Austin Poetry Review: Tell us about your most recent book.
Devan Murphy: My 2024 chapbook, I’m not I’m not I’m not a baby, was published by Ethel Zine & Micropress and handmade by the wonderful Sara Lefsyk. In this collection of prose poems, essays, and abstract comics, I delve into subjects including exvangelical (that is, “formerly evangelical”) longing, gender dynamics, and loneliness and connection (especially during lockdown, when many of the pieces were written). The pieces are disparate on the surface, but in almost all, I attempt to tap into the questions of what we owe one another and ourselves; how we find meaning in other people, especially as women; and how to find divinity in the mundane.
APR: Share a 3-10 line excerpt from one of your poems that you feel encapsulates your style.
DM: This is tough. I could probably spend a long time thinking about this. But I’ll go with, “You call me to a world in which not waiting is a form of waiting. To be the rock and the circle at the same time—this is what it means to be a sphere. // … I do not know if you are in love with me, but if you are, you are in love with a dead squirrel. // Straight-faced and with tender paws I lay your gifts in a shoebox under my bed. There they calcify, they colden.” It’s from my poem “The Hoard.”
APR: What themes or ideas do you find yourself returning to in your poetry?
DM: Having been raised very religious and left the church in my mid-twenties (I’m 33 now), I’m still unraveling some spiritual threads, so a lot of my work is about God—anger at God, longing for God. I also write a lot about gender, which, I think, sort of goes hand-in-hand with the God stuff. I take a lot of inspiration for my writing from my dreams, too; I’m really interested in dreams as nonfiction or as an extension of reality.
It was recently pointed out to me in a workshop that I have a habit of including bodily fluids (particularly urine and blood) into my work, which was a little embarrassing, because I hadn’t really realized it! I think I’m interested in filth and privacy and imperfection and repression and vulnerability, and bodily fluids represent all of those things. They also frequently show up in dreams (at least my dreams) and can reveal a great deal about your mental and emotional state that way—bringing what’s hidden and human and humiliating out into the open.
APR: Who are some poets or writers who have influenced you?
DM: Growing up, my biggest literary influence was probably the Bible, though I didn’t think of it that way back then. It’s influenced my writing style and the content of many of my surreal stories and fairytales.
I’m also very inspired by Rilke, J. M. Barrie, the Brontës, Kate Bernheimer, Jenny Boully, Diane Seuss, C. S. Lewis, Anne Sexton, Richard Siken, Mary Ruefle, and—this might not count—Sufjan Stevens, whose songs I consider poetry.
APR: What are you working on now or hoping to explore in your writing next?
DM: I have two new projects in progress: one is a book-length poem about my evangelical Christian upbringing in rural Ohio (it might also be an homage to C. S. Lewis, whom I loved/love and have some complicated feelings about, now that I’m no longer religious). Stylistically, it’s inspired by the Bible and by mystical Christian writing, like The Cloud of Unknowing or the writings of Julian of Norwich.
The other project I’m working on is an illustrated collection of surreal stories and fairytales called Very (which is my favorite word, and which a friend of mine suggested I use as the title). A lot of the stories in the collection explore the same themes my poetry does: family dynamics, gender and sexuality, love, loneliness. In my wildest dreams, I envision the book sitting on the shelf beside Leonora Carrington’s collected stories, Kate Bernheimer’s Gold Sisters trilogy, or Sabrina Orah Mark’s Wild Milk.
