Something Has to Shatter

Poet Victoria Kennefick opens the second season of The Glimpse, joining host Seán Hewitt for a discussion of birth and rebirth, self-actualization, and the rewards of keeping your heart open. Kennefick reads her poem “The Ego is Crushed Like a Snail Shell Under a Stiletto and is Begrudgingly Divested of Its Own Smugness” and Carolyn Kizer’s poem “Heart’s Limbo.”

Episode Transcript

Seán Hewitt (00:00):
The Glimpse,

Victoria Kennefick (00:05):
I could actually feel at certain times, my
heart closing in situations, and Irealized that's what's happening
when I have that feeling. It's myheart going nope, or I don't want
that, or I'm scared often.

Seán Hewitt (00:21):
Welcome to The Glimpse. I'm your host. Sean
Hewitt, Victoria Kennefick's, debutcollection Eat or We Both Starve
won the Seamus Heaney FirstCollection Poetry Prize and was
shortlisted for the T.S. EliotPrize, among many others. Her
second collection, egg/shell, was aPBS Choice for Spring 2024 and BBC
Poetry Extra Book of the Month,Victoria Kennefick is our guest

(00:45):
today on The Glimpse.
Victoria Kennefick's poems arebrave, exposing funny and dark.
They take risks, not only in termsof form and language, but in terms
of the real and necessary risks ofart: to look directly at difficult
subject matter, to implicate thepoet in a mesh of moral and

(01:08):
aesthetic questions. Victoria makesher life into poetry, but not in
the way of transforming it intosomething pretty or excusing it.
Instead, she opens up even thedarkest parts of experience in
order that we might witness andfeel less alone ourselves. These
are poems full of the body, ofvisions, of humor and intimate

(01:30):
hope, raw but never undeveloped,shocking but never untrue.
Victoria's work is exposing andreal and generous, and I'm so glad
to have her here on The Glimpsewith us. Victoria, welcome.

Victoria Kennefick (01:44):
Thank you so much, Sean, that was a beautiful
introduction.

Seán Hewitt (01:47):
You're very welcome. Your new collection. I'd just like
to talk a little bit about it.First, it's called egg/shell it
came out this year. For thosepeople listening, which is
everyone, they won't be able tohear exactly what I'm saying when I
say the title, because there'sactually a forward slash between
egg and shell, which speaks a bitto the concerns of the book. Could

(02:09):
you tell us a bit about that?

Victoria Kennefick (02:11):
That was a very obviously intentional move,
punctually or punctuationally, butalso, I think, in terms of what I
envisaged the collection to beabout, because it initially, very
much started as a book aboutfertility, and particularly
secondary infertility, and usingthe egg rather usefully, and

(02:34):
perhaps obviously, as a method toexplore that. Particularly as I
happen to live near a wetlandcenter, which is this beautiful
lake, and swans in it. And theswans breed every year, and it
becomes an almost obsessiveexperience for the people around
the area to you know, when are thecygnets going to be born? And so

(02:54):
there was something around thatenergy that spoke to how I was
feeling about my body, and how Iwas feeling about my journey in
terms of trying to have a secondchild. And I suppose so that was
very much the initial impetus forthe collection, or certainly the
poems I was writing that eventuallybecame the collection.
But as time went on and as lifedevelops, things changed for me,

(03:16):
personally and my former spousecame out as a trans woman, and that
really did put a massive pause onmy life for how I thought it was
developing and how I thought it wasgestating, I suppose. And that kind
of moment of pause felt incrediblyimportant to show in the book: this

(03:39):
kind of fissure that that appearsand everything afterwards is
different. So that kind of allowedme to, I suppose, process the
experience myself as a person, butalso as a writer. And then I was
really delighted to find out in myextensive research, because that's
what I do when things happen to me,I research them both

(04:00):
academically and otherwise, and Ifound that when someone doesn't
realize they're trans yet, they'rereferred to as an egg, and once
they have that epiphany that theyare a trans person, their egg
cracks. And I just found that to bean enormously helpful way for me to
understand what was happening, butalso to kind of understand the fact

(04:21):
that things do break, but equallysomething different but more as
beautiful or completely differentin form emerges out of it. So that
was very much, I suppose, how therest of the collection came
together, and then how I imaginedover time the entire book.

Seán Hewitt (04:38):
Yeah, it's an incredible kind of consonance of
images there, of two very differentexperiences somehow coalesced
around the egg and and gestationand birth and rebirth, all of those
things. Second collections arefunny beasts, in a way, because you
know, when you come out with yourfirst book, you kind of make a

(04:59):
statement of sorts, whateverstatement that might be. And then
the second collection either kindof continues that statement or
deepens it, or, in some cases, kindof contradicts it or goes in
another direction. And all of thoseare, you know, come with their
various troubles and challenges.How did you approach it? I mean,
obviously this is a book thatchanged as you were writing it. But

(05:21):
how did you kind of conceive ofthis second collection? Was it
different to writing the firstbook? Did it feel different?

Victoria Kennefick (05:29):
I really appreciate you asking that
question, because I had had,ultimately my whole life, to write
my first collection, and though itwas slow in terms of how it came
together, there was a certain levelof, I'm going to say viciousness
around it, because I was just very,very focused on it being a very

(05:49):
clean, tight, sharp book with noexcess. But then I found with this
book, I couldn't bring that sameharshness to it, because of what I
was writing about and because ofhow much I had changed because of
the first book. And so I had muchmore compassion for the words and
the images and the people in thepoem and the experience of the

(06:14):
poem. And I think I, I would usethe term perhaps grace that I was
maybe allowing myself a little moregrace with mixed results, as you
know, as cleaving your emotions hasmixed results. And it was
uncomfortable, but it felt verynecessary. So I thought I would be

(06:34):
much longer than I was writing thissecond collection, but it felt
incredibly urgent, and the poemscame very, very
intensely. There was a it was veryemotionally intense experience. But
I was very, very cognizant of thefact that while I wanted them
obviously to have that resonance, Iwanted them to still be crafted and
to still so then there wassomething really satisfying about

(06:57):
taking that very urgent emotion andthen crafting it, which I suppose
is what we ultimately do, but in adifferent way to how I had before,
and the trying that out was whatwas so wonderful and fun in the
middle of this very difficultperiod of my life. It was the thing
that I think really gave me someseparation from what I was

(07:20):
Experiencing, allowed me to havesome form of control over it as
well, to curate it and create myexperience and maybe own it a
little bit more, because it isobviously when something is
happening outside of your control,like secondary infertility or
somebody that you know has a verybig impact on how your life goes,
makes a significant change, you dokind of feel helpless and kind of

(07:45):
like you're you're standing in themiddle of a storm being kind of
bent in every direction. So I thinkstanding in, in the place of
creating a poem and but allowingmyself a little bit more and being
more gentle with the work andmyself, which was really difficult,
too. I found it hard.

Seán Hewitt (08:05):
Yeah, we often think about how poems might change a
reader. You know, this poem changedmy life, or changed how I saw
something. But I think for poets,we maybe don't often talk about how
much the poems can change us, theidea that when you get to a second
collection, you might have beenactually changed by the first book.

(08:26):
And so that comes with its owncomplications. You know, you're
kind of witnessing the evolution ofVictoria as well as Victoria's
poems. And I hope you'll writeloads and loads of collections, and
we'll be able to look back at theevolution of Victoria alongside the
poems. All right, well, the poemyou've chosen for us has to, I
think, take the medal for the besttitle I've read in a long while.

(08:51):
It's called "The Ego is Crushedlike a Snail Shell Under a Stiletto
and is Begrudgingly Divested of itsOwn Smugness." Can you tell us a
little bit about the title and thenand then read it for us.

Victoria Kennefick (09:04):
One of the things that has struck me as I've
grown older and experiencedsuffering, as we all do in various
guises, is how often the ego isinvolved, and I've become more
aware of my ego's whisperings orroaring sometimes. And of course,

(09:27):
it's a necessary part of our humanexperience, and very useful
particularly, I think, you know, ifyou're a creator, it's always
useful. But I think when you'recreating something, you have to
have some sense of an ego that, oh,this needs to exist in some way.
But I was really surprised when asecond pregnancy didn't come to

(09:49):
pass for me at the time, andcertainly when my marriage fell
apart and my former spouse came outas a trans woman, I didn't realize
that it would impact on my ego, andI think that when all of that
happened, I really had to have areckoning with my ego, and it was a

(10:09):
really cathartic and reallywonderful experience in letting go
a lot of ideas I had around beingsafe as well. Because I considered,
I suppose, being married to besafe, or, you know, to have a
husband to be safe. And thosethings are not, unfortunately, in
many cases, necessarily the case.So this poem was an attempt, I

(10:33):
suppose, to explore that.
But it's okay to have those kind offeelings, and, and, and it's okay
to feel the loss of something thatyour ego enjoyed holding on to or
felt safe having, and that there isgoing to be a response to that.

Seán Hewitt (10:52):
Would you read it for us?

Victoria Kennefick (10:53):
I'd be delighted. "The Ego is Crushed like
a Snail Shell Under a Stiletto andis Begrudgingly Divested of its Own
Smugness."
When you slipped out of your skin,you slip of a thing the skin I
thought I knew you in, it wasdazzling and terrifying how I too

(11:15):
had to slough wifehood off my dryarms, scrub it from my violently
blue-white legs exfoliate itsunmistakable musk. You were no more
my husband than any other woman.What a thing to miss! And yet, and
yet I try to imagine clinging toyou like a 1980s polyester nighty

(11:36):
sparking in the dark, for God'ssake, images of bodies reaching
over the mantelpiece and going upin flames, people chimneys burned
on my child brain. Maybe I could doit and clutch all that we made
tightly until my fists shook.Stupid, smug, ego snail. Who am I

(11:59):
now without you, but what I'vealways been, a white feather in the
wind. I told you that when we metand you cupped me in your hands
loosely, and the wind could blow atany gale, get knotted and sure, I'd
toss a bit and shiver, but I couldmull that over in the dark, in the
dark, in the dark did you know? Didyou know? They all ask, questions

(12:25):
like prodding fingers? Have theystripped their spouse's skin clean?
Have they watched something fallaway? A lie? No. A pretense, no. A
realisation, yes. An epiphany,definitely. What a ridiculous
question, though, when you didn'tknow and dressed as best you could

(12:46):
in what you thought you should.
We were just playing, I suppose,until it was clear that it was
serious as murder. The end of us, Imean. The dream of us. Not your
slinky escape from your chrysalis,not your beautiful fluttering into
the light.

Seán Hewitt (13:09):
Thank you. It's such a brilliant poem. I love it. You, you
can't tell where it's going at anygiven point it slips just into new
territory every time it's about tostop, and I think I love the way it
just kind of evolves and growsthrough itself. One thing I'm aware
that listeners might not realizefrom that poem is something about

(13:32):
the shape of it. Would you tell usa little bit about the shape?

Victoria Kennefick (13:37):
So when I was writing it, it went through many,
many different forms, but the oneit really ended on, which is, I
suppose you would call it centered.It's almost, yeah, like a tree
maybe, or maybe the egg cracking,just that, that sense of it being
wider rather than being long. Sothat was kind of the sense of it. I

(13:59):
really enjoy playing with form inmy own, my own restrictions, not so
much when I have other peoplesplaced on me.

Seán Hewitt (14:09):
One of the things that came to mind when I was reading
this poem was a line from SharonOlds in "Stag's Leap," actually the
title poem of the book; she hasthis brilliant moment that always
comes back to me. She says, "Whenanyone escapes, my heart leaps up.

(14:29):
Even when it's I who am escapedfrom. I am half on the side of the
leaver." And it seems to me to kindof speak to a lot of the tension in
this book, which is, you know,wanting to retain two things that
are intimately intermeshed. Oneperson and another person, and the

(14:52):
actions of one person affectinganother person, but still not
wanting to begrudge another person,even though you might be upset and
discombobulated, and you know, haveyour ego crushed, and you know all
of that turmoil, there's still asense of celebration even in the
language. You know, you can feelthe warmth and tenderness of the

(15:13):
language, and you know yourbeautiful fluttering into the
light. So it feels like a generouspoem in the way that it approaches
that.
Was that tension between, you know,these two quite opposing things.
Was it at the forefront of yourmind when you were when you were
writing, trying to get the balancebetween this tension? I mean,

Victoria Kennefick (15:33):
Thank you for saying all of that, because I think
that was very much what I washoping.Because I think my project
in my life, maybe and certainly inmy work, is self-actualization,
that sense of to thine own self betrue, and that's something my mom

(15:56):
always said to me when I wasgrowing up, and something I always
found really desperately difficultin some situations and impossible
to ignore in others.
And so I think when somebody tellsyou what they need to do in order
to be their true selves, you cannothelp but admire that. And you

(16:22):
cannot help but just say, yeah,like, if that's what you need to
do, that's your step forward intobeing more yourself, which is, I
think perhaps our only purpose, ifwe have any. And so I think that
was a huge part of my experience,on the best of days, and even on

(16:48):
the okay days, and then othertimes, obviously, kind of thinking.
But what am I going to do? Whatwill become of me? How will I
gather the wreckage of what Iperceive to be a break. And breaks
can be very positive, and breakslike the cracking of an egg, can

(17:10):
have positive outcomes, but still,something has to shatter, and
somebody has to maybe clean up, andsomebody has to kind of see what's
emerging, and somebody else has tomaybe clear away the fragments and
so on. So I think I couldn't everin my work, certainly escape from

(17:30):
the fact that what was happeningwas a manifestation of someone's
true self.

Seán Hewitt (17:36):
Yeah, you know one thing I think this book does really
well. And you know, we sometimesdon't see enough of of this dynamic
is acknowledging the difficultiesof our interdependence on other
people. We often, I think, readbooks or talk about books as though

(18:00):
people are atomized, completelyinsulated, and that "I have the
right to my story," but it's quitehard. You know, when your story is
someone else's story, and there'sno real delineating line where one
stops and the other starts. And youknow, we often think about poems as

(18:22):
ways of tracking experience orholding experience, you know, kind
of frozen moments in time orlooking back in time. But this,
this seems, in a way, a poem abouthaving to rewrite experience or
seeing a different version of thepast that was not the one you
thought you were in. Is that a kindof propulsive force in the book? Do

(18:48):
you think?

Victoria Kennefick (18:49):
Yes, what I did in the work was try and look at how
I had to take responsibility myselffor where I was when I wrote the

(19:10):
book. And I mean, I went throughall of the maybe more challenging
and difficult emotions in thatregard, but I think most usefully
coming to the realization thatthere was something around the
dynamic that protected me fromsomething in myself that I found
challenging, and now was time tomeet that part of myself and get

(19:35):
another chance to heal that part ofme or allow that part of me to
grow, or even just acknowledge it.And so obviously there is a weird
sense of the person that I marrieddoesn't actually exist anymore,
legally, or any paperwork or andthe person that is now co-parenting

(19:55):
our child with me, and we get onexceptionally well, really a great
person, but is a different person?
Very similar in lots of ways, verydifferent in other ways. And not
just, I mean, not just physically,of course. But looking back and
kind of going, well, who was thatand, but who was I? And I think I
found that much more helpful tolook at well, how have I changed?

(20:18):
And how would it best benefit me tolook at this from a perspective
that helps me to grow and helps meto change and helps me to explore
in my work, through my writing, waysthat we can meet our former selves
that acted in ways that maybe werelike maybe we could have done
something different there, butultimately lead us to where we

(20:38):
should be, which is at anotherpoint where we can choose, I think,
to grow.

Seán Hewitt (20:44):
Yeah, you know, the poem is a way of empathizing with
various versions of yourself.It's such a great poem, Victoria.
And I think what you know, one ofthe things that that is so great
about it and all of your parents,even though they come from very
specific personal circumstances, Ithink you you have a way of of

(21:11):
allowing them to be universal.It'squite easy to kind of say, "No,
here's a bad thing I did," or"here's, you know how I feel about
something," but to say that when itbegins to enmesh every everything
around you,
there's real bravery, and I thinkyou've done it beautifully. Yeah,

(21:32):
okay, we're going to take a quickbreak now, and when we come back,
you're going to tell us about apoem that inspired you, in which a
woman puts a heart in a freezer. Sowe'll take a break and then we'll
come back.

Victoria Kennefick (21:48):
That was so lovely. Thank you so much.

Cathy and Peter Halstead (22:00):
We hope you're enjoying this second season
of The Glimpse. It's just one smallpart of the Adrian Brinkerhoff
Poetry Foundation. We're thefounders Peter and Cathy Halstead.
Our goal is to make great poetrymore accessible to everyone, and we
do that in a variety of ways,through partnerships, our film

(22:22):
series, this podcast and ourwebsite, brinkerhoffpoetry.org. We
hope these works will lure you intoa parallel universe, the way a
Möbius strip brings you intoanother dimension without leaving
the page you're on. Thank you somuch for listening.

Seán Hewitt (22:43):
Welcome back to The Glimpse. Victoria Kennefick you've
chosen a poem by Carolyn Kizer.It's called "Hearts Limbo." Do you
want to tell us a little bit aboutit before you read it for us?

Victoria Kennefick (22:56):
So I think if I were to characterize 2024 for
myself, there have been manyinteresting moments, but overall, I
think my general focus for the yearwas keeping my heart open. And I
hadn't realized at all how often Iclosed my heart. And as someone who

(23:19):
would have considered themselvespreviously, to be an open-hearted
person or to be an open person, Irealized that in many ways, that
wasn't the case at all. And thatreally fascinated me, because I
could actually feel at certaintimes my heart closing in
situations, and I realized that'swhat's happening when I have that
feeling. It's my heart going"nope," or "I don't want that," or

(23:40):
"I'm scared," often. And so when Icame across this poem, it actually
really moved me. And I suppose inmany ways, it has a levity to it,
and when it's dealing withsomething that is, I think, one of
the bravest things that you can doin your life. And so when I read
this poem, I cried, I laughed and Igasped at how brilliantly Kizer

(24:05):
talks about the heart and what wedo to it. Yeah. Would you read it
for us? I'd be delighted to
"Heart's Limbo" by Carolyn Kizer,
I thrust my heart, in danger ofdecay through lack of use, into the
freezer compartment,deep among theice-cubes, rolls ready to brown 'n'

(24:28):
serve, the concentrated juice. Ihad to remember not to diet on it.
It wasn't raspberry yoghurt. I hadto remember not to feed it to the
cat when I ran out of tuna. I hadto remember not to thaw and fry it.
The liver it resembled lay onanother shelf.
It rested there in its crystalsheath, not breathing, preserved

(24:53):
for posterity. Suddenly, I neededmy heart in a hurry. I offered it
to you, cold and drippingincompletely thawed. You didn't
even wash its blood from yourfingertips. As it numbed them. You
asked me to kiss your hands. Youwere not even visibly frightened

(25:15):
when it began to throb with love.

Seán Hewitt (25:19):
That's such a great poem, and in some ways it reminded
me of some of your poems in Eat orWe Both Starve, they're really
bodily and intense and almost kindof a sort of body horror comes
through them. Is that somethingalso that kind of pulled you into
this poem? You know the lack offear about things bleeding and

(25:42):
throbbing and going in the freezerand being thawed.

Victoria Kennefick (25:48):
It's such a great way of, I think, describing
the internal workings of ouremotional bodies, because it's
really difficult to describe thatexperience, especially, I think I
don't know, obviously, how otherpeople feel, or how they experience
feelings in their bodies. Andsomebody said recently, "your

(26:11):
issues are in the tissues," which Ithought was an amazing, an amazing
line, and how, I suppose, as we getolder, we move our bodies less and,
you know, we expect them to be ableto hold all of these experiences
that are, you know, emotion ise-motion. So they get stuck and

(26:31):
they freeze up, and they get rusty.And I was really struck by how
banal it is as well that, you know,she's just plopping her heart there
in the freezer, next to the liver,which is also there. And that's
another poem, probably aboutsomething, but also next to the
rolls and the concentrated juiceand like, Oh, don't, don't feed it

(26:53):
to the cat, or don't do that. Yeah.I loved that. It was integrated
into a very domestic scene, andthat in giving this other person
her heart, it wasn't like, you saystylized, it wasn't, you know, she
didn't take time to thaw it out andmaybe, like, I don't know, give it
a rub down, or slap it around, ortenderize it. She's like, Oh, here

(27:16):
it is.

Seán Hewitt (27:17):
Yeah. I mean, even the act of receiving that heart, you
know, the other person is there.And it seems for the speaker, such
a terrifying idea to give theheart, you know, the expectation
seems to be repulsion, kind ofwanting to throw it away or give it
back. And there's something quitemoving about the surprise of the

(27:40):
poem at not being rejected. Youknow, in that way, that's a lovely
thing about the ending. One of thewords that really stands out to me
is, "As it numbed them, you askedme to kiss your hands. You were not
even visibly frightened when itbegan to throb with love." It's the
"visibly" there, which I think putsa sort of doubt, still in the poem.

(28:04):
It's almost wanting to believe thatthe person isn't frightened. But
"visibly frightened" seems to me toleave a doubt that the person might
still be internally frightened. SoI can kind of see two frightens
you know, well, it's a scary thing.

Victoria Kennefick (28:26):
It's terrifying.

Seán Hewitt (28:28):
And, you know, sometimes I think we don't
appreciate the responsibility thatwe're putting on other people as
well. You know, we make demands ofpeople. And I think this poem does,
does both of those things. It kindof reminded me of the quote that
Has been doing the round from Ithink it was Hilary Mantel's
interview with the Paris Review. Asshe says, "The question is, not who

(28:50):
influences you, but which peoplegive you courage?" And I wonder if
that feels kind of closer to yourexperience of this poem. Does it
give you courage?

Victoria Kennefick (29:01):
I think so. I think when you're wondering how to
self-actualize and to maybe be yourtrue self as much as is possible,
given the world that we're livingin and so on, but it seems like
quite a rebellious thing to do, orquite a radical thing to do. But

(29:23):
what it really means is trustingyourself to be open, because the
opposite of love is fear, and thefear can often be about your own
inability to cope with being hurt,or your own perceived inability to
cope with being hurt. And inresisting that hurt, we obviously

(29:47):
resist all of the things that bringus joy. So even though the heart is
not, you know, table-ready and isdripping on this person's hands,
this person accepts it, becausethat is, ultimately what love is.
It's, it's acceptance,

Seán Hewitt (30:04):
Right? You know, you've let go of your own
responsibility for your own ego,and you've, you've entrusted it to
to another person. You know, Ithink, really, you're probably one
of these people now, which might bea courage giver to other people or
other poets through your poems, butI wonder who, who your courage

(30:25):
givers or permission givers havehave been poetically.

Victoria Kennefick (30:30):
I would love the idea of being a permission
giver. That sounds amazing. I'vehad so many, and I'm always
searching for more, and it's justinteresting the idea of permission,
because we have it already, yeah,certainly, I think very early on,
Yeats, I think, gave me permissionto be passionate and maybe a little

(30:53):
bit nerdy and embarrassing in mypassions. Kavanagh gave me
permission to be grumpy andcantankerous and made it okay to
for me to maybe see that I mightnecessarily feel like I fit in, but
I don't know, does anyone? Andthen, of course, I think for the

(31:14):
dramatic two very differentwriters: Sylvia Plath, obviously,
who felt like coming home when Iread her, and Flannery O'Connor, I
think both of them for the drama,the drama and the religion and the
the I think particularly with Plathtaboos that I would have thought

(31:36):
were in place for me, around thingsI could or could not write about.
And I think with Flannery O'Connor,the sense of her being, you know,
problematically in manydifferent ways now looking at her
from this perspective. And indeed,then you know a southern woman, you
know, conservative background,Catholic and writing these

(31:57):
incredibly violent stories. Ithink, too Sally Rooney. I'm just
really interested in how she writesabout relationships and about the
heart and about interdependence.And in a sense, watching reading
normal People, and certainlywatching the show at a very
particular time in lockdown and inthe kind of beginning of this

(32:20):
disintegration of things athome. That sense of wanting
interdependence, actually cravingit, and realizing it's something
that rather than keeping your heartin the freezer, it's far better
served, and you are in your life byallowing it to be passed around.
Maybe not willy nilly, per se, butcertainly taking a risk and

(32:44):
allowing yourself to be shock,horror, loved,

Seán Hewitt (32:49):
Yeah, yeah.

Victoria Kennefick (32:51):
for who you truly are, the whole messy, gooey
lot.

Seán Hewitt (32:55):
Yeah, and it's often not as scary to other people as we
imagine it might be.

Victoria Kennefick (33:00):
I hope not. I hope not.

Seán Hewitt (33:02):
I'm just nearing the end of Intermezzo now, and I'm
really enjoying it. So big thumbsup for Sally Rooney, okay, so before
we leave, I'd just like to ask you,what's next? If you can tell us,
are you working on anything? Areyou having a break? You know what's

(33:22):
what's going on? Everything isokay.

Victoria Kennefick (33:24):
I don't do breaks. Seán, I really mean to and
yeah, I yeah, I'm working on maybedoing more breaks. And I'm working
on essays at the moment, and I'vehad a few published, one in The
Stinging Fly. Olivia Fitzsimonscommissioned me to write about

(33:47):
being a writer with ADHD, and thatwas an extremely interesting thing
to do. And there are a few things Isuppose, that I'm really interested
in exploring in essay form thatdon't seem to be packaged in poem,
in poem in my head, they're justnot poems. I've been working on
on some of those. Dabbling a littlebit with maybe longer fiction,

(34:12):
which I find really daunting, andit's like starting again and
procrastination, which is part ofthe ADHD rainbow of symptoms, and
I'm sure everyone has, to somedegree, experienced it. It's quite
profound. And I'm really interestedin observing that in myself and

(34:35):
maybe using that, maybe later, toexplore that kind of experience in
poetry.

Seán Hewitt (34:42):
yeah. So essays, maybe a novel and more poems,

Victoria Kennefick (34:46):
So three or five books together.

Seán Hewitt (34:51):
Well, thank you so much for taking time out of a very
busy life to talk to us. VictoriaKennefick, thank you very much.

Victoria Kennefick (35:00):
Thank you, Sean, it's been wonderful.

Seán Hewitt (35:08):
Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host. Sean Hewitt,
Victoria's poem "The Ego is Crushedlike a Snail Shell Under a Stiletto
and is Begrudgingly Divested of itsOwn Smugness" is from her
collection egg/shell, published in2024 and aired with permission from
Carcanet. "Heart's Limbo by CarolynKizer" comes from Cool, Calm and

(35:30):
Collected Poems 1960 to 2000published in 2002 it was used with
permission from Copper Canyon Press
Coming up next week, poet MícheállMcCann on the challenges of writing
about queer domesticity, MarkDoty's impact and the power of a
firefly in the right hands.

(35:50):
Make sure to subscribe to TheGlimpse wherever you get your
podcasts. You can also findepisodes on our website.
brinkerhoffpoetry.org/podcast. We'dalso love to hear from you. Drop us
an email at The Glimpse [e-mail] .
The Glimpse is a production of theAdrian Brinkerhoff Poetry
Foundation. I'm your host SeánHewitt, our senior producer is

(36:14):
Jennifer Wolfe. Kat Yore is ourtechnical director and mixing
engineer. Editorial director AmandaGlassman is our curator and
production coordinator. Amy Holmesis the foundation's Executive
Director, and our co founders areCathy and Peter Halstead. Thanks
for listening.