Undisciplining the Fields — Divya Victor with Tonya M. Foster: December 9, 2023

Divya Victor reads from her book Curb, interspersing the poems with commentary. She begins with "Hedges," then describes how the book was partially informed by writing into questions of otherness and citizenship. She follows this with "Lawn Temperate" and "Lawn Arid" which both address public space, "one of Curb's main themes" according to Victor. Next she reads "Blood/Soil," the title of which comes from the Nazi slogan. She finishes her reading with "Petitions (for an Alien Relative)," a poem that takes language from a bureaucratic form used to plead for a family member's visa. 

Tonya Foster thanks Divya Victor following her reading, asking about her practice at writing Curb. Victor points to beginnings of the work arising from the 2001 fall of the Twin Towers, the Patriot Act, and the 2016 rise of Donald Trump, a span of time in which Arab and South Asian "bodies were completed distorted in how we were perceived" and "became the face of terrorism." Through the act of composition, she says, "I can step down some of that weight" and arrive at a coming "to understand where we live." 

Foster cites Saidiya Hartman being asked "How did you come back" out of the research. Victor tells of the Tamil practice of choral music embodying grief, returning to "the sound of trouble in the voice" — opposing this to Protestant whiteness which "hides grief behind multiple veils." 

Foster asks of the distinction between one's work and one's job, and Victor speaks to that distinction and the need for the work to be "moving against the grain of the job...."

"Creative Writing" as a term, she says, is like "chai tea" — redundant and reductive. She speaks of new reactionary curbs on speech in the space of academia, and the limits of institutional spaces. "We're always writing under surveillance" says Victor, pointing to "undisciplining" within the series title. She tells a family story of smuggling as modeling the encoding of public and private speech that writing can carry. 

Foster cites Joy James: "How do we show solidarity [with] people who have been deemed disposable?" Victor says her attempt is to call for recognition of "kithship" (rather than kinship) so that "we find strategic commonalities" with others. 

Turning to the audience for questions, Victor tells of being deeply influenced at age eleven by the film The Exorcist, and the possibility of channeling and embodying multiple voices, against "the limits of the monovocal lyric" that leads to "poem as weak propaganda." Rather, "as many voices [as] there are in me, there are that many ears in you...ready to be opened."

The hope is "that several relations between us can form now, in convergence and in conflict...."

Foster speaks to the generative "breakdown of the grammar...that is meant to regulate." Victor cites common Americanisms that South Asians find disturbing. Foster cites Amiri Baraka on radical changes of meaning that come from "moving the tongue slightly" and Victor says how much "survival depends on the tongue" — "to allow me to enter, to pass, to arrive, and depart." 

In response to the audience, they speak to opening public spaces through enunciation and listening. 

Victor tells of the artists' book version of Curb (among other iterations) and wanting "to make a book that is really conspicuous." She cites the "collaborative thinking" of that project as, also, "where most my work happens."

Audio cuts out briefly at Victor's response to Ariel Resnikoff from the audience. She speaks to a crucial maintaining of distance and avoiding identification with those others "with whom we are kith" in order to bring "good witness work."