Interview with Issam Zineh on Unceded Land — March 29, 2023
Issam Zineh is a Palestinian-American poet and scientist. He is author of Unceded Land (Trio House Press, 2022), which was the Editors’ Selection and a finalist for the Trio Award for first or second book. He currently lives on the ancestral homeland of the Paskestikweya people.
Daniel Lassell:Issam, thank you so much for speaking with me. Let’s start by talking about your debut poetry collection, Unceded Land, out now from Trio House Press. When I was reading through your poems, I found such boldness and compelling dynamism. Of the many themes that permeate the book, the relationship between love & loss and self & landscape stuck with me strongly. Could you speak more about how these themes shaped your book’s development?
Issam Zineh:Thanks to you, Daniel. I really appreciate this kindness. Thematic cohesion was something I didn’t think about until pretty late in the process of putting Unceded Land together. I think that has something to do with how the poems in the book came to be. The earliest versions of some of these poems were written in the 90s. That was followed by a period of twenty years or so in which I wasn’t writing at all. After that time, I began to revisit those old poems and write new ones. I wouldn’t say there was a complete demarcation between the themes in the older poems and the more recent ones, but there were certainly some stylistic differences. The weight of my attention was on different concerns in my twenties compared with my forties as well.
So there was this kind of long exercise in trying to figure out how this all fit together. The interconnectivity you mention was mostly revealed to me through talking with other people about what they were seeing in the writing. A revelatory moment came when I began reading about alienation as both a psychological and social phenomenon. It seemed to me, then, that the poems were very much interested in problematic separation from the things to which we naturally belong—mostly each other and the land. I began to see territory as an instructive way to think about those separations—territory in the spiritual and literal (for example, geopolitical) senses. Once I realized this, it became more evident to me how concepts we might associate with territory, like power, loss, and reconciliation, were asserting themselves in the poems.
Lassell: Collections that take their time are often well worth the wait. I’m grateful for books that surface after decades of percolation, like how you’ve described Unceded Land came about. In your response, you’ve made some poignant points about the relationship between territory and alienation, how drawing a border—whether mentally, physically, or both—is often a vehicle to assert control. It makes me think about how separation on a geographic level inevitably influences the personal experience, be it familial, romantic, societal, or other. When it comes to alienation, there also seems to be an element of fear at work beneath the surface. How does fear drive (or not drive) your poetics forward?
Zineh:That’s a very interesting observation. I hadn’t thought about the presence of fear in these poems. Now that you mention it, I do think there is a kind of fear in some of the poems that contend with the erotic or romantic. There’s anxiety there, a fear of loss. I was very idealistic in my notions of romantic love. I think in some of those poems there’s a tension between that desire for enduring love and the understanding that love is a time-limited proposition. I was grieved by that understanding.
I can’t say that I see fear in the poems that contemplate alienation in more broadly social and political terms. The poems I’m thinking about are more inclined toward assertiveness and confrontation, if not belligerence. There I see more of a poetics of witnessing and resistance, for example to dispossession and the asymmetrical power inherent in the idea of territory as a colonial concept.
Now I’m guilty of making that false distinction between the “personal” and the “political” that I don’t usually find helpful. I don’t think any one poem in Unceded Land is or can be one or the other. So maybe there’s a little fear and a little resistance in each of these poems.
Lassell:“A poetics of witnessing and resistance”—I love that. And I can certainly see it in your work. I do also see an element of fear in some of your poems in the ways you’ve described, but always inclusive of an aspect that looks beyond fear itself—a perseverance toward survival. I think you have a unique gift for intertwining themes and concepts into your work, such as the confessional, the political, the romantic, etc. Could you describe what your writing practice looks like today? What are your concerns when writing a poem vs. revising?
Zineh:My writing practice is predominantly a reading practice. I read a book of poetry every week on average. I’m also usually listening to an audiobook in some other genre at the same time. I try to generate drafts of three to four new poems every month. I write mostly on Saturday. It works best for me to try to generate a draft in a single sitting. I’ve also been more interested in writing essays on the poems I’m reading than writing poems. That has been rewarding.
My revision practice has changed dramatically. One thing I stopped doing recently is re-reading my drafts over and over in the days after I’ve drafted them. I realized that my obsessive re-reading was leading to a cementing of my relationship with those early drafts, and that made it harder to see where they needed to be revised. Now I put them away for months, sometimes longer, before returning to them.
In terms of my concerns when writing, it would be a lie to say I have an intention at the outset of drafting a poem other than to get something on paper. If I’m surprised or moved by the poem, if it feels like I’ve said something different or differently than I have before, then I get excited about what could become of it. In revision, I try to be attentive to my idiosyncrasies and habitual patterns. There are some specific issues I’m working through in revision at the moment. For example, the relationship between the speaker and the “you” of the poem might be more ambiguous than I intend; I favor a kind of discursiveness which might be unintentionally disorienting; I have challenges with vulnerability. In the end, I hope for the poem to be my best attempt with the medium I can put forward on that occasion.
Lassell: That’s a beautiful description of your writing and revision process. Indeed, every writer has their own unique way of getting words onto the page, and I feel a real sense of community in what you’ve shared—especially the bit about the importance of reading in your poetry composition. What books have you read recently that have left you energized?
Zineh: Brenda Hillman’s new book, In a Few Minutes Before Later, is extraordinary. As with much of her work, at least for me, there’s a feeling of something unprecedented. It’s all just so formally interesting and intelligent and human and rebellious and humane I guess I would say. I’ve enjoyed going back to her earlier poems, and each time I read them it feels like the first time.
I recently read Jericho Brown’s The New Testament and The Tradition in succession. That was a very rewarding experience. I was most taken by how these poems confront masculinity narratives and how closely violence and intimacy sit in relation to one another, often right on the same line.
I’m reading Galway Kinnell at the moment. So much vulnerability and mastery. I’d be hard pressed to describe how brilliant I find these poems.
Lassell: Those sound like deeply rewarding reads! I adore Jericho Brown’s work, and Galway Kinnell is a classic. I must admit I’ve not read much of Brenda Hillman’s poetry, and I’ve heard so many great things; I will need to check her books out. I do love poets whose earlier works feel like you’re reading them again for the first time when revisiting their books.
I’d like to shift gears just slightly for this next question if we can. You mentioned the influence of reading on your poetry, and that has prompted me to think about other areas of possible influence. I understand that, in addition to being a poet, you serve as the Director of the Office of Clinical Pharmacology at the USDA. How does your science work intersect with your poetry? Does one influence the other?
Zineh:They intersect in the sense that we tend to find substrate for our poems in our daily lives, but I would say my science life and my poetry life have been fairly compartmentalized. Even going back to college, I felt I had to decide between a science track or a creative writing track in terms of a career choice. I had passion for both. I went to pharmacy school but overloaded my coursework with an English course or writing workshop every term (two credits away from an English minor!). They were complementary but not necessarily synergistic if that makes sense. They balanced me out, but I don’t feel they necessarily fed into each other in very obvious ways.
I could get interested in a project that connects science, medicine, and poetry more intentionally but have nothing in mind. One thing that’s probably true is the analytical mindset inherent in the scientific disciplines is probably the same mind I bring to close reading of poetry. I’ve found writing critically about poetry to be a real joy and a generous teacher.
Lassell: That’s wonderful, Issam. My work beyond the realm of poetry has a similar influence on my poetics, in that I’ve found something between a happy symbiosis and a good practice of compartmentalization. It’s so good to commune with poets who don’t fall within the walls of academia. To me, poets who live and work in the world are essential to keeping alive the urgency of the Art.
Thank you, again, for your time in having this conversation with me. In closing, I’d like to give a brief nod to readers who—by way of this interview—are just being introduced to your poetry for the first time. Would you like to share a few lines from a poem in Unceded Land (or a whole poem if you prefer) that you think act as a good entryway into your poetry collection?
Zineh: Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate your thoughtful questions and your time as well. Maybe we’ll leave folks with the title poem. In a certain way, it’s one of the poems that comes closest to the intimate vulnerability we’ve touched on, even if fleeting. It’s also a poem that had its earliest start twenty-plus years ago and was finished as the collection was coming together, so it might give a sense for the range of concerns in the collection.
Unceded Land
This part of the cape is known for oysters. That part’s known for turnips. The playhouse is closed until next season. I keep reporting in this way.
fort hill rock harbor
We stand at the edge of town cove. You ask why I brought you here and if I remember any of the original intensity.
The sun is a kind of gratitude, you say, a continuously ringing bell in the lower belly that we can breathe right into.
You have done it again, this time without the modesty it might require: taken your cresting pain and turned it into a kite.
You will come clean if I ask.
We should start seeing goldfinches this time of year. How would you describe a warble to someone who has never heard one?
A music without words, a euphemism in the cessation of sound, a scarce Bedouin music where we are in tents and pour each other out,
bloated, amorous, into little bone cups for drinking.
I say, we might be standing on unceded land.
Light in a field. You say, I have no need of such things. Just sing to me, baby, just sing.
