Issue 3: Interview with Tate Fountain
“Hey, look, I’m, uh. I’m heading out. Going someplace / calm. Someplace quiet. Like the blue-hour walk to the bus / before the world’s quite risen.”
~ HEADING OUT by Tate Fountain
In 'HEADING OUT,' the speaker of the poem is fantasising about escaping to a place that perhaps doesn't exist - a cinematic world of "anonymous cities" and the "idea of lunches." What was your inspiration for this piece?
It originated with the line about the slips, actually—which came from the opening shot of Roberta Cantow’s film Clotheslines(1981), although at first I only knew it as a still. Something about the colour and light, and the texture to it, really struck me. And I ended up having it in mind alongside the kind of feeling I’ve had when walking alone as the light is changing, or gone, and when things have stilled to a specifically nonthreatening quiet. When you’re very aware of space, and potential, and the gap between where you are and what you want. (Which had nothing to do with the shot from Clotheslines, and yet aligned itself with establishing shots in my head—because everything I write is apparently battling to exist in a different medium. Take a breath, buddy!)
I’m a big collector of visuals, so the slips became almost part of a catalogue of images I was seeing around the same time. I was obsessing—as ever—over the way ensemble casts touch each other in the background of films and shows and stage productions, and had also encountered what seemed like countless half-blurry, unadorned pictures of the same Pinterest candlelit dinner party (y’know, the ones that are meant to be casual but suddenly reveal themselves as products of affluence once you account for the cost of prosciutto?). And it was all images on top of images on top of images, and all of them were, intentionally or not, evoking this specific vein of feeling. Peace, in some ways; quiet joy and wild excitement in others. Envy, sometimes, over houseplants.
And with all of this I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that, when you’re looking at these images—by nature of their existence as something two-dimensional, something captured—you’re automatically removed from them. As much as you can love something or aspire to it, it’s intangible—it’s beyond you. You’re longing for the concept of the thing. And if you had it, perhaps you wouldn’t recognise it as that idea or feeling or experience you’re aching for, because your association with it is predicated in some way on it being imaginary, characterised as much by lack as by wanting. But at the same time, you’ve got to try. Right? This poem is very much about the speaker being like, “I’m not content with sitting here, where I am; I need something else, which makes me feel like these things do, which is perhaps really just the idea of feeling calm, or only owing people things like kindness, rather than owing them emails, or other taxing tasks, and without performing myself; I just want to be able to slow down, as much as I know that isn’t the world I’m living in.”
Voice is very important in your poem; it is delivered as a monologue, but full of gaps and hesitations. How did you go about developing the speaker's voice?
There are a couple of elements to it. The first is a kind of communicative shorthand: opening a poem with a phrase like, “Hey, look,” just cuts to the chase. Because I had a set of visuals or concepts that evoked something, and I needed them threaded together; and I wanted the thread to be grounded, because otherwise it felt rushed, or disembodied—or had no muscle, y’know?
But I was also very aware of wanting the poem to have somewhere to go, to build up a sense of propulsion and flow—which gave the speaker a journey into eloquence, and meant the reader’s experience didn’t plateau. The juxtaposition between the fits and starts of the hesitations and the precision of the images points out the speaker’s distance from them, again, but at the same time creates this state where the speaker’s desires are just bursting out of their mouth. And it’s hard, in language, to communicate anything with complete accuracy, but that’s what the speaker is endeavouring to do. And to an extent once you’ve started telling people what you want—what you really, really want—it gets easier and easier. I suppose that in itself is an arc partially completed. If the speaker’s looking for a route away from fear, they start with clear communication.
You're currently part of the editorial committee for Starling journal, an online platform dedicated to young writers from Aotearoa (New Zealand). Can you tell us a bit about your role there?
Absolutely! (I’ll talk about Starling—happily—’til the cows come home.)
Louise Wallace and Francis Cooke, as editors, have been publishing the work of young writers biannually since 2016. They’re extremely generous, very discerning, and really do champion the writers they work with—as well as many who, because of particular submissions, or the sheer volume of them, don’t necessarily make the cut for publication. I don’t want to seem obsequious, but when you look at the current landscape of writers, seeing who had support from Starling early on, I think we owe a lot to Louise and Francis, in terms of how they’ve provided so many initial introductions. And in March, 2021, ahead of Issue 12, they extended a similar opportunity to fledgling editors!
I don’t know what the situation is like overseas, but paid editorial opportunities in Aotearoa—especially with established publications—can be hard to come by, and so I jumped at the chance to be involved. The work of the editorial committee involves an initial reading of a selection of the submissions (with every submission being looked at by at least two of us), and providing thoughts and feedback. Then, once that initial reading period is over, we get together—via Zoom, because we’re spread across the country—and talk through the condensed list: which pieces are definite yeses, which ones we might fight for, what edits there are to be made. And we also go over options for the cover artist, guest writer, and interviewee, all of which Louise and Francis are keen to accept our insight on. It’s a dream of a process, really, getting to learn on the job, and provide input which feels genuinely valued. I love doing it, and I love getting to shout for weeks about all the writers in the issue once it’s gone live. (It’s far easier than having to front up and be like, “spend your time on my thing, that I wrote!”)
I’m also thrilled to get to work alongside Claudia Jardine and Sinead Overbye. I’ve admired them both as writers for a long time. Claudia’s been published in Starling since the beginning, and as a classicist-by-undergraduate-degree, I’ve always been really attracted to the elements of antiquity she brings into her work. She’s a master at it (and a Master of it, really—she has an MA in the subject). Sinead is an editor for Stasis Journal, which has been one of the great homes of new work over the past year. Its second iteration has wrapped up now, but I was always so excited to see what would pop up on the site each weekday; I so rate Sinead’s taste.
What have you been reading lately? Are there any great writers from Aotearoa we should keep an eye out for?
Most recently, I’ve been rereading H.D.’s novel, Bid Me to Live. It doesn’t answer the Aotearoa question—which I’ll get to—but I wrote about it in my MA thesis, and I’m kind of always dipping in and out of it, and I had my first concerted, post-thesis reread last week, and now I’m practically inconsolable. Arguably too invested? Yes. But do I recommend it (and Perdita Schaffner’s afterword)? Sure do, baby.
Re: the second question, though: shoot—how much time have you got? I don’t think it’s a question of “any” so much as “what specific thing are you after, which medium, what subject matter, what tone; how are you feeling in this present moment, and how do you want to feel?”—y’know, like, “can I make you a playlist?”. Aotearoa is so rich with writing.
Perhaps as recommendations go journals and anthologies are a good entry point. Kick off with Starling, maybe, see who catches your fancy and then follow them around—or go through Stasis or Sweet Mammalian. There’s loads of variation within each (even if we’re revealing a glaring national predilection for the letter “S”). If you want to feel less like you’re speed-dating writers, you could check out the AUP New Poets series, which gives you three chapbooks per edition and a bit more time to settle in. Or if you want to feel really ahead of the game, I’m personally keeping an eye on eel, the new mag from editors shania pablo, Nathan Joe, and (previous Aniko poet!) Lily Holloway.
In terms of particular books I’ve loved, a few spring immediately to mind. Ransack by essa may ranapiri is such a rich, deft collection; I spent a real standout week this past semester discussing it with my first-year English students. I read Helen Rickerby’s How to Live and wanted just about to physically devour it, to be closer to the words in some way. Nina Mingya Powles’s Magnolia 木蘭 is outstanding, too, full of specific, assured use of colour and sensory detail. And Emma Barnes’s I Am in Bed with You is just brilliant, so perfectly pitched. An inevitability, really; I’ve been a fan of theirs for ages.
Tate Fountain (she/her) is a writer, director, and editor based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her academic research won the David Wright Prize in English (2019), and her short fiction was highly commended in the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition (2020). She has been published in the Min–a–rets Annexe, Stuff, and Agenda, among others, and is currently a member of the Starling Editorial Committee.