Daniela Elza on the weight of dew

Posted by Pearl Author Interviews Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

About the weight of dew

BCB: What do you think readers will find most notable about this book?

Daniela Elza: I would be curious to know what they find out. Perhaps they will find a kind of balance between poetic and philosophic, language and lyric, an exploration of the boundaries between city and nature. In the introduction to the book Aislinn Hunter puts her finger on the pulse of my work.

BCB: Did researching and writing this book teach you anything or influence your thinking in any way? 

Daniela Elza: The book came out of my practice to philosophize poetry and poeticize philosophy. One of the prerequisites for the work was to look at the world and words anew. No easy task. To approach in awe and wonder. To think about language and thinking as I experience them in the moment of creating. I was curious how thought happens, how it takes shape. Tricky that. It is like peeking on yourself from the side. To ask myself who is this me and who is this you.

At the time we had moved to British Columbia. We went on a 20 day trip to see some of this beautiful province we now call home. That was a good opportunity to look and experience something for the first time. To awaken a childhood state of mind, bring it more into focus. Which inevitably opens the space to question the habitual and defy expectation both in being and language. Travel will do that.

Something happens to the self that dissolves in the immensity of the natural world and its ecological interconnectedness. Something else happens to it when it does not.

One of the things that started becoming apparent to me in this process is that ecology is not something out there. It is in our minds and how we are in the world. It is in the relationship between. It is how we step into a wild meadow, or into the wilderness of our heads. A poem is a wild thing. Will we choose to be transformed at least as much as we are intent on transforming and changing these landscapes? We need to get that in our heads before we hope to be able to preserve it on the planet.

And then there is language. This structure into which we try to pour the fluidity of being and the world. Ultimately, how to make this place home. It is not surprising that the root for ecology comes from the Greek word for house- oikos.

BCB: What would you most like readers to tell others about this book?

Daniela Elza: How it influenced them. What windows it has opened. What doors it has unlocked. What walls it has knocked down.

BCB: Can you suggest one question readers might find interesting to discuss, concerning you, your writing in general, or this book?

Daniela Elza: Some questions I keep asking myself: How do we re-animate the world? What is poetry? What is philosophy?

BCB: How can readers help you promote this book? 

Daniela Elza: Get the book. Give it to a friend. Recommend it. Ask your library to get it in. Review it. These are all good ways.

About You

BCB: Why do you write?

Daniela Elza: Writing has been the one thing that has stayed with me, regardless. It is what I do by default. It is how I learn, how I figure things out. It is for those little eurikas (as Robyn Sarah calls them). That electricity (as Margaret Atwood echoes) one can experience in the act of creating. It is to surprise myself. It is addictive.

I was thinking the other day how we are told “write what you know” and how that was at odds with my sense that I write to find out/ to figure something out. Still, in order to write it has to be in our bodies. It is not so much what you know but perhaps what is somatic and visceral that we pull into the mind and spin into language. Which is perhaps what is behind Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s line “Language is a hinge that connects us to the flesh of our experience.” ( in Threading Light)

Then the question: what does the reader get if they have not had that experience? Not least important is the hope that what you have written will unlock something in the reader’s own experiences and gift it back to them.

BCB: What is your greatest strength as a writer?

Daniela Elza: Perhaps that I keep writing?

BCB: What quality do you most value in yourself?

Daniela Elza: Patience with words, and questions. A willingness to be naive and play in order to see fresh and anew.

BCB: In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?

Daniela Elza: Education, ecology, their interconnectedness. I am also passionate about collaborations. I write poems with other poets. It is a wonderful practice in abandoning the ego self, in letting go.

 BCB: What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your life? 

Daniela Elza: My family is very important to me and a source of inspiration.

Though I have published quite extensively in the last ten years, this is my first full length book. It used to be a dream. Now it is a reality. I think of it as an accomplishment.

BCB: Is there any new or established author whom you feel deserves more attention, and what is it that strikes you about his or her work? 

Daniela Elza: There are a lot of good poets out there and very few get the recognition they deserve. I have found inspiration in unlikely places. It is hard to have a fair list here. When I encounter the work of such poets/thinkers/writers I try to acknowledge it in my own work by incorporating their words as epigraphs and/or weave them within my poems. Thus re-enacting the inspiration in the reading and how my mind inhabits their words. Hopefully, trapping some of that initial electricity. That is my small way of bringing such writers into the conversation.

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