crystalline, you know, in the way it's bouncing the light around this
poem, or refracting things. You know, it just seems to be, the more
you look at it, the more it means, but also that it can mean
contradictory things. You know, it's both a love poem and, and
perhaps a regretful poem about what... "What we've made of
ourselves" can be read two very different ways, I think, according
to how you want to read this poem. You know that it can be a kind of
sign of strength for what we've made, you know, the strength in the
making, but also a kind of "look what we've done," in a regretful
way.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah.
Seán Hewitt: I've been reading this poem over the past week kind of
repeatedly, and I still not quite decided the definitive reading. And
I think that's what I love about it.
Parker Hibbett: Yeah. I think in preparing for talking about it
here, I was like, "oh my god, I actually don't know how to talk
about it." Like "if I, if I present this reading of it, that's not the
only reading, like, I can't," I don't know, it...
Seán Hewitt: Yeah, there's something. But I think that's what
the best poems do, right? They kind of confound the other language that
you might, might try to summarize them with. You know that this poem
exists in its own kind of irreducible space, and part of it
is that kind of sparking nature of, of the words, "What bridges our
back. // What strong neck, what bright eye. What menagerie / are
we." So good, so good. I loved it. So Parker, it's been a big year for
you with the publication of your debut book. What's next?
Parker Hibbett: I I'm in the final year of my, my literary practice
PhD, where I'm working on, like, an auto ethnographic series of essays,
kind of memoir-esque. But yeah, working, towards, like a non
fiction book, which has been maddening and impossible, and I
think I'm starting to feel like I don't ever want to touch prose
again after this. But by the end of this, I will ideally have a, like,
a nonfiction book of essays.
Seán Hewitt: That is something really to look forward to. I can't
wait to read it. Parker, thank you so much for taking the time to
speak to us today, and for reading your, your poems, it's been a real
pleasure.
Parker Hibbett: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.
Seán: Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host. Seán Hewitt.
Seán Hewitt: Parker’s poem "Joni Mitchell dresses up as me (parts I
and II)" is from High Jump as Icarus Story, now available from
Banshee Press.
"Love Poem: Chimera" by Donika Kelly is from Bestiary, published
in 2016. It was used with permission from Graywolf Press.
Coming up next week, poet Jane Clarke talks about her journey from
psychoanalysis to poetry, building a wall, and how her visits with
farmers, ecologists and naturalists inform her work.
Make sure to subscribe to The Glimpse wherever you get your
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The Glimpse is a production of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry
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Director, and our co-founders are Cathy and Peter Halstead. Thanks
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