PITYMILK is so excited about Chelsea Tadeyeske‘s new book ISLAND WEATHER. The poems were written in the spring of 2022 during a residency in Iceland at the same time as another Tadeyeske collaboration, WHAT IF LOVING YOU WASN’T ABOUT ME, with Detroit based writer and artist Edie Roberts. Both books are absolutely worth your time, we took a minute to learn about where they come from and about the modest cool and beauty of Milwaukee and Chelsea’s relationship to possession (like by a demon), etc.
PITYMILK: Where are these poems from? Where are they going? Where do they root? Where do they fly?
CHELSEA TADEYESKE: As far as where they came from, like internally? Ritualistic investigations of memory and how it roots in the body/experience of loneliness and the self. As far as where they were written? Iceland! On a tiny island a short and scenic ferry ride from the mainland to the north, called Hrísey. It’s the shape of a tear drop, and that seems right. Where they are going? Hopefully someplace where it absorbs in the pores of your memories too, your feelings of loneliness/yearning/recalling, and becomes itself a new memory. I think that is where they both root and fly—-that is actually a nice way to put what I attempt to achieve in a poem—this sense of rooting or connection, but also a fleeting flutter of a feeling. If it didn’t fly away in the end, there would be no reason to continue writing poems. If you didn’t connect, you would cease to care.
PM: What is the importance of being Iceland? What brought you there? Tell us about your experience there at the residency and otherwise. What keeps bringing you back?
CT: I’ve had a dear friend ask me this in another context. Like, Why are you so obsessed with Iceland? I think the answer is complex and also ever-churning the more time I spend there. First, it’s a gorgeous and also seemingly impenetrable place. But it’s also generous if you’re well intentioned—it’s covered in moss, it’s boiling underneath, it’s full of ice chunks shaped like hearts, it’s completely and utterly alien but also very much a part of our earth. I am endlessly fascinated by its contradictions.
In high school, I was a huge fan of Sigur Rós and Múm, and some films that came from there or were set there, and I think the fascination stoked until early adulthood when I was finally able to go. Landing there in the early morning hours and breathing the air tinged with a volcanic/sulfuric scent, seeing everything through the grayish/blue/vibrant green filter, etc. I was enchanted. I’d say a good 30% of my dreams take place there or feature some fragmented storyline of me going there/trying to get there—I’ve learned to just let its pull charge through me without really needing to explain exactly why I’m so obsessed. lol. I just am. Forever will be. I’ll always be called back to it in dreams and in reality.
Landing the residency in Hrísey at Gamlí Skolí was a part of a very elaborate plan that took two years to manifest. I’d been to Iceland many times prior, but this time it was a more intentional goal. The experience was….honestly, one of the most defining and important of my life. Not to be all dramatic lol. It was tough, it was elating, it was affirming, it was lonely, it was full of surprising connections I still glow about. I fell in love with this very particular face of the mountains surrounding us, watching them turn darker as their snow melted, the calls of the birds both beautiful and alarming, the feathers, the bones, the handfuls of locals that embraced (in their way) our anxious American-ness, etc.
PM: How do these poems differ from or situate themselves next to your previous work? Are you following new leads? Turning over new stones? What are you finding under there?
CT: It was strange, these poems were very strictly written day after day in a succession of 26 days. I’d never done that before. It was surprising to feel how easily they came out when I learned how to focus my attention in a way that allowed these feelings and thoughts to drip through like wax. It just kept burning until the candle was gone. Usually, my process is very fragmented, like, I have an idea of a movement or thought I want to express in a poem and would slap that together with this other thought or line I’d written down and do that a few times and hammer it all together until it made some sort of poetic sense.
Stepping back a bit now, and looking over poems I’d written since the residency and this project, it’s funny how your environment informs not only the themes and content but also the process. Capitalism makes you live a very fragmented life as a creative—you aren’t always able to engage with these parts of yourself and your brain, but given the time and opportunity to do nothing but be a creative—something exciting will catch fire like its all part of the plan and it is not your right to question why. If anything, this experience makes me want to manifest more opportunities like this, to see what else happens.
PM: To who do you currently owe some artistic gratitude? Who is turning your cranks lately? Who is spinning your dials?
Forever and always a fangirl for Cathy Wagner. I think her talent is a part of a realm all its own. Admittedly, I have to return to her poems over and over in order to understand what they mean. When I do, I feel most accomplished and surprised and horrified and forever changed. Knowing her personally is something I have to pinch myself for. I reread the same authors and books A LOT (I’ve been told folks with severe anxiety will do this because they are comforted by familiarity). It’s hard to know what parts of my artistic sensibility comes from, it’s all a whirpool. Here is a list that is very much incomplete but spans past, present, and future, famous and less so, prose, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, music:
Miranda July, Elisa Gabbert, EMA, James Baldwin, John Ashbery, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Flannery O’Connor, Robin LaMer Rahija, Edie Roberts, Toni Morrison, Sufjan Stevens, Elyse Johnson, Lydia Davis, Claudia Rankine, Bright Eyes, Bethany Price, Lorrine Niedecker, Lucia Berlin, Tove Ditlevsen, Maggie Nelson, KP Kaszubowski, Jenny Hval, Chris Kraus, Sigur Ros, Sarah Yanni, Frankie BB, Jennifer Tamayo, Jessie Knoles, Annie Grizzle, Richard Brautigan, omg this is so messy and incomplete but what is coming to mind now. I’m a sucker for emo, for an ineffable combination of opposing feeling, being challenged and uncomfortable but among a beautiful prairie full of poetic sentiments, etc.
PM: Anna Tesarova Was at the residency from the Czech Republic during the same month as you were? Tell us about connecting and collaborating with them. Do you think you’ll potentially keep working together or was this merger project specific? How do you think their work speaks to your own? Are you surprised with their interpretations?
CT: Ohhh Anna was one of the reasons that made this residency so special. We (Edie and I) come from circles that are very much invested in connecting, experiencing, doing, etc. and Anna was very much that way as well. Always down to share a meal, a conversation, a hike, a memory—-and I have had so, so many with her that I will cherish. Her art was also very inspiring. Being a multidisciplinary artist, it was very motivating to see her work across formats (illustration, performance and ritual, photography, video, etc.) I would most certainly work with her again in the future and even have plans to meet in Europe hopefully this year or next. She’s also a fiery and tenacious Aries, and I think anyone could use that energy in their creative lives/collaborations.
When she sent me her illustrations for the book, I sobbed. It was such an honest and genuine response to the poems and the environment that we both were alive in for a very special moment together. It felt right and like the only way I would feel confident about an illustrator. It had to be Anna. She was there. She was making, doing, changing there too. I am so thankful she obliged.
PM: Your live performances are striking and captivating, often engaging your whole body and with a command of pace and punctuation. How do these ideas come to light? What is your relationship to performance? How important is it in your craft?
CT: A very famous poet that I will not name who shared a bill with me recently was like “When you whisper into the mic for a line, or move your body this way, smirk, etc. is it demarcated on the page?” First, I was honored they said anything to me at all, but also that they noticed and were curious?!?! The answer to their questions are usually, no. I don’t know if I could ever be that coordinated because performance is always changing, like a body. Performance is such a free radical space where I can at first be entirely out of control, then learn to take ultimate control through practice. As a Virgo, I’m obsessed. It both challenges and sharpens me as an artist.
Another pal told me I look “possessed” when I read poems and that also made me chuckle. Performance is where I go to kill parts of myself off and also stoke a fiery energy that is not inherent to me (my chart is full of air, earth, and some water). I’d say, it is just as important as the writing itself. One would not exist without the other, although their relation to each other is not entirely linear either. It changes and takes many different attempts to find what feels right or good or affecting. I think of the first reading I ever gave often (Foxglove gallery (RIP) in Riverwest, Milwaukee) and I shudder/laugh. I remember being so nervous and almost blacking out and introducing each new poem with “And this one is called…” lol—crazy what 10+ years of practice can do to your relation to a thing. As long as I write, performance will be a part of my way of processing the poem. When I write, I hear a voice that directs very subtly the next line or movement—it needs to contain in it a space for that type of real-time exploration. Maybe there is a weird persona at work, although I can’t unstitch where that person starts and my other person begins/ends? At least not yet. Do I have to?
PM: How are things back home in Milwaukee? What are you excited about? Where do you see the energy going in the near future? What do you wish you saw a little more of?
CT: Oh, Milwaukee! One of the loves of my life. It feels great and also like it’s coming back online in many ways post-pandemic. When I travel and folks ask me about it/the art scene, I tend to explain how collaborative and multi-disciplinary its foundations are. We are always down to cross-contaminate bills/projects with various mediums and musicians will support poets in their shows/pursuits and vice versa. Folks here are modest, non-pretentious, and adventurous in that way like will try something they may not be 100% great at but will for the vibes and the adventure. It feels great, I’m very excited and hopeful for what continues to build. Can’t wait to keep bragging about it.
More of?! Well, perhaps more poets and projects that are touring?? Particularly like from Chicago and Madison, etc. Places that are close and far! More collaboration between places! But again this is starting to churn as things are generally back to safety and we can move around more easily. (This is also a call to any poets that want to read in my apartment, The Bell Tower—vibes are high, the house is cute, and I have a spare room WITH A MATTRESS!). We can walk around the lake together before or after, too.
PM: Anything else you want to let us know about? Any projects or performances of note? Where can people find more of you?
CT: I want to shift my focus to returning to old work and either self-publishing more collections and/or trying to land those pieces digital homes in journals. Finish what I start, you know? I also feel like shifting into a more prose-y space and working on an older project, Dear Charlie. It’d be so rad to land another residency to explore this epistolary nonfiction essay that needs intentional time to develop. Other than that, keep an eye on my socials IG: pity_milk and pitymilk_press—always churning stuff on there, posting about things going on, and building those up as a bulletin board of sorts. As of now I have a very free/perhaps soon-to-be-updated artist website chelseatadeyeske.wordpress.com. Connect with me, I dare you!
GET A COPY OF ISLAND WEATHER! for your own little poetry/land of fire and ice shrine!
