Interview with Darius Atefat-Peckham on Book of Kin — October 9, 2024
Darius Atefat-Peckham is the author of Book of Kin, winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize (October, 2024) and editor of his mother’s, Susan Atefat-Peckham’s, posthumous collection Deep Are These Distances Between Us (CavanKerry Press, 2023). His work has recently appeared in Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, Rattle, The Journal, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, he was selected by the Library of Congress as National Student Poet. Atefat-Peckham grew up in Huntington, West Virginia, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at Harvard. He is currently a Poetry Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.
Daniel Lassell:Darius, thank you so much for speaking with me. I absolutely loved reading your award-winning debut collection, Book of Kin, available from Autumn House Press. It strikes me as a deeply authentic meditation on family and grief, a book that is filled with so many profound poems on love and love’s endurance. The death of your mother and older brother in a car accident in Jordan in 2004 are at the center of this book. It seems like such a monumental task to write about such a life-altering event and the experiences surrounding it in your life. As a matter of craft and construction, what considerations did you have when approaching this collection?
Darius Atefat-Peckham: First of all, thank you so much for your kind words about the book, and for your friendship over the years. The community surrounding these poems (so many brilliant writers, friends, and mentors who have been astoundingly supportive, generous, and kind over the years) are what made each of them possible. For that reason, I think I’ve chosen the perfect title, which is something that might sound vain if I said it in another context, but the book really is a Book of Kin, both in its content and in the people surrounding it, who hold me and my work with such loving hands. I’m loved and lucky, and grateful is what I’m saying, and perhaps that’s what I’ll be saying in different ways this whole interview.
Book of Kin is comprised of the poems I wrote during my undergraduate years at Harvard—the oldest poem, “Imagine the Lake. Cyrus is Alive,” dating back to fall of 2019 in Josh Bell’s poetry workshop my freshman year, to Jorie Graham’s magical (somehow both exhausting and rejuvenating) workshop through the isolation period of the pandemic, all the way through to Tracy K. Smith’s brilliant advising sessions, chatting with her each Wednesday in her Barker Center office near a window that sat us just above the treeline, the leaves changing as we talked about poetry and its uses in the world, attempting to shape together my first collection for my senior thesis. I count this time as my poetry coming of age, and, as such, I think the poems I produced have a quality of restlessness—poetry puberty? growing pains? Am I stretching the analogy too far?—both formally (the poems are constantly trying out new forms—the ghazal, the sonnet, the duplex, the prose poem, and other invented forms—and breaking their rules and conventions) but also in what they profess: full of contradiction, uncertainty, questioning, and silence.
Ultimately, I think this book is less a story sprung from tragic origins, one which obsessively circles back (though it does at times), and more an act of language-learning and construction, a testament to enduring love (as you rightly noted) and to love’s place in grief. My dad, a sufferer of chronic pain, used to tell me that “pain is a reminder we are still alive.” The book, then, is a conversation which includes both the desperation to become a “self,” or to become whole (to heal), and also to listen to our beloveds, to let their voices crack us open into a kind of abundance—to return to the source of grief, and as we get close to our ghosts, our hauntings, to make something of that communion that allows us to move forward. To not only survive, but to live, and to be wholly with others, to love others, to have presence. In constructing the book, I wanted that arc to be apparent, both sonically and in its content, from its first line, “The first sound was the ax blade / shucking away / my bones” to its last, “My father is setting his jaw. When I look, he cracks a smile.” Not every poem has to end with hope, but hopefully every story can. Or at least, that’s where I hope the book leaves the reader. With the joy of our shared and lived sorrows, as Ross Gay writes. Or, as Tracy wrote so generously on the back of my book, with an “ecstatic elegy”—the ecstatic, to me, being that which allows us to most beautifully and dutifully connect, a lovely splintering of the self that can allow for another’s light to seep in.
Lassell: That is such a beautiful and generous way of looking at personal and poetic growth, and the book-making process. Indeed, everything you’ve shared is apparent in this collection. There’s a sense of togetherness and between-ness that the book is wrestling with, which leads me to my next question. When I consider the role of poetry in your life, it appears to be one of ever-presence—you’ve been surrounded by poets from the very start. How has your view of Art and an artist’s life been shaped by this, and could you share what drew you to ultimately become a poet yourself?
Atefat-Peckham: Yes, absolutely! I love talking about this. Growing up, you can only hope that your parents become your biggest idols, and that certainly was the case for me. All three of my parents, Joel Peckham, Rachael Peckham (aka Rachie), and the late Susan Atefat-Peckham, were and are writers and professors of extraordinary talent (in my completely objective opinion)—as well as teachers, guides, and luminaries for so many. They continue to be my role models. When I explain that my dream since I was about ten or eleven years old was to be a poet and professor, most people are surprised, even other writers. But it’s certainly true and felt like the most natural thing in the world to me (after realizing that my precocity wouldn’t amount to Matilda-like powers, or that talking Polar Bears probably didn’t exist—though I’m still holding out hope on this one…maybe in another universe?). Anyways, as an only child (did I give that away already?) who never really felt like one—Cyrus’ presence in my life has always felt profound, if not tangible—books and the characters in them were my next-best companions, another form of travel, a way to connect to the world. As such, I read voraciously during my childhood, attended countless readings from writers I admired greatly, and dreamt of writing a book of my own one day.
Of course I felt some pressure to be a writer, and a good one, but that’s inescapable and was never the fault of anyone around me. I think, then, my task was to figure out what “good” meant in the context of the inescapable or inevitable, what it meant for me as an emerging writer. I’m still unsure, but I think the closest I’ve gotten to a definition of “great writing” is a writer who achieves great sincerity. One of the cool things about relationships with writers and artists (especially ones who approach in their work something of a genuine authenticity—isn’t that what we’re all striving for?) is that you’re constantly learning about them, even as they’re learning about themselves. If it’s a relationship like the one I have with my parents—and am lucky to have with so many friends who I consider family, kin—then their creative work is a persistent wellspring of revelation, and each new piece is an opportunity to learn more about them, to listen, to deepen that relationship of intimacy.
And maybe that’s how I approach my poetry as well: with the understanding that someone I love will be on the other side of it, and with the urgency of revealing something about myself that I want this beloved to know. To be known is a rare and powerful thing. For this reason, I think a lot of my poems emerge as love poems with a “you” that is various and expansive, a “you” I attempt to be generous toward and radically care for, the way I would one of my beloveds, the way I would someone who has trusted me enough to let me in, to truly know them, or a facet of them at least. So I guess the long and short of it is that I write in order to connect, and that’s always been the most important thing to me. To work towards being a kind and generous person (which is a practice) and to reach out in my work, to let and be let in, to hold and be held in a lyric space.
Lassell: I think there is a profound wisdom in your answer: that the practice of writing isn’t in pursuit of fame or fortune, but a seeking toward personal betterment, and through that seeking for personal betterment, you connect with others and make the lives of readers better in turn. “To be known is a rare and powerful thing”—wow, I love these words you’ve shared.
If we can, I’d like to briefly explore another one of your profound observations, which you mentioned in your first response: “love’s place in grief” and the role of hope in grief’s journey. Could you say more about this, and perhaps offer some advice to those who are navigating grief’s landscape?
Atefat-Peckham: This is a big question, and a good one, but I think I’ll need to give myself a bit of space to answer it. I’m a bit long-winded, if you haven’t noticed. Thank you for asking me this, and for letting me search for my answer.
One thing I think about a lot is how grief transforms and informs the way we love one another. And I do think we have some agency in how and in what ways it does. Of course there are difficult and obvious consequences of grief that are out of our control—night terrors, PTSD, fear of abandonment, depression—things I’ve dealt with in my life and seen my loved ones struggle with. But I’ve also seen firsthand how grief can teach us to love and can inform how we value and care for one another. I’m thinking about how gentle my father became after the accident, how cuddly and sweet, his arms always around me—can a well-timed hug save a life? I think it can, and I’ll explain why later—, how, as a little boy, I seemed to be a magnet for the nurturing tendencies of my loved ones—and isn’t this what makes someone a “loved” one, a beloved?—to the point my nickname, throughout my life, and in different iterations, from different beloveds, has always been, somehow: “Bear.” Through the nurture and care of my beloveds, and the emphasis of care in my upbringing (having literally been brought—lifted—up) I’ve learned to view grief as another form of love, in the same way I view elegy as just another kind of love poem. Not a lament, a song of loss and despair, but a testament to enduring love, an act of care and reconstitution of voice, an act of continuance.
My grief for my mother and brother is unique in that I don’t have memories of them. They died when I was just three years old, and so much of my relationship with them has become a perpetual act of seeking and reconstruction. For a long time, this feeling of irrecoverable “loss” was the main source of my sadness (a quick aside to offer that the same way Ross Gay distinguishes between the qualities of happiness and his all-encompassing delight, I’d like to make a distinction here between sadness and grief—grief being a practice similar to delight, and perhaps indistinguishable, certainly concurrent, that we must allow ourselves to feel and hold and carry with us, that we must learn to practice in ways that allow ourselves to love; grief then, in my opinion, is a kind of gateway to love)—as a young boy, who was just beginning to understand what it meant to love, who understood less still what it meant to love beyond death, I had resigned myself to that loss, to never knowing or being known by my mother and brother, and so for much of my childhood I avoided and neglected my grief. I can forgive myself now—I was so little, and just trying to navigate the grief of those around me who did harbor memories, which could be intense and oftentimes felt overwhelming—and learned fast in what ways I was wrong.
I think one thing I want my poems to achieve is the kind of multiplicity I saw emerging from the people around me just following the accident, and which I can look back on now as one of the most beautiful flowerings I’ve ever experienced. For example, the way my father became a sort of mother and brother to me. The introduction of my stepmom, Rachie, to our little family unit—who quickly became one of my fiercest protectors, most gentle and loving parent, and biggest supporter. How my grandmothers—all three of them—have become mothers and, even more crucially, friends. How my cousins, and a great many of my friends, became like siblings. In the poem “The Turkish Coffee Lady” I write, rather facetiously, “I have this issue: I’m too many sons to too many mothers.” By the end of that poem, I hope the reader understands that this is no issue at all, but rather an abundance I seek out, and one I delight in. I love the feeling of reciprocal care, even brief or small examples of it, even when it comes from a stranger who, through their own vision of radical empathy, feels like no stranger at all.
My dad sometimes will tell the story of how, a few weeks after the accident, he was lying in bed, unable to walk, confronted with the immense and seemingly impossible task of rebuilding his life. How he considered giving up. He says he was dangerously close to that decision, succumbing to that despair, when I hobbled in the room (I had a broken leg from the accident, myself, and a blue cast—my favorite color) for my nightly routine of standing at his bedside to watch him breathe. I used to do this. Go and watch him breathe, like watching waves break on the shore. It was calming to me. When I noticed he was awake, that he was looking back at me, I climbed into bed with him, wrapped my arms around him and told him I loved him—and this, he says, is what kept him breathing, and moving forward, what kept him alive. I don’t know if I remember this specific instance the way he does, but I remember so many times putting my ear to his chest, listening and feeling his breathing raise my head, and slowing down or speeding up my breath, matching the pace of my living to his. So I guess my advice would be to love hard through grief, and to practice this reciprocal nurturing often. To find small ways to celebrate that love and to find the people who will watch you breathe, who will celebrate your living, alongside you.
Lassell: Such poignant words of advice, Darius, and so beautifully said. I really like what you’ve shared about elegies as being testaments of enduring love, and the story of the hug you gave your dad that kept him going in a time of such immense grief. I also like that you mentioned your grandparents, which prompts my next question. One of my favorite poems in Book of Kin is “Dar Havāyat, In Your Air,” where at one point your Bibi says, “‘You are doing amazingly good!,’” and then the poem continues: “In her English, / the good I’ve done is / staggering.” I love the deeper perspective you offer about language in poems like this one, where language barriers—in whatever form they take—can become portals to new interpretations on life and meaning, rather than walls to keep people apart. It makes me consider some of the dream-like poems in your book and how ghosts and hauntings have a say. Your book is divided into three sections—could you share a little bit about the titular poem’s section?
Atefat-Peckham: Your use of the word “portal” makes me think this is the perfect opportunity to talk about the “porthole” poems a bit, poems which confound me still and that I really appreciate the chance to think about—isn’t that cool, and one of my favorite things about poetry, that some of the poems we write will stay a mystery, even to the writer themselves?
I’ve always been so delighted and oftentimes moved and even sometimes astounded by the poetics of a spoken fragment, of a sentence that dwells between two or more languages (sometimes, in a single sentence, my Bibi will switch between all three of her languages—Persian, English, and French—and then, if even that doesn’t get her meaning across to her listener, she’ll venture over to other languages she isn’t as practiced in, like Arabic, German, Italian, or Spanish—which is to say my Bibi is kind of brilliant and so incredibly fearless and treats language with the playfulness and curiosity of a true poet), a sentence that has the exciting and searching quality of a great translation, the poetics we stumble upon when we don’t quite know how to express or translate our feelings. Bibi always says that the most important thing about learning a language isn’t saying something well or beautifully or perfectly but learning to laugh at yourself, to give yourself over to imperfection and find beauty and goodness there. So when she says to me about my Persian, “You’re doing amazingly good,” I know I truly am.
Isn’t every attempt to express ourselves in language a productive failure to do so, every attempt to describe beauty, always wishing we had said more or less or something different—the beauty being in the attempt, in the tireless impulse to make ourselves known, or, as Tracy used to teach, “to make our lives more legible to ourselves”? I think the porthole poems were an attempt to really truly embrace the language-learning process (something I don’t believe I’m very good at) as something full of mistakes, and happy accidents, and new sonic associations—an unfurling of meaning and sense that would allow me to reveal things to myself about my relationship to music and my heritage, and construct a language of my own to communicate, to exist, within. Language is culture, and I think I learned some revelatory things about myself through the process of building new associations from things I misheard or misunderstood. On the page, I wanted the porthole poems to seem like both a window and a mirror, maybe like the quality of a window at night which lets you see through, somewhat, but also reflects your image back, your reflection making what’s on the other side a bit more difficult to decipher. I was hoping for the language play and punctuation to help transport a reader into the knowledge of someone grappling with the abundance of a mixed heritage, with the bridge of a hyphenated experience.
Lassell: I love what you’ve described about language as being an abundance. Indeed, Book of Kin seems to deftly convey a deeper understanding of abundance—that even despite terrible loss, abundance can still find its way into a life. (I should also mention to readers of this conversation that between my last question and this one, my family has happily welcomed a new baby in our home, so the idea of abundance is very much top of mind.)
Darius, I have had such a wonderful time speaking with you, and I’ve learned so much from your words here and in your poems. Thank you, truly. Would you like to end by sharing what is inspiring you these days?
Atefat-Peckham: I’m so excited by the arrival of a new member to your beautiful family, and that “abundance” is where this conversation has led!
I think August has always been a difficult and transitional (and at times lonely) month for me, but I’m feeling excited about the new connections Book of Kin will hopefully bring me as I travel around for readings.
I just got back to Austin to begin my second year at the Michener Center for Writers, and I’m excited to be in community and fellowship again after a long and emotional summer. It’s hot here, so hot—a heat that can sometimes feel good but can sometimes overwhelm—but then again, just now I’m outside the airport waiting for a friend to pick me up, and there’s a woman alternating between fanning herself and her service dog with her big floppy hat. I’m inspired by these moments of beauty and reciprocal care.
I’m inspired by the ghazal, which I’ve been writing almost exclusively within (my master plan is for my second book to be full of them—we’ll see how that goes) and its ability to travel and love so expansively. I’m inspired by love poems and the beloveds who inhabit and inspire them, always.
As always, I’m inspired and made grateful by my family, my friends, by the connections I continue to make, the people I love who support me (people like you, Daniel! Thank you, thank you, thank you…)—the beauty that constantly and persuasively surrounds me. I’m so lucky.
