Today’s Pride Month interview is with poet and activist Dane Kuttler.
Hi, Dane! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?
It’s been a struggle at times, no doubt about that. But luckily, I have a yearly practice of writing 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April, and that really helped carry me through. The other creative endeavor I’ve been throwing myself into is working on a book about food, with an artist and page designer. Collaborations have always energized me.
Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how do you identify, and how has that identity influenced or informed your art/craft?
I’m a big ol’ queer. I used to write a lot of poems about being queer, back when it was still something I was sorting out in the world. I also made the mistake of thinking it was the most interesting thing about me for a long time. Spoiler: it’s definitely not. Though now that I’m thinking about it, this year I’ll have been out for twenty years, and there’s something that feels good about that. I look back at the fears that people may have had for me when I came out as a young teenager – my teachers, my family – and being able to say, “No. None of that happened. I’m living a beautiful life, and I’m incredibly happy, and being queer hasn’t caused me any undue suffering,” is a powerful thing.
You are a poet who has traveled the country performing on stage and who has won awards. This is the spot where I ask the generically broad question about your creative process. I’m not even going to try to narrow it down, because I really want to see where you go with this.
Equal parts rigid discipline and total anarchy. Every April and November, I write 30 poems in 30 days and post them on Facebook for accountability. During the rest of the year, my writing routine is haphazard and undisciplined, but having the raw material of those 60 days has shaped several books, which get completed over the rest of the year. Locking myself into April and November actually has had some really interesting constraints – for instance, there’s almost always a slew of poems about Passover in the April run, and November gets political, for obvious reasons. I’ve been doing it for over 10 years like that.
Like I said above, I love collaboration, and the projects I’ve been able to collaborate with other writers and artists have been, without a doubt, the most rewarding of my career. I don’t submit much to publication at all these days – I sort of gave up on that game – and delved into the things that seemed to resonate the most with people, which ended up being Jewish liturgical stuff. Stuff which is, it cannot be denied, very, very queer.
As part of The G!d Wrestlers, you’ve self-published The Social Justice Warrior’s Guide to the High Holy Days and The Book of Solace. They are beautiful inspirational works that, while rooted in your deep Jewish faith and upbringing, speak to readers across religious, ideological, and identity lines. I wish they had a wider audience than they seem to have. Tell me about the writing of each book what you hope people get out of them.
Oh hey, speaking of Jewish liturgical stuff! There’s also a third book in that trilogy, the stepchild of the bunch – Unlikely Victories: A Handbook for the Good Fight, which deals with the “historical holidays” of Chanukah, Purim, and Passover.
Anyway, the writing of these have been truly amazing experiences, religious experiences. They’re the closest I’ve ever come to feeling that kind of awe-filled inspiration where I don’t even feel like I’m writing the stuff – I’m just furiously transcribing it from Somewhere Else. Imagine the very best idea you ever head, an idea so good you felt consumed with the need to share it – it was like that. At least, the first one was. It helped that I was working with another writer, who was editing it with me, and we fell madly, dizzyingly in love over it. Falling in love with someone over a book can go one of two ways – you end up indulging each other, and your book becomes what Anne Lamott called a “self-indulgent sack of spider puke,” or you end up with something transcendent, something way better than the sum of its parts. I got lucky; we ended up with the latter.
The next two books, I was much more alone, and it did take away some of the magic, but the feeling of transcribing, rather than creating, was still very much there.
It never occurred to me to try to find a publisher. I don’t know that the publisher for these books exists. I have published one chapbook of poems on a small press, and it was a wonderful experience, but after that, the success of self-publishing (the GW books have paid for themselves, which is a rare feat in self-publishing) gave me no incentive to get back in that game.
The wonderful thing about writing books tied to holiday cycles is that each year, I reach new people. This past year, someone printed out a few quotes from SJW’s Guide and put them up on the wall of their synagogue, and that was absolutely mind-boggling. I was so honored, AM so honored that people continue to find value in it.
In the days I’ve been composing these interview questions, the world has taken a darker turn with the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing riots. Has this been inspiring you to write, or do you feel (as so many do) that being creative in such dark times is frivolous and that our energy is better spent elsewhere?
Oh dear Gd, no. It’s never frivolous. As white artists, though, it’s not the time to be taking the spotlight. I think now is the time to be vigorously reading and uplifting the works of Black writers and artists, and using our own creative pursuits to further our own understanding. Unfortunately, we’ve been here so many times before that it feels familiar, now. Book of Solace was written right after the Pulse shooting, and so I felt, as a queer writer, that I had something valuable to say about that – to speak to other queers about love, resistance, resilience, grief. This, though, these murders of Black people – I see myself as having a different role to play, one that’s much more about holding space for Black grief and creativity, much the way space was held for me after the Pulse or Pittsburgh synagogue shootings.
“Poet” and “Activist” are just two of the many hats you wear. You’ve written in several places about the process of becoming a foster parent, and about being parent to children who are transgender or gender-nonconforming. What do you wish more people would understand about foster children in general, and trans/gender-fluid children in particular?
I wish people understood that the work is hard, but 1000x harder on the kids. That no kid is “lucky,” in foster care. I get what people are saying when they say “X kid is so lucky to have you,” and it’s a kind thought, really, but it stings. Lucky kids don’t have to go live with strangers. Lucky kids get to stay home with their parents, who get the help they need in order to parent them safely. Lucky kids don’t get yanked away from their homes. I don’t expect my kids to be grateful for their situations – in fact, I fully expect them to resent the hell out of it. Even when I’m doing my best. My best is never going to be home, and that’s okay. That’s what I signed up for.
You know what I’d rather people say? “How lucky for you, that you get to know and love this awesome kid.” That’s more accurate.
Are you working on any new projects currently? New poetry, or perhaps a “Pantry Meals” cookbook? (For readers who don’t know, you regularly raid your pantry and create meals on the fly and then post about them on Facebook.)
Actually, I’ve been trying to tap into that sweet groove of liturgical writing ever since the rebellion broke out, and it’s finally starting to show up, in little bits around the edges. Right now it’s just called “Blessings,” and are short, one-sentence brachot. A bracha (singular of brachot) is a one-line prayer that Jews say before doing just about anything – Eating. Waking. Sleeping. Putting on a new pair of shoes for the first time. Even learning – there’s a bracha to say before you open your books. These are brachot for things like newly woke white people, and a bracha of protection for the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the chunk of Seattle that’s been turned into a momentary anarchist community, with beautiful results.
I’m also in the middle of working on a book about food – not pantry meals, but a book that’s a love song to my “queerfam,” my immediate chosen family community. In non-pandemic times, we get together for dinner once a week, and it’s some of the richest community I’ve ever been a part of. The book is partially about community building, partially about food, and partially about the wealth of showing up.
Finally, where can people find you and your work online?
www.danepoetry.com is my digital home.
Dane Kuttler writes poems and hates bios in Western Massachusetts.