In this interview MZAB speaks with poet and writer K. Eltinaé on his newest collection of poetry ‘The Moral Judgement of Butterflies’ available to purchase here . Our conversation explores his upbringing, culture and the creative process behind writing and creating.
Tell us more about yourself, your upbringing and what informed your creative literary pursuit?
I grew up in a very scientific family, the third of four kids so kind of middle child. I felt drawn to performing arts and music, while my siblings were more athletic and I guess where traditionally most family members followed in the footsteps of what came before them, I strayed early on and found a community outside my family home where I would disappear for hours on end besides of course the Public Library.
My father was big on wildlife documentaries and obsessed with traditional homeopathic medicinal herbs and plants and gardening. I grew up with a mathematician of a mother who had a very critical eye, pouring through newspapers after work with her glasses perched on her nose comparing articles as she ate sunflower seeds. ¨This¨ she would circle ¨is what really happened, the rest of it is opinion.
From a tender age, I have always been drawn to the cadence of language, and this manifested through my love of music. I devoured Jazz at first with artists like Pharoah Sanders and Sarah Vaughan, then moved on to Soul, Motown, Classic Afrobeat, and Folkloric Music from Africa and the Middle East, then Gospel, Pop, R&B, and Rap and Hip Hop followed. I would spend hours at the library in my teens pouring over music reviews. I had a real love for debut albums rushing to the mall buying tapes pouring over lyrics, and carefully assigning every artist what I felt or believed was their signature sound. I guess this idea that I would later learn is loosely called ¨voice¨ in creative writing, really influenced my own journey in discovering my own voice. I used to hang out at this spot called 3rd St after school and on the weekends and play tunes for hours on end for my clique of friends.
You come from a rich tapestry of different cultures. How has this reflected in your approach to writing?
I think like most children of immigrants who are raised as third-culture kids; you are kind of born into a reality where there are 36 nationalities in your graduating class and a million more at your school so you naively assume that is the norm. Not until later in life when I moved to countries where everyone was born and raised in the same place and I was not, or places like Sudan where I have heritage and family whom I met for the first time in my early twenties but had no memories with.
It put a major spin on the way I perceive the idea of nationality, family, and ultimately the identity I make peace with and the way I carry myself in this world. I felt a bit like the transplanted trees my dad would bring with him for his garden in Sudan, which would have him jammed up for hours before he could leave the airport. Some days I would survive and thrive in Sudan and find a way to slip into spaces and other days I would be cooped up at home rereading books I had read because books were hard to come by or listening to mixtapes and CDs that centred me in so many places I could not return to and even if I did -where everything as I knew it was gone forever.
What was the creative process behind creating The Moral Judgement of Butterflies?
Originally The Moral Judgement of Butterflies was the title I chose for a memoir I began loosely writing while I was doing an MA in European Literary Cultures. I was awarded a full-ride scholarship with a handful of students from Serbia, Iran, Brazil, China, Bosnia, Italy, Spain, and Puerto Rico. I worked extensively on it once I landed in Granada, but the constant editing and restructuring got me to chapter six and when I realized I wanted to write about generational trauma, loss, the nostalgia of decampment, and this transient nomadic sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time but in verse.
The book began as an homage to the Nubian Exodus. I wrote the first poem Exile after a heated phone call about wanderlust and soon followed Tirhal, the title poem, and many others. Some of the poems were shortlisted for The Brunel Poetry Prize in 2019 and later on that summer, I decided to purge the collection and change the title.
I decided to purge because I felt that in some of the earlier poems I had not managed to speak out about social justice issues or topics such as verbal and physical abuse in a way that would be recognisable to survivors or readers experiencing that and I dropped Tirhal as a title after a reviewer of The Brunel Poems claimed my work was inspired by a taxi service operating in Sudan under the same name.
I ended up taking out about half of the poems and spent a summer writing new poems which coincided with me battling for legal status in Spain due to the inability to renew my passport during Al-Bashir’s regime, leaving me stateless. This bureaucratic nightmare which lasted nearly seven years informs poems in the collection such as Native, Settle, Breathing Exercises, Illegal, Plans, Arraigo, Kindness, and Butterflies.
What are some central themes of the collection?
I wrote The Moral Judgement of Butterflies for people who were born into societies, families, contexts, and circumstances where they were never seen.
For those who had to shrink themselves in order to combat oppression inflicted upon them under the banner of honour, societal pressure, gender, religion, culture, or tradition.
People oftentimes feel there is no choice, no exit door and I know first hand that sometimes life is painted that way, so I wanted to write candidly about my own experiences of leaving home, being in limbo and also of those survivors I crossed paths with. Otherness, cultural/geographic displacement, generational trauma, and exile come to mind as central themes in the collection.
Talk us through the title of the collection and the choice for the cover art.
The title of the collection comes from the idea that everybody wants something that is beautiful and unique but at the same time wants to transform the beautiful and unique thing into something they can own (commodity) or something that abides to some kind of already existing established order they want it to fit into. Personally, speaking, the moral judgment of butterflies is about the idea that beautiful and unique things are never left alone to exist, that they often live their short lives constantly under fire, being asked to conform because who they are is never enough in the eyes of others including those who admire them.
It ceases to be beautiful when you cannot control it/label it or make it your own.
The cover art is by an extremely talented Spanish photographer Carlos Fama @ig_fama whose work I was introduced to by my dear friend and sister, the artist Dara AlNaim, who is a Sudanese-Spanish diaspora multidisciplinary artist. The title of the original piece is “META-MORPHY.”
What is a poem in the collection that you feel most attached to?
I think the poem that holds a special little place in my heart would be “watermark” because it’s the first poem I wrote after I decided to purge the collection, and I felt a tremendous alleviating energy as I wrote it. In it we are introduced to a narrator who is holding people accountable, putting them on trial and taking back his power, and it’s a poem that liberated me.
What is an achievement in your writing career so far that you most cherish?
Every opportunity to share my work in spaces where it is welcomed without experiencing censorship or hostility is a huge blessing to me. I am thrilled to have won the awards I have for the poems from this collection, but in retrospect I have also learned that the real award is how you are made to feel and that there is truly no price for that. Most recently I was invited to be part of the Black Swana Edition by Mizna curated by Safia Elhillo and I felt extremely honored and humbled to be considered by her.
What is a line of poetry/ prose that you live by?
“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk through the rain.”
Audre Lorde
This is a quote, one of many that I often return to.
Finally, what creative projects are you looking to plan in the future?
I am in the early stages of working on a second collection and I am busy finding ways to collaborate and promote the collection with readers and many of the amazing brothers and sisters I have met over the years.
The Moral Judgement of Butterflies is available to purchase on Amazon . Follow K.Eltinaé on Instagram @k.eltinae to keep in the loop with his work.
The Moral Judgement of Butterflies: K. Eltinaé in Conversation
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