A Conversation With Anthropologist/Poet Adrie Kusserow

Editor's Note: For this week's paper, freelance writer Keenan Walsh interviewed St. Michael's College anthropology professor Adrie Kusserow in conjunction with his review of her new book of poems, titled Refuge.

The review appears in "State of the Arts," but space did not permit including this Q&A, in which Kusserow talks about "ethnographic poetry," her humanitarian work in South Sudan and why she wants mosquito nets for her birthday.

SEVEN DAYS: How does poetry fit into your work as an anthropologist?

ADRIE KUSSEROW: Poetry is at the very core of my work as an anthropologist and humanitarian. Anthropologists are supposed to be good at what Clifford Geertz called “thick description.” We don’t just sit in libraries and surf the internet for data; we live and participate in the very muddy, messy lives of those we want to understand. Hence, our writing should reflect that depth of involvement and insight, ethically and epistemologically. Many of my poems have intentionally viscous titles (“Mud,” “Milk,” “Yolk”) because I refuse the spurious distancing from the world portrayed and assumed by so much academic writing, where subjects are often frozen in time, sporting one coherent and unified culture through pretty rituals and writing that doesn’t attempt to unhinge the reader.

I fell in love with writing poetry because it helped me investigate and honor a whole landscape of deep emotion, unspoken inequalities and conceptual complexity that I wasn’t seeing or feeling in conventional academic writing. Far from documenting a neat life, a poem, in its very nomadic vagrancy and line length, rhythm and unsettling metaphor, can depict the borderlands, the liminal places of confusion of a refugee, their internal tug of war. 

SD: How does ethnographic poetry fit into the “poetic tradition,” for lack of a better word?

AK: Recently I was part of an anthology … [The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders, ed. Jared Hawkley, Susan Rich and Brian Turner, published jointly by the Poetry Foundation and McSweeney’s Publishing, 2013], and like one of the editors, I believe (as Brian Turner says), “This is a time in which a deep, sustained and global interaction is necessary to reinvigorate the poetic landscape at home.” Many poets go from one MFA to another, without much sustained and meaningful interaction with the world beyond our borders. Travel and the experience of being on someone else’s ground can unsettle, unhinge, crack the writer open in astounding ways.

Dog Mountain Reports That Gwendolyn Huneck, Widow of Artist Stephen Huneck, Has Died

UPDATED BELOW

Sad news from St. Johnsbury — Dog Mountain is reporting via its email newsletter and Facebook page that Gwendolyn Ide Huneck, 61, has died. Huneck is the widow of famed Vermont artist Stephen Huneck, who took his own life in January 2010.

The Facebook post and message at Dog Mountain — where the Hunecks lived, Stephen made his carved-wood sculptures and other artworks, and the couple built the quirky and beloved Dog Chapel — are minimal. Whoever wrote it indicated that they would not be answering emails regularly. Fans and friends are invited to post condolences on the Facebook memorial page.

"Dog Mountain has suffered a great loss," the page reads. The writer adds that Gwen was just a week shy of her birthday, and that she had never really been able to recover from Stephen's death. Since his suicide, she had carried on with his artistic legacy, managing the business of Dog Mountain and the ongoing sales of her husband's unique artwork — and dog-centric books, including Sally Goes to the Beach and Sally Discovers Dog Mountain.

We'll share more information as we have it.

UPDATE:

The Caledonian Record in St. Johnsbury has just confirmed Gwen Huneck's death in a slightly more detailed article here.

Seven Days' Eva Sollberger made this video of Stephen before his death.

Barre Cultural Alliance Pools Its Many Resources, Presents Story-Based Celebration

What do socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, anarchist Emma Goldman, dance troupe Pilobolus and South African singers Ladysmith Black Mambazo have in common? Go ahead, think on that.

Give up? The answer is this: All have appeared on the stage of the Barre Opera House. Granted, the first two and last two were decades apart, but that just illustrates the long cultural history that Vermont's Granite City has had. And that's not even to speak of the colorful, artistically and politically rich past fostered by the granite industry itself.

But we will speak of that, because the Old Labor Hall — once the site of immigrant stoneworkers' intense socialist gatherings — last year joined the Barre Opera House and two other local institutions as charter members of the Barre Cultural Alliance.

Remembering Poet T. Alan Broughton, 1936-2013

Vermont writer and teacher T. Alan Broughton passed away in the early hours of Friday, May 17, at Vermont Respite House. He will be remembered by generations of University of Vermont students — Broughton began teaching English there in 1966 — and by readers of his novels (four), short stories (two collections) and powerful poems (nine collections).

The last of those poetry collections was A World Remembered (2010). It's a searingly eloquent work that deals from many angles with the prospect and fear of death. "The terror of obliteration threads its way through this work devoted to preserving something from that fate," I wrote in my review. "Though the author declares himself a nonbeliever in any afterlife, his words often take on the tone and force of prayer..."

In 2003, Peter Kurth reviewed Broughton's short-story collection Suicidal Tendencies for Seven Days. He quotes Broughton as saying that "every time he sits down to write he still feels 'baffled and anxious. ...I only wonder how I got away with it.'" But he assuredly does "get away with it," Kurth continues.

Harry Bliss Infiltrates the 'I Can Read' Set

No grass growing on Harry Bliss. The Burlington-based cartoonist and illustrator has a brand-new, teacher-approved kids' book, Diary of a Worm.

Says Bliss on his Facebook page:

"All my life I wanted to have an 'I Can Read' book...and now I do. It's ironic, because I suck at reading..."

Written by Doreen Cronin, Bliss' partner on other children's books, Worm has a companion — or is it a sequel? — Diary of a Spider.

For someone who claims to just look at the pictures, Bliss does all right with writing, too. He's penned the children's books Bailey, about a charming and surprisingly talented dog, and Luke on the Loose, as well as the adult cartoon collection, Death by Laughter.

And then there are Bliss' very grown-up cartoons, which appear weekly in Seven Days and occasionally in the New Yorker. The magazine has also published more than 15 Bliss cover illustrations.

Can't get enough Bliss? Check the website for his cartoon of the day.