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An interview with Chrystos

Off Our Backs, Sep/Oct 2003 by Bealy, Joanne

I first decided to write about Chrystos after seeing her read to a standing room only crowd at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Though a mike and podium were set up on the stage, she chose to stand below with her audience, reading poems and telling stories. While she infected the audience with her laughter and her trademark honesty, there was a vulnerability about her as well. And by the number of people who stood up at the end to honor her, it is clear that Chrystos is well loved and that her work, always on the cutting edge, has had a lasting impact on many people, particularly women. Born off-reservation in San Francisco on November 7, 1946, to a Menominee father and a Euro-immigrant mother, Chrystos is a self-educated writer, artist and activist. With five books of poetry (Not Vanishing, Dream On, In Her I Am, Fugitive Colors, and Fire Power) and appearances in numerous anthologies, including This Bridge Called My Back, she is passionate about her art. Now living on Bainbridge Island, Washington, Chrystos has worked actively and tirelessly for the disenfranchised, whether first nations, queers, battered women, or the poor. "Telling the truth is powerful medicine." she writes. "It is a fire that lights the way for others. When we speak our 'Fire Power,' we join a long and honored line of warriors against injustice."

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JB: Could you talk a little bit about what poetry is to you, first of all as a writer but also as a reader? On the writer side, what prompts you to pick up your pen?

Chrystos: I think of myself primarily as an oyster. Whatever irritates me [I write about]. I would say sometimes a newspaper article [inspires me], sometimes somebody being rude to me, sometimes something exquisitely beautiful, sometimes just a random phrase I'll hear. I'm working on a poem now that's inspired by a piece of graffiti in a bathroom. It's pretty wide open and I don't ever sit down at a desk and write a poem, that never happens.

And none of it necessarily makes a poem either, it's actually very random. It's important to write it though, give it voice. When the lines start in my mind, if I don't write them as they're coming, then they disappear. So I've learned to be a pretty good secretary to my brain.

JB: What is your revision process then? Do you have one?

Chrystos: Generally speaking I would say that I don't edit very much. I might take some words out or fiddle around with the way the lines are going. I don't agonize over every word because for me writing is kind of like a snake skin. Something is being shed. I'm not quite as precious about it I guess as some people are. I love to write, but I actually write more in my journal than any other kind of writing and that's really very very comforting. I think of my journal as my best friend.

JB: Are there people who influence you?

Chrystos: Oh, yeah. I try to keep up on all the Native poets. That's quite a job sometimes. There's a whole renaissance that's never happened before in the history of this country. And that's really wonderful. I also read a lot of foreign novels because I find American novels too white and too predictable most of the time. There are very few people in the United States who are writing novels that are interesting, at least the ones that are getting published.

I recently read Trumpet by Jackie Kay which I highly recommend. It's a marvelous novel. I'm finishing up a novel by Pat Barker who I also like. I tend to go outside the United States to explore writers, especially Africa and Japan for some reason, sometimes South America. Although the South American writers can be a little too Catholic for me. I was raised a Catholic and it's a little hard to take the over-the-top Catholic stuff now.

JB: Some have classified you as a confessional poet. Do you think that's accurate?

Chrystos: I try to talk about the real things that are happening in the world. My feeling about people like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath is that they were very much focussed on their own lives and they didn't have very much consciousness about anyone else in the universe, I mean outside of their class and race and background. So I don't feel that's accurate for me because I've written about all kinds of people, not just Native people. I would say I'm more a political poet than a confessional poet because I have never actually confessed my darkest secrets [ laughter ]. I don't know if I ever will...

JB: When you sit down to write, do you have a collection in mind and then write to it or do you write individual pieces and pull them into a manuscript as they start to weave a shape?

Chrystos: I just kind of write. My poor agent has been waiting two years for a manuscript from me. I hate the part of sitting down and typing it all up, making sure that it's clear copy, turning it into a manuscript. That part is really boring to me.

JB: So you write long-hand?

Chrystos: Yes, I do. People are always asking me how I can write without a computer. The typewriter works just fine [for me]. When I go to put a book together I don't like it to be all sad or all sexy, you know, I try to combine poems so there's a balance in the book. That's what I'm thinking about when I put the book together.

An interview with Chrystos

Off Our Backs, Sep/Oct 2003 by Bealy, Joanne

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