Part 2: "by the oath I will keep"
Migratory Poetics in Practice is a sit-down questionnaire with contributors of ni’hikeyah tʼáá jííkʼe, all free nations, todas las naciones libres: migratory in verse.
In this intimate exploration of creative diaspora, I ask these artists and poets about their venture into the unknown, into the space of reimagining textual beginnings, and where they can end up. In this migration, these creatives offer practices we can take as artists in our own right, to give language the malleability it needs to express our more complex thoughts and feelings.
CH: The anaphora in your piece reminds me of Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots.” The repeated words create a sense of urgency and unease, they're almost alarming. Both your poem and Kipling’s use repetition not just for rhythm, but to drive the movement of the piece forward, building a kind of tension. Can you speak to that tension and what you drew from the original text to shape it?
RZ: What a compliment! This will be similar to my 3rd answer. I wanted to pick out specific, deeply charged words from the original speech, like “unsafe” “homeland” “terror” “God” - and heighten that charge. Repetition felt like the right way to do that. Almost like performing erasure poetry on the speech, or switching out each word in the deadly rhetoric with its densest neighbor. I wanted to drive home this deadly urgency of the ultimatum that gives no room to breathe.
CH: There’s something deeply childlike in the way sound works here, as if the poem is reaching toward an audience just beginning to grasp language. The alliteration feels tactile, almost like a doorway into meaning rather than a reflection of it. Can you speak more about the audience you were envisioning? Was this childlike sensibility intentional?
RZ: I love this observation! I don’t think I went in envisioning a particular audience except for the intention to democratize and make accessible the feeling, that raw curl and kick of the steel boot in the speech itself. Sometimes the tyrant too is a child.
CH: I’d like to talk about form; the enjambments in your piece seem to heighten its musicality. In the original text, there’s no clear indication of line breaks or when Bush pauses to breathe, even in the performance of it. Yet, despite that and your line breaks, you create a relentless pace that leaves the reader little room to breathe. Can you speak to the poem’s rhythm and breath?
RZ: Thank you! Definitely meant to reflect, again, that deadly urgency of the ultimatum. In an abusive relationship, ultimatums are often used manipulatively to create stress, twist or reduce to black/white the narrative so that the abuser can retain control. This poem is meant to feel like a scream, but also a flag and a neon sign in other parts. Its breathlessness is meant to create stress, but also reveal irony through the cracks in between - hence playing with alternating ALL CAPS and lowercase. A small inhale before the next shout.