Reader Highlight: Lilia Marie Ellis
Lilia Marie Ellis is a trans woman writer from Houston. Her work has appeared in publications including The Nashville Review, trampset, and Stone of Madness Press. She is an MA student in Greek and Latin Literature at the University of Maryland. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @LiliaMarieEllis!
For the second post in our series highlighting members of our masthead, Editor Edison Angelbello talked to Lilia about ancient poetry, translation, and her poetic influences.
Eddie: What made you want to become a reader at Non.Plus?
Lilia: I had a poem appear in the first issue and just loved how the whole issue turned out. It was wonderful to appear alongside some truly talented people, and I ended up becoming friends with some of them too. So from the beginning NPL has been one of my favorite magazines, and I wanted to be a part of it. I love the community we have—such kind and supportive people. And I think I’ve learned so much from being a reader, too, getting to read and think about so many different sorts of poems.
E: Do you have any poetic obsessions? Things you return to again and again in your writing/reading?
L: I don’t know if I would call it a poetic obsession, but trauma feels pretty inescapable; there’s never anything to say about it, but it feels very nearly impossible to write about anything else. Aside from that, alienation and loneliness are constants in my work, and my favorite works all deal with them to some extent.
E: How has studying Latin and Greek literature affected your writing? And similarly, what effect has translation had on your poetic practice or your writing process?
L: I think ancient poetry can illuminate the lives of people in a way that’s really touching. One of my favorite poems, for example, is a Latin poem that was graffitied on a wall in Pompeii, and is only preserved because of the volcanic eruption there. It’s a love poem, written from one anonymous woman to another. It’s a beautiful poem, and when you read it in the original language, her feelings come through so clearly. It’s written two thousand years ago but you can read it exactly how it was written, on the very surface it was written on. I think it’s absolutely remarkable that we have it—a poem not by an aristocrat celebrating violence and power, just one woman in love. Women (especially queer women) get erased constantly in history, especially ancient history. But people like us have always been falling in love and writing poems about it. I can’t explain exactly how that’s impacted my writing, but it has quite deeply. Maybe in the sense of making poetry felt, and in giving life to ordinary experiences. There’s a tendency for poets to examine something ordinary, and show that it’s actually not ordinary. Some of my favorite poems are like that, so I wouldn’t say that it’s wrong necessarily. But personally, I think the ordinary can be strongly felt and experienced without having to be extraordinary; I try to give light to that in my poems. Our experiences don’t have to be philosophical to be meaningful.
As far as translation goes, there are lots of murky ways it helps that all add up—it’s hard to pin down but translation has made me much more aware of how I’m using English on a word-by-word, line-by-line, and syntactical level. And of how I’m conveying emotion. You have to make choices when translating because it isn’t possible to bring everything over. How can you stay as true as you can to the original poem? What can you keep the same and what has to change to keep the feeling intact? For Latin and Greek, at least into English, most poems have been translated several times before. Often they’re mostly true to the literal text but lose the emotions. Most of the translations I’ve seen of the Pompeii love poem I mentioned lose the emotion behind it because they’re too stuck in conveying what’s literally going on in the line by line. It’s a lot harder than it looks. I have my own translation that I think conveys the emotion better—but maybe in a few years I’ll look back on it and feel completely different.
There are more specific, technical things I’ve picked up and incorporated into my style too. Most of them are dry and boring, but a few are more surprising. For example, Latin and Greek in schools are (usually) terribly taught. It’s typically done in a rote grammar-translation method, and the sort of translation they envision is literal, word by word. The problem is, when you translate like that it often doesn’t make sense; you’re trying to fit the language into an English mold when of course there’s nowhere close to a 1:1 correspondence there. That’s especially true of languages like Latin and Greek, which don’t have strict word order. You’re translating constructions and phrases that don’t exist in English. For students trying to learn the language it’s frankly exclusionary and frustrating. And I think this method is an essential reason why many English translations of Latin and Greek works utterly lack the emotion of the original. But I’ve picked up some aspects of the “bad translation style” if you can call it that, and incorporated it in my poetry. I try to cultivate an almost surreal aesthetic in a lot of my poems, so when it’s brought in correctly, it actually fits well. The balance is hard to get right though.
E: Can you speak some about your influences in poetry, and maybe shout out some specific poets/collections that have been of particular importance to you?
L: I don’t think my poetic influences would be all that surprising, for the most part. My biggest sources of influence come from my own experiences and relationships, my favorite works of writing, and religion.
Virginia Woolf is a big influence of mine—especially the Waves, which I think comes through in my style. Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood, too. Both are almost more prose poem than novel. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled is one of my favorites, and inspired some of the surrealness in my poems. Ross Gay has been tremendous, especially the way he writes about joy and community; my favorites are Be Holding and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. I write about heavy topics, but I don’t ever want to write anything that’s not ultimately hopeful or joyful, and I think those two collections have helped me incorporate that. Lately I’ve been working on some projects that are somewhere in between prose poetry and creative nonfiction, so works like Bluets by Maggie Nelson have influenced that a lot as well. I draw a lot on scripture too, especially the New Testament epistles; my chapbook took very heavily from a couple of those. I owe a lot to friends who inspire me and constantly challenge me; Yusuf Akman, Carson Sandell, Rachel Stempel, Amy Jannotti, Louise Mather, and others too numerous to count. And I owe so much to trans and non-binary poets and their work; kari edwards’ succubus in my pocket, Trish Salah’s Wanting in Arabic, J. Jennifer Espinoza’s There Should Be Flowers, Cameron Awkward Rich’s Sympathetic Little Monster, among others. There are lots of other writers, too, who’ve influenced me a good deal—Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Smart, Lisel Mueller, Wisława Szymborska, H.D., James Joyce, Ali Smith, Manjushree Thapa, James Kelman, Simone Weil, Gertrude Stein.
E: Often in times of crisis, poetry feels at once vital and futile. Do you think poetry wields the power to affect positive change? If so, how?
L: I’m very hesitant to say that individual poets or poems can bring change. But I think movements and communities can, and poetry plays an important part in that.
Poems can also bring positive change on a very small scale, which is important too. A poem can make another person feel less lonely, which matters a lot. I’m working on a manuscript now which draws a lot from Marx’s 1844 manuscripts; I don’t think it’s likely I’ll win over anyone who wasn’t already a communist (though you never know!) but I hope at least some people can feel a little less alone reading it.
I also think the communities behind poetry are powerful; the friendships we make, the support we give each other. Neoliberal capitalism thrives on keeping people apart, breaking down communities, and uplifting the career as the focal point of meaning in life. So the communities we build as poets do matter a great deal, too. There is a lot more work to be done in making poetry spaces inclusive and accessible, but I think they help on balance.
E: Lastly, I like to ask our readers if they have any advice for aspiring poets and writers?
L: These are not really stellar insights but I think they’re probably most important, at least for most people. Read and write every day, even if it’s just a little. Read broadly, but also with care and attention. Reread your favorite poems over and over again. Make friends with other poets and learn from them. If you’re monolingual, learn other languages.