Hotel Almighty by Sarah J. Sloat
Sarabande books 2020
Interviewer: Angie Dribben
In exploring the relationship between text and visual art when occupying the same space, one question that arises is how do the images elevate and not detract from the text?
This is a question that’s hard to answer in words, and I can only speak for myself. Most important is the text and the visual elements work together, if that makes sense. Even if they don’t speak to each other directly, they should do so in association. Nevertheless, even then it’s going to be the mind that puts things together. I could have a poem about a fire and show a flock of birds rising, and the audience might think the birds are fleeing the fire, and others in the audience may think the birds are a flame, and others may simply get a feeling of energy.
I think that by choosing a subtle and/or uniform background, or by making sure the text and the images work together, you can keep your audience reading as well as just looking. It’s worth mentioning too that you make your words stand out in the way they appear as well as what they say.
I say this, but in some cases of visual poetry, one might like the text to be less prominent, let it be more of an undercurrent in the overall work.
Does this change when the page, the individual piece, becomes a collection? Do the images from page to page within a body of work need to have a common denominator?
I’m not one who insists on poetry collections being what they call “coherent.” Many editors of chapbooks and even books are looking for poems united around a subject or theme. As a reader, I don’t need that at all. I think variety in a collection can keep a reader interested. Nevertheless, if you want the collection to have some unifying factor, it doesn’t have to be that each piece shares a look or a theme. In terms of different expressions, I think of Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony, which uses drawings, text, and photographs. The work is united by its subject matter, and each new piece is a surprise. The visual poems in my book, on the other hand, share a particular look because of the way they were created, but I didn’t set out to explore any theme in particular. I let each page be in and of itself.
How much of your finished page is intentional versus instinctual or vice versa?
This is silly but since I’m away from home without my book at hand it’s difficult to answer this with precision. Nevertheless, I began each poem with the text and without any plan for the visual elements in mind. After that I would decide how to obscure the unwanted text and then how to enhance the page visually. It was an organic process. Sometimes I did deliberately choose a color or rule it out. For example, I felt I got carried away with blue and went cold turkey. I drifted into white and didn’t really notice that it also started to dominate me. I had to push myself towards other colors. I made “For a long time I think about isolated things” yellow even though I worried it might not work out. So, I did make deliberate decisions, but mostly I waited for the page as a whole to fall into place.
Do you see the images you placed on the pages with the found poems as images, individual poems, part of the found poem, or not poems at all?
I want the images to work together with the text. As far as Hotel Almighty goes, the collages divorced from the text aren’t poems in themselves. They become part of the poem by sharing the space, by interacting. Some of the collages could work on their own, though not as poems. I tried to find visual elements that in some way spoke to the text without overtly connecting. “Overlapped shades,” for example, shows some empty lounge chairs on what could be sand or snow. They become those which “lay back, listening to the wind in winter.” It’s a lonely image that reveals the loneliness of the poem.
In line with that perspective of complexity, how do you know when you have made something that once belonged to others your own?
The poet brings her own sense to the source text, which for me is like a data bank or a lump of clay. I don’t want to recognize Stephen King in my poem. I’m going to avoid lifting full sentences or long phrases from his work. All the words in his books belong to everyone who uses language—the source writer has just narrowed down the choice available to the poet.
I read Hotel Almighty cover to cover in one warm soaking bath. With traditional poetry, I typically become exhausted with the emotions and the processing. I have to read it in phases.
I wouldn’t say Hotel Almighty is a light book. The sadness and loneliness of Misery, the original text, is present in the found poems. But, as poetry tends to do with its unexpected connections and lyricism, it gives a vibrancy to even the blinding of midnights. This is where I think the visual component may have aided my digestion as well by weaving light into the sadness or loneliness that I sometimes felt in the text.
How do you understand the emotional and/or visceral impact of the visual art component on the reader?
It’s so nice to hear about your bathtub reading experience. I always worry about getting the book wet!
As to the visuals—though they may not make sense of them immediately, people connect with images immediately. Images exercise a strong draw. Think of children reluctant to give up “picture books” for the “more adult” pure prose. Who can blame them!? Images and color convey ideas and emotion.
How do you think the components function as common denominators in the reader’s comprehension?
We find connections somehow among most everything. I think of when I was trying to sort all the pieces into sections. In the end, instead of forcing it with demands like “all the poems in this section must be melancholy,” I let the poems gravitate towards each other without need of explanation. The mind connects the dots.
Is this how you will always create? Exploring this relationship between the found poetry and found visual?
I don’t know! Five years ago I’d never done anything like this before. I find it hard to get away from the visual element now. At the moment, however, I’m working on pairing some of my own writing with visuals. But to be honest, I’m homesick for Stephen King. I haven’t found a book or text that has same appeal for me from the found poetry point of view. He’s so down to earth and rich with good nouns and verbs.
I recently returned to my apartment in Spain after leaving a year ago when the pandemic started. On my kitchen table, which is my desk in Spain, were six or seven Misery pieces I had done or was working on, plus a notebook of potential keepers. I’m trying to consider this a ‘dead’ project, as in completed, but even in Misery, an important character is buried alive and pulled back up into the oxygen.
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Sarah J. Sloat splits her time between Frankfurt and Barcelona, where she works as a news editor. Her poetry, collage, and prose have appeared in The Offing, West Branch, Sixth Finch, The Journal, and Diagram. Sarah is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including Heiress to a Small Ruin and Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair (Dancing Girl Press).
Angie Dribben’s debut collection, Everygirl, a finalist for the 2020 Broadkill Review Dogfish Head Prize, is out with Main Street Rag. She is the contributing reviews editor at Cider Press Review. Her work is in The Night Heron Barks, Cave Wall, EcoTheo, Crab Creek Review, Crack the Spine, and others.