Gaia Rajan: On Image Building, Literary Influences, Storytelling through Everyday Surrealism, and the Release of Her Chapbook “Killing It”
Gaia Rajan’s poems are written in such a way that from the very first stanza to the last sentence and beyond, they will grab you and never let go. In her second chapbook Killing It, out now from Black Lawrence Press, Rajan examines queerness, violence, “and the detritus of American achievement” through haunting, visceral imagery and storytelling that sticks with you long after reading the final page.
I spoke with Rajan via Google Docs about image building, revision, her literary influences and other projects, and the inspiration behind her new chapbook Killing It.
First of all, congratulations on your new chapbook! Can you tell me about how Killing It came to be, how you landed on the title, and what you hope readers get from it?
About two years ago something shifted and I became excruciatingly conscious of the ways in which I was erasing myself to seem human, to seem legible, to seem worth it. This was in some part about my queerness and brownness—I’ve always been aware of the ways I could be perceived as a threat—but it’s also a lot of other things. You move through towns where horrible atrocities have happened just looking for a gas station. Every day, you inhabit places where versions of you have died. And what are we doing with that grief, other than taking it quietly into our bodies? What are we doing with our lives, beyond being willing subjects, participants in an artificial heaven that will never be open to us?
So yeah, that’s why Killing It exists. And it’s called Killing It because I wanted to twist some normal term to expose its violence. I came upon an Ocean Vuong quote the month after I finished my first draft where he talks about the ways we use words of violence to describe achievement, like “killing it,” “knock ‘em dead,” “target audience.” The myth of American success doesn’t just coexist with violence, it encourages it.
This collection grabbed me from the very first poem, which shares its title with the chapbook, and never let go. Some of my favorites throughout the book include “Heaven”, “A Self-Help Book Says to Confront Your Possible Selves”, and “Inside Every Poem You Can Hear Muffled Screams”. How do you arrive at the haunting, visceral images that appear in your poems?
Thank you! I’m so glad this collection held something for you. I think I think of images in two dimensions— first the sensation, the very specific felt fleshy thing, and then the construction, which is more removed, architectural. Of course you need to feel things in their fullness, but that doesn’t itself qualify as poetry in the way I relate to the form. In terms of construction, I think for me it’s about establishing not only the image but the world behind it; what kind of universe could sustain this feeling? What kind of universe makes this feeling visceral?
Several images, along with their overarching themes of queerness and identity, reoccur throughout the book, including ghosts, myths, surrealness, even guillotines. What are the most important things to keep in mind when crafting memorable images like this and do you have any advice for people hoping to do similar things with images in their poems?
It’s less that I choreographed an image set and more that my obsessions are pretty layered and consistent. I think my only advice is to lean into your own thinking; frames of inquiry that feel normal to you, your internal wallpaper, those are usually the strangest details. I think in hauntings, I have a Midwestern accent, and my storytelling is very much about finding the surrealism in institutions and daily life, and I hope that comes through in my poems.
Do you have a favorite poem from the collection? What is it about and can you share a snippet of it?
I’ve been reading “Rites” a lot at recent readings— it’s a prose poem inspired by small-town Ohio and one of my best friends. An excerpt:
Rites
for A
You look so happy, your father will say after your first shift. You are good at being happy. You are seventeen, suddenly pretty. You understand how the world works. If you’re good at school you’ll meet a boy in science club or orchestra and if not you’ll meet him in the parking lot. You will like him because he does not know anything about you. You’ll fuck for the first time in this field if it’s still a field and if by then it’s a strip mall you’ll go to his car. You are good at being happy with usual men, their mediocre bodies. You’ll visit him at the end of his minimum wage shift as a dishwasher and his elbows will be soaked and soapy. He’ll hug you and it’ll leave your back cold, like the idea of wings.
There is a stunning ghazal crown in the middle of the collection called “Inheritance” – what was the process like in creating this poem? What was editing not only that poem like, but the poems as a whole throughout the collection?
A couple years I was writing a sprawling thesis on Partition and hauntology. As my academic work got closer to rigor, I started wanting that to extend to my poems. So “Inheritance” is a ghazal crown about generational trauma that mirrors the geopolitical aspects of this history— ghazals from South Asia, sonnets popularized in England, sonnet crowns from America. Revision for this poem felt like I was trying to reveal something that was already there. I think for the other poems, revision felt like I was building something new on top of older drafts, but revision for the ghazal crown was very sculptural.
What are some of the biggest differences between Killing It and your first chapbook Moth Funerals? Any similarities you can call out?
With Moth Funerals, I was very much responding to canon. I was trying to build something that felt like an assertion of myself in the poetry world. Now, I really don’t care as much about Institutions or Gatekeepers the way I did when I was sixteen and Moth Funerals came out. I think I saw them as a lot larger and more powerful than they are. Killing It doesn’t care as much about being loved.
A lot of my obsessions recur across both books, and there’s one poem that’s included in both manuscripts.
What inspires you to write?
I used to have specific inciting incidents for my poems, but now that mostly doesn’t happen. I think at this point what draws me to language is just my obsession with language itself— I want a space to just play with the strangeness I can’t fit in my daily life.
Do you have any specific writing routines you’ve found work for you?
I can’t hold to any system of life for very long. I always end up feeling like they expire a month or two in, and then I have to build a new way to live. That extends to my writing practice. Right now, I’m writing a lot in buses and in the back of cars. Something about being in motion but not being responsible for it, about trusting someone else with the actual mechanics of movement, is freeing.
You recently interned with Poets House – what was that experience like and how did it affect your work?
It was an incredible experience— I got to coexist with the beautiful archives, and the people at Poets House are so amazing. I spent a lot of time working on a couple digital releases for Poets House, and also learned a lot about archival, grant writing, and programming. I did a Hard Hat reading where I read the title poem of Killing It and also “Conversion” by Megan Fernandes. I also hung out with the workplace dog, Goblin, who will forever be the love of my life.
I walked into Poets House every day and felt like I was in the presence of power, not just the people who’d been in the space in the past but also the sheer volume of poetry history contained in the archives. I felt connected to the history of poetry in a way I couldn’t access before, and I think that comes through in my newer drafts.
How did the WOC Speak Reading Series come to be?
A couple years ago, Khalisa Rae and I were talking about how much we wanted a community of women writers of color that convened regularly. We wanted to build a space to celebrate each other, and it became one of my favorite projects I’ve ever been involved in. We hosted monthly Zoom readings and had some of my favorite poets ever join us virtually, and it meant so much to me to have that home to come back to all through 2020 and 2021.
Who are some of your biggest literary influences?
I am in love with everything Bhanu Kapil has ever done— Killing It especially wouldn’t exist without Schizophrene. I also really love K-Ming Chang, Anne Carson, Krystal Languell, and Franny Choi. Soft Science changed my life and I go back to it whenever I need to tap into power.
Also, a lot of my approach to language is from my high school education in Latin; I originally took it because I was awful at immersion classes, but I fell in love with the mind space of the classics and spent three years inhabiting Virgil’s work.
Do you have any other projects on the horizon?
I’m currently deep into drafting for a new hybrid book project. I’m not sure what this will become, but I want to stay with it long enough that it starts to reverberate. I’m trying not to talk about it too much before it’s real, so I’ll just say I am currently obsessed with ideas of real and imagined reincarnation and early South Asian afterlives.
I’m also into computer science, and I’m currently working with a friend to build an augmented reality walking tour of a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. More details soon
Anything else you’d like to add that I didn’t ask?
I’m good! Thank you so much for having me on!
Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). Her work is published or forthcoming in the 2022 Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Split Lip Magazine, diode, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the cofounder of the WOC Speak Reading Series, the Junior Journal Editor for Half Mystic, and the Web Manager for Honey Literary. She is the first place winner of the Princeton Leonard P. Milberg Poetry Prize, Sarah Mook Poetry Prize, and 1455 Literary Festival Contest, and a runner up for the Smith College Poetry Prize, Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize, and Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize. Gaia is an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, studying computer science and creative writing. She lives in Pittsburgh. You can find her at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.
About the Interviewer
Erica Abbott (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based poet and writer whose work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Serotonin, FERAL, Gnashing Teeth, Selcouth Station, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other journals. She is the author of Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship (Toho, 2020), her debut poetry chapbook. She volunteers for Button Poetry and Mad Poets Society. Follow her on Instagram @poetry_erica and on Twitter @erica_abbott and visit her website here.
