this conversation is organized by NOVEMBER and presented alongside excerpts from BEE REAVED, published in 2021 by SEMIOTEXT(E), and moving-image works from CECILIA DOUGHERTY and ANNE WALSH.
LAUREN O’NEILL-BUTLER: how does it feel to be having the letters of mina harker republished in 2021, and how did that come to be? obviously, a lot has changed since 1998 but the book still feels so fresh.
DODIE BELLAMY: can i bitch about something? i’ve been really wanting to.
LO-B: yes please!
DB: it was never out of print because university of wisconsin press sat on it for 14 years. the first edition was published in 1998 by hard press, after it got rejected everywhere. part of the problem when i was trying to get it published was that it was a moment when some publishers were sending back books that they had already accepted. it was a rough time in publishing, but also because of the sex in the book, so many publishers were just like, “no way.”
anyway, hard press was a great poetry press that was run by michael gizzi. he took it instantly and that was a very sweet experience. being that it was a small poetry press, it went under after a couple of years. in 2004, eileen myles and joan larkin lobbied for university of wisconsin press to republish it. eventually they took it on but with the agreement that they didn’t have to spend money to re-typeset it. so, they used the same galleys as hard press with the same typos. life lesson: don’t publish a book with a press that’s not invested in it. a dozen years later, since the book was languishing in obscurity, i contacted them about getting the rights back. and they said they were continuing to make the book available via print on demand and therefore the book was still in print, and i couldn’t have the rights back...!
a couple of years after that semiotext(e) got involved and chris kraus ended up getting a pro-bono lawyer to help, and the press still wouldn’t give the rights back. so many authors have this problem: suddenly, print on demand is considered in print and their publishers won’t give their books back. somebody needs to make a rule about this! in the end, we had to pay that press more money than i have ever received from their sales to get the rights back. i just wanted people to know this book exists. i mean, “fans” of my writing did not know about that book.
LO-B: so, it was worth it.
DB: i feel that the mission has been accomplished. you know, i’m obviously not looking to be a bestseller, but i do want that book to be circulating. the curious thing is to see how the book is going to fly now. last night i gave a reading at poetic research bureau in los angeles—live, which was great. i was in conversation with michelle tea. she had an incredible argument for the book: she loves its polyamory. that’s not a term i would ever use for it because the times were so different when it was written, but i can see how it works now.
LO-B: speaking of that, mina harker begins on the day mina/dodie and kk (kevin killian) are married, right? the three of them basically get married. and bee reaved sees that relationship through to its closure when kevin passes away. there’s something so beautiful about having both books released together. i wondered if that connection was in the mix with the timing of both books coming out this fall?
DB: you know, that was an accidental gift. the new collection was not supposed to be about kevin’s death. it was commissioned as something else, with a different title. but that’s what happened. the two books together are kind of like the autobiography of a marriage. i didn’t want to push too much in making those overt connections, but i did make some editorial decisions that way, as i was putting together bee reaved. i’m very happy that they’re there together, for sure.
kevin and cedar, cecilia doughtery (2002)
LO-B: i wanted to ask about nick cave as a kind of organizing principle for bee reaved. i loved its epigraph: we are here and you are where you are.
DB: that’s a line from ghosteen.
katy bohinc and nick cave at lincoln center, filmed by hugo perez (2019)
LO-B: and then you have two sections of the book: here and where.
DB: yeah. and you know, normally it would be here and there. but i thought with where it becomes a bit more loaded. but it’s also so simple. it just gave it enough structure to contain what felt like two books. because, you know, bee reaved is about kevin. so, i wanted to include our joint dialogues, for example on the ugo rondinone show and our piece on mike kelley, and the final discussion that he and i did together. i felt like i needed to show people what was being lost. to have them experience kevin a little bit. otherwise, i don’t think i would have added those things in.
LO-B: i was thinking also about the epigraph to when the sick rule the world, which comes from mike kelley.
DB: yes, that was from a video interview on youtube: “what i dislike about a lot of contemporary artists is they want to be hipsters. they’re not willing to be fools.” that was important for that book because i wanted to have tonal consistency. and so that was the principle. like, i would look at that mike kelley quote, and i ask, “does this piece fit?” one of the powers of kevin’s poetry was that he was willing to be a fool. and, obviously, in my writing, i’m making a fool out of myself repeatedly. i think that that creates an opening for people, right?
LO-B: yes. for me, you evolve the idea of embarrassment to make it something much more rich and fruitful, and not shameful or something to be afraid of.
DB: i have this piece called “lady jane” that’s in an out-of-print book and originally i was going to put it in the bee reaved collection, but then i decided, no, i was only going to include things that were written since sick rule the world, that i wasn’t going to put old stuff in . . . anyway that one is all about embarrassment.
LO-B: when did you write it?
DB: oh god . . . what era was it? it was right after eileen myles got her job teaching at uc san diego. so, a long time ago. it’s about applying for an academic job and just, you know, the horror of knowing people on the search committee and being told all the horrible things that they’re saying about you. included is a list of humiliations that go through my whole life. wayne koestenbaum liked that one, and later wrote his book humiliation. glad i inspired someone.
LO-B: ah yes, and there’s his brilliant quote: “dodie bellamy is a national treasure. i’ll go further. dodie bellamy is an international treasure.” so, in the spirit of humiliation—i want to ask you about frozen and “let it go.” one of my favorite pieces in bee reaved is your essay on anne walsh’s 2015–17 video anthem. can you talk about writing that one, and about the piece for those who are unfamiliar with it?
DB: that essay is from the book hello leonora, soy anne walsh, which is basically about anne’s project on leonora carrington and carrington’s novel the hearing trumpet. for the project she took singing lessons—broadway musical type singing—with all these post-menopausal women in berkeley. anthem shows the women singing “let it go,” and it’s so great. i have to say, i don’t watch very many disney films or animations, but i had already seen frozen, when she had asked me to write about anthem. i mean, that “let it go” song is ridiculous—it is a very weird song for children.
the essay is also about aging. when i turned 30, i thought my life was over—i felt so old, like i couldn’t be a child anymore. of course, that was a lie—i continued being a child well past 30. it’s hard to find a way into writing about aging. so, i latched onto this goofy song and this goofy movie, as a way to explore things about myself that were very tender and embarrassing to talk about. but i also thought, “this is going to drive out my younger audiences. the old crone speaks!”
anthem, anne walsh (2015-2017)
LO-B: let them go! [laughs.] but it’s inspiring how you add levity in some pretty heavy material. there’s a lot of humor in bee reaved about kevin’s death.
DB: but you could see that before it became about kevin’s death—i was already dealing with themes of mortality and aging. i always had the thought in the back of my mind that i was going to do another essay collection, so almost everything i wrote since my last collection, i would shape toward a sort of thematic cohesiveness, with the hope i could at some point plop them all together into a ms word doc and they’d make sense.
LO-B: another theme in the book is youtube—you write about a mary beth edelson interview and there’s an essay on jeffree star; i could go on. the book reminds me of how reality tv is the most ubiquitous form of media these days.
DB: when i was really in the deep grieving state, my view of the world was very strange, in terms of what i found interesting and what i didn’t. i would be moved by things like a child would be moved by them. and then covid hit, and everybody was watching images all the time, because what else was there to do? so, yes, tv became a very important part of the book. i mean, watching all 17 seasons of grey’s anatomy, even after it started sucking.
DB: but you could see that before it became about kevin’s death—i was already dealing with themes of mortality and aging. i always had the thought in the back of my mind that i was going to do another essay collection, so almost everything i wrote since my last collection, i would shape toward a sort of thematic cohesiveness, with the hope i could at some point plop them all together into a ms word doc and they’d make sense.
LO-B: another theme in the book is youtube—you write about a mary beth edelson interview and there’s an essay on jeffree star; i could go on. the book reminds me of how reality tv is the most ubiquitous form of media these days.
DB: when i was really in the deep grieving state, my view of the world was very strange, in terms of what i found interesting and what i didn’t. i would be moved by things like a child would be moved by them. and then covid hit, and everybody was watching images all the time, because what else was there to do? so, yes, tv became a very important part of the book. i mean, watching all 17 seasons of grey’s anatomy, even after it started sucking.
rip diamond.. losing our best freind, jeffree star (2019)
LO-B: last question: what are you working on now?
DB: jennifer krasinski is open to re-establishing the arrangement i had with you of writing on a somewhat regular basis for the artforum blog, which is something i’m very invested in. i love how permissive the blog is in terms of style and the use of personal material. i enjoy the challenge of crafting these brief, personal engagements with whatever. it deepens my relationship with the world.
i have a novel from the late 1990s that i abandoned, which i want to complete. there’s a lot of wonderful writing there, but overall, it’s a mess, so it’s a big project to take on. it contains tons of sex and body stuff—and of course abjection. we couldn’t live without our abjection in the ’90s. i guess at this point it will be a historical novel. it’s a very ambitious book, and when i conceived it, i simply did not have the skills to complete it. but now i do. i’m taking steps to structure my life towards a daily writing practice rather than the binge writing i’ve been doing the past several years.
LO-B: okay, i lied, that was not the last question. do you think abjection is coming back? my feeling is that it is, big time. i should also mention november’s first volume was on the return of the informe. is it time to read julia kristeva again?
DB: i have to admit, i had to google informe, and i see it’s a word from bataille. it’s weird i wasn’t familiar with it, as bruce boone, an important mentor, is a translator of bataille. oops. so, i see it means formless—a concept that has been important to my writing since the early 80s, when i discovered the new narrative scene here in san francisco. one article i just read included a list called “forms of formlessness,” and here are the words they listed: dangle, tangle, jumble, litter, mound, heap, junk, foam, fluff, mud, dirt, fat, trash, goo/ooze/putty, mess. it’s funny, but this could be a description of my writing, my love of dejecta and the word ooze. one of my favorite lines from the letters of mina harker is “the monstrous and the formless have as much right as anybody else.”
a related concept from bataille that i return to repeatedly—because of kathy acker writing about it so compellingly—is the headless man, where the linearity of the rational mind is supplanted by labyrinthine twists of the intestines, a sort of gut logic. in her essay “critical languages,” acker offers a great quote by bataille: “in the face of the weighty animality of death, life appears avid with joy imperative.” i’m assuming he’s talking about an opening to the sublime, but one that’s nastier than that of the romantic poets. i should add that i always approached bataille with tons of ambivalence. it’s hard to reconcile him with a feminist perspective. i’m all about writing from a feminist/queer agenda, exploring what it feels to live in a female-gendered or othered body.
cca actually lets me teach a grad fine arts class called “sex and death,” and the first time i taught it, i assigned an excerpt from kristeva’s powers of horror. and even though her theories on abjection were insanely important to my development as a writer (and continue to be important), last spring when i returned to her book, i had no patience for its abstract circuitousness. should we read kristeva again? maybe somebody needs to do a dumbed down version for our internet-rattled brains. i’m not one to make big pronouncements about cultural trends. my attention tends to focus on the micro, on what’s right in front of my face—be it a memory or on a screen or some fragile blip of the “real”—and i let associations spiral out from there. lately, when i’ve been in situations where a candid conversation is possible—and it’s always one-on-one, never in a group—there is a perception that the us is rushing towards totalitarianism, and expressions of hopelessness follow. and fear. and despair. i assume such conversations are happening elsewhere as well. is abjection coming back? i imagine that hopelessness and its et ceteras would operate as a sort of petri dish for abjection. so, yeah.
DB: jennifer krasinski is open to re-establishing the arrangement i had with you of writing on a somewhat regular basis for the artforum blog, which is something i’m very invested in. i love how permissive the blog is in terms of style and the use of personal material. i enjoy the challenge of crafting these brief, personal engagements with whatever. it deepens my relationship with the world.
i have a novel from the late 1990s that i abandoned, which i want to complete. there’s a lot of wonderful writing there, but overall, it’s a mess, so it’s a big project to take on. it contains tons of sex and body stuff—and of course abjection. we couldn’t live without our abjection in the ’90s. i guess at this point it will be a historical novel. it’s a very ambitious book, and when i conceived it, i simply did not have the skills to complete it. but now i do. i’m taking steps to structure my life towards a daily writing practice rather than the binge writing i’ve been doing the past several years.
LO-B: okay, i lied, that was not the last question. do you think abjection is coming back? my feeling is that it is, big time. i should also mention november’s first volume was on the return of the informe. is it time to read julia kristeva again?
DB: i have to admit, i had to google informe, and i see it’s a word from bataille. it’s weird i wasn’t familiar with it, as bruce boone, an important mentor, is a translator of bataille. oops. so, i see it means formless—a concept that has been important to my writing since the early 80s, when i discovered the new narrative scene here in san francisco. one article i just read included a list called “forms of formlessness,” and here are the words they listed: dangle, tangle, jumble, litter, mound, heap, junk, foam, fluff, mud, dirt, fat, trash, goo/ooze/putty, mess. it’s funny, but this could be a description of my writing, my love of dejecta and the word ooze. one of my favorite lines from the letters of mina harker is “the monstrous and the formless have as much right as anybody else.”
a related concept from bataille that i return to repeatedly—because of kathy acker writing about it so compellingly—is the headless man, where the linearity of the rational mind is supplanted by labyrinthine twists of the intestines, a sort of gut logic. in her essay “critical languages,” acker offers a great quote by bataille: “in the face of the weighty animality of death, life appears avid with joy imperative.” i’m assuming he’s talking about an opening to the sublime, but one that’s nastier than that of the romantic poets. i should add that i always approached bataille with tons of ambivalence. it’s hard to reconcile him with a feminist perspective. i’m all about writing from a feminist/queer agenda, exploring what it feels to live in a female-gendered or othered body.
cca actually lets me teach a grad fine arts class called “sex and death,” and the first time i taught it, i assigned an excerpt from kristeva’s powers of horror. and even though her theories on abjection were insanely important to my development as a writer (and continue to be important), last spring when i returned to her book, i had no patience for its abstract circuitousness. should we read kristeva again? maybe somebody needs to do a dumbed down version for our internet-rattled brains. i’m not one to make big pronouncements about cultural trends. my attention tends to focus on the micro, on what’s right in front of my face—be it a memory or on a screen or some fragile blip of the “real”—and i let associations spiral out from there. lately, when i’ve been in situations where a candid conversation is possible—and it’s always one-on-one, never in a group—there is a perception that the us is rushing towards totalitarianism, and expressions of hopelessness follow. and fear. and despair. i assume such conversations are happening elsewhere as well. is abjection coming back? i imagine that hopelessness and its et ceteras would operate as a sort of petri dish for abjection. so, yeah.
