Shoshana Kessler . . Shoshana Kessler speaks to poet, Camille Ralphs, as part of a consecution of interviews, the first published in The London Magazine in 2017 .
* So why did my umbilicus, umbrella of the belly, not asphyxiate and fix me at my birth, and make my due my expiration date? Why was I lapped in aprons, and not limbo’s fair-welled farewell wave; why was I milk-fed, milk-toothed, given weight? ...
(from ‘Job 3:11-26’, published in Liberties , spring 2024 and then in After You Were, I Am ) * Shoshana: Luke Kennard, in his review of After You Were, I Am in The Telegraph , writes that ‘a careful and stricken theology emerges’— Camille: —stricken, stricken is a key word. For him or for you? l think he’s right, it is stricken. Is there a theology you’re creating here? For example, there’s something that’s directive in ‘after St Francis of Assisi’ .
‘Cursed are we who know it’s hard to save the world from everyone who wants to save the world. You do have to be good’ (‘after St Francis of Assisi’ , After You Were, I Am ) That’s also in conversation with another poem. Mary Oliver? Yes.
That’s what I figured. Is the first ‘Job’ the most personal of the poems? Personal? All of these poems are an attempt at sublimation, to some extent, and finding a way of talking about whatever I’m potentially feeling without boring myself, or without feeling self-indulgent. And those poems in the first section, they’re ostensibly prayers or cho.
