The cover of Patricia’s book “Contact” features a punching boxer. When I look at it, I first wonder if there is always something painful and essentially violent about the contact. What shades of contact are most important to the author herself when choosing the subject of the cover, from which the reader’s first contact with the book begins?
Patricia smiles: “Some people interpret it as a shocking and overly flashy cover. I wanted the boxer Muhammad Ali to be on the cover. We can see it on the cover, only covered with foam. It is isolated, so all heat and any potential for violence is separated from the others. My idea is that he is more dangerous to himself than to those around him.
There is also some irony here. Because even if we can trace the provocation on the cover, it was mostly aimed at me. All the ominousness of the cover is not directed at the reader or anyone else at all. The book was originally titled No Contact. And suddenly we switched to “Kontakte”. In the book, there is no contact or contacts with real, living persons. The texts contain my personified and created cultural personalities, which I arrange in a collage manner. In the texts, I see this one very close to me.
I deconstruct the characters of the books, for example from Ričard Gavel’s “Vilnius Poker”. The first chapter contains epitaphs for my grandmother, which I wrote after her death. We had a very close relationship. But in that chapter too, I’m talking to her ghost, not her alive. So my contact in the book is not real either, it is so phantom. Indispensable without constant cracking. I want that contact, I strive for it, but at the same time I constantly “shoot it down” myself.
When asked why she chose the figure of M. Ali as a symbol, Patricia says that she was attracted by his contradiction: “In a way, the lyrical subject of my book is trapped, just like Muhammad on the cover. When I was writing the book, I would sometimes find videos of his fights online and watch them. I enjoyed watching them.
When I delved into the personality of this boxer, I was interested in the fact that he always seemed very contradictory as a person. A violent beast in the boxing ring is more of a profession, but in everyday life he was a sensitive, vulnerable and religious man. And this paradox is very interesting to me.”
Continuing the topic I started, I ask Patricia what she thinks about human relationships, whether she thinks that every contact really has a certain streak of violence:
“Critics have pointed out that the motif of the mask often appears at the beginning of my book. It is inextricably linked to the question of our social personality. We sometimes wear masks when we communicate. Aggression probably becomes a calmer and more peaceful state when we trust the person we are interacting with. Then there is no need to box because we are no longer scared. I would probably single out the feeling of human insecurity as one of the main themes of the book.”
I ask Patricija, how does he evaluate not only encounters in life with other people, but also with other people’s work? How does it feel to read their work? Feeling safe or insecure? Is there also a desire to cut off contact in order to protect one’s autonomy?
“I think the relationship with other people’s works is in a way easier, because you interpret it yourself, and the interpretation can be very close to you. I have always read a lot. Since childhood, I used to read various encyclopedias, and literature brought me to the real world.
Teodoros Biliūnas/BNS photo/Patricija Gudeikaitė
It was through literature that I understood and learned how things work. One of the most important functions of literature is to teach you to reflect on what is happening around you, and not just focus on yourself. I admire some writers very much, but not because I want to imitate them in my work. For example, I wrote a cycle inspired by R.Gavel’s work for a long time. The inner voice kept asking what I was doing here – after all, R. Gavelis is stronger than me and the texts are already written. But his work had a strong effect on me. Let’s say that all four chapters of the book repeat the mysterious motif of “them”. They appear in the poem “Hell riders”, it grows like monstrous flowers. R. Gavelis himself in “Vilnius Poker” links “them” with the demons of totalitarianism.
With a very destructive force that you have to fight in order to maintain your autonomy, otherwise you will just be crushed. My relationship with other writers is more based on respect and learning. And if we talk about real people, I really value relationship and friendship. Another important aspect is that literature, along with many of the above-mentioned subjects, also taught empathy. We should never trivialize or generalize another person’s suffering. Human communication is a very complex process. If everything is already quite complicated, I think we should respect each other more just because of that. The same is true in the community of writers,” says the writer.
Patricija lives in Kaunas, so I ask her how she gets along with other writers and artists from Kaunas, how important communication with other creators is to her in general.
“Gavelis tried to feel the rhythm of Vilnius and its movement. My Vilnius is Kaunas. I was born here and have already spent 25 years of my life here. Therefore, every section, every street in Kaunas is important to me and related to various memories. In the Kaunas bar “Godo” my friends and I organized various readings, literary meetings and created a kind of fellowship, a community. I really enjoy reading other people’s work and I am happy for their success. For me, this is essential. In the book “Kontaktas” there is a dedication to the invisible editors: prose writer Lina Simutyta, poet Mantas Balakauskas and sound artist Tadus Greičiūnas. I exchanged texts with them in one way or another and received comments. Although the ego may resist at first, but later you listen and enjoy. I really appreciate the fellowship with other writers and creators.”
Eriko Ovčarenko/BNS photo/Patricija Gudeikaitė
The conversation turns to mental health. This theme, in one form or another, often appears not only in Patricia’s own texts, but also in the works of her favorite authors. Her texts cannot be so easily categorized as confessional poetry, so I wonder what place mental health occupies in her work.
“I’ve noticed that recently, the literature talks more and more about trauma and mental health. I decided to talk about these topics myself even before the book came out. I have published essays about my psychotic and schizoaffective experiences. However, I notice two camps in the field of literature. The first emphasizes one’s narcissistic self and the experiences associated with it.
Authors put themselves in such a position that they seem to be wandering somewhere and do not even notice what is happening around them. The second openly criticizes such a poetic strategy. It’s great that people are talking about it, but in literature, especially poetry, just speaking confessionally or telling stories about your own experiences and I sometimes find it questionable. One is blogging and sharing your experiences and another is poetry. I read and appreciate confessional poetry, especially by Americans such as John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath. However, this kind of poetry is always there for me confessional. Confession. That religious dimension.
In this context, confession seems inevitably associated with guilt. That I kind of have to feel guilty. However, I don’t think an author like me who talks about mental health should feel guilty or explain. So these things should be separated. If you wrote a book, you wrote it. The author is quite different from the speaker of the book. As Roland Barthes writes, the author is dead, he does not exist. It seems to me that more time should be devoted to the author’s own creation process. If creators talk more about their liminal experiences, it’s likely that the divide will decrease,” says the writer.
Laura Vansevičienė’s photo/Aušra Kaziliūnaitė
Although Patricija says that she is suspicious of the religious undertone accompanying confessional poetry, I note that her book is full of religious symbols, cultural images directly or indirectly related to religion, and hints about the other world. The guest of the podcast herself noticed this only when the book had already been compiled: “After writing the last chapter of the book, Africa, I noticed that there are a lot of different cultural references in one way or another related to religion, for example, the mentioned saints – Sebastian and others. Then I wondered why this happened. Admittedly, religious thinking is deeply rooted and cannot be easily dislodged. I used to be very cynical about religion. It is a form of rebellion. But maturity is definitely important too. If we talk about the saints, about the same Sebastian or Hildegard, it seems to me that the aspect of transcendence is very important.
You mentioned the other side. There is a lot of it in the book – a lot of ghosts of all kinds. In this sense, it is probably possible to see certain features of romanticism: if a person writes about the other side, it means that he is in a certain sense dissatisfied with the surrounding reality. Looking for something behind this reality. This is probably also related to youthful maximalism. Reading Kontakt, I understand: if I were to write now, it would probably be completely different. And if I ever publish a second book, it will be less ghosts and otherworldly and more real people. In this sense, that longing for the beyond can be considered a form of rebellion – I am not satisfied with what is happening here and now. This motif is also very prominent in the main poem of the book, “No Contact”, where I box with the dead and scream at the living.”
Listen to the entire conversation “We should never belittle the suffering of another person” on the Lithuanian Writers’ Union’s podcast “Rašytnamis”. Writer, philosopher, doctor of humanitarian sciences Aušra Kaziliūnaitė talks to the poet Patricija Gudeikaite.
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2024-09-01 21:12:29
