Tag: Ada Wofford

We Call Upon the Author to Explain—Elizabeth Devlin

An image with the text: We Call Upon the Author to Explain

This month we had the honor to speak to Brooklyn-based poet and musician Elizabeth Devlin about her poetry collection Milk Spine (Dancing Girl Press & Studio, 2024). Her writing is visceral, rhythmic, sinuous. It’ll prick your palm then crawl inside your ear and get stuck in your head—in a good way! The poems reward multiple reads, and like a great song on a newly discovered playlist, they inspire you to keep hitting play, to keep going back and reveling in the anticipation of that one perfect hook. When everything comes together, the whole thing just clicks! Devlin has that in spades, and it was a treat to get to pick her brain about her process and the intersection of poetry and music.

A cover of a book showing a painting of a woman with brown hair, eyebrows, eyes, and a red lip. The title is "Milk Spine," placed on the lower right side of the book. The author's name, Elizabeth Delvin, is written beneath it.

Ada Wofford: The collection opens with “Milk Fat,” which begins, “For three years, I stopped living, / so I could give life.” This is such a powerful opening. On the one hand, it seems to pit living as something against giving, but one could also see giving as living; that they are two sides of the same coin. Can you speak about how you view the relationship between giving and living and why you chose to open the collection with this observation?

Elizabeth Devlin: “For three years, I stopped living, / so I could give life,” is a reference to the sacrifices one makes when choosing to become a conscientious parent. There is a dissolution of self, and ego, in service of one’s progeny. I agree that giving is an attribute of living; some of the most rewarding things I have done in my life came from positioning myself in a role of service. But what that line specifically refers to is the devotion required of parenthood; there is little freedom, autonomy or sense of self, once one chooses to be a good parent, especially at the beginning. Parenting a newborn is challenging but is also an exhilarating and powerful act of service, selflessness and love.

AW: In “Up/Pick Me,” you work in a call and response pattern that depicts what a woman is or needs versus what she gets, how she is perceived, “I am in need of religion/It must be a sin to look that fine.” The writer Anne Lamott once quoted a friend of hers as saying, “You’re not a body having a spiritual experience, you’re a spirit having a body experience.” On the surface, the poem is about sexism, but that sexism is rooted in the denial of the spirit (or inner self) via seeing the body as an object. Can you speak about this idea of spirit or inner self versus the corporeal, and how poetry might function as a conduit between the two?

ED: Most days, I feel like a moderately evolved ball of nerves, bouncing from one sensation to the next, hiccupping through a series of physiological and chaotic responses to internal and external stimuli. My poetry lives, and finds color and smell, in the awareness of my corporeal self. Whether I am appreciating my body or not; I have never been able to dissever the two. I do not believe I have a “soul,” nor do I subscribe to any religiosity that purports humans possess an essence separate from the body that is exclusive to us or other sentient beings, or the byproduct of being the chosen progeny of an all knowing, omnipresent being god/goddess. I do not believe there is another plane on which people exist after they die, where individuals will be divvied out their punishments or prizes. I believe that this life is it.

So, when you ask me to speak about this idea of spirit or inner self versus the corporeal, and how poetry might function as a conduit between the two, I am at a loss. We are made of stars, and no energy is created or destroyed. Considering this, I could not separate my corporal form from a literal or metaphorical idea of soul. They are interlinked bedfellows. This all said, I do feel there are things we have yet to understand, or define, and I identify these things as metaphysical, and some may consider that an indication of “spirit/soul.” I love the idea of having a soul because it allows me to contemplate fanciful things and exist in the realm of woo.

AW: You write with a lot of rhythm and rhyme (I didn’t realize until I finished the book and read your bio that you are also a musician), “relative to the / rickety-racket, / bury-that-hatchet,” and in another, “but I love you like a sister / or a brother, / from another mother, / with your free, Whitehall condoms, / cell-phone-bling, pawn-that-ring brokers / and the elevated rittle-rattle.” This produces musicality in the poems that I find quite refreshing. Can you speak about these elements and what they mean to you as a poet?

ED: Humor and play are very important to me, in life, and in poetry. I am so pleased that you received these lines in this way; thank you for sharing your reflections. The musicality of the world is undeniable. I hear melodic voices in all things; poetry is just another instrument, or vehicle, through which we may construct songs. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, the flow, verbiage and syntax, and how beats and syllables flow from the mouth when read aloud, this is where the fun lies. Whenever I write, I am always reading out loud, to hear that rhythm and ensure its presence.

AW: To build on this (and if you’ve already answered this, then just ignore), written poetry is inherently a visible medium while music is not. How do you think of poetry as something visual and what can the page accomplish that sound can’t?

ED: Sound is visual to me, in that, it induces literal visual responses, which can cast my sight in shades of color and feeling. I do not have chromesthesia, but sound does change my sight and the way I perceive shape and color, so, in this way, when I hear poetry read aloud, particularly lyrical poetry, the sound does have a visual effect. I put great consideration into how words appear on the page, as well; format and line breaks, and the play that can exist within, allow poetry to have visual impact outside of the sound. Both things are important.

AW: I’m very curious about the title of the collection, it conjures in my mind a spine molded out of curdled milk, seemingly solid but viscous the moment you touch it. Can you speak about your inspiration and why you chose the title Milk Spine?

ED: I love this; “it conjures in my mind a spine molded out of curdled milk” is right on point. Milk Spine was a reference to being a milk producing mammal and how my life was ruled by the hunger of my child’s need to suckle. It’s also a playful way of referring to the spine of a book. The book’s spine and the spine of the body, give structure, definition, support, and much of what is spoken about in this manuscript, is about the corporeal body, organs, spine, blood, fat, so the title was a reference to that, as well. Breastfeeding is such an animalistic, ecstatic and sensual ritual. It bonds mother to child in a parasitic way that is emphatically welcomed by both participants. There are some mutual benefits to breast feeding but, at times, I also felt I was submitting fully to this being I had created. The poem “Letdown” addresses the complexity of this relationship in detail. I have never felt so simultaneously powerful and helpless, as when I was breastfeeding. The mammary imagery does include images of curdling, and I hope that the narrative of a failed relationship is illustrated by that. The milk, and the romantic love, outside of the mother/baby relationship, is sweet and fatty and life giving, until it is not.

AW: The concept of religion and spirituality appear throughout the collection, though sometimes in contradictory ways; in “Flushing Ave,” you write, “if there was still religion / lifting these two boot souls to God, / But there isn’t.” Later in the collection, you have a poem titled, “Church of the Orishas: A mother’s prayers: after Psalm 143:1” in which you write, “OH GODDESS, hear my prayer, / Give ear unto my supplications, / In Thy faithfulness answer me—in Thy righteousness.” I’m going to leave this as broad as I can because I know this is such a complex topic to discuss, but if you’re comfortable, can you talk about what religion and/or spirituality means to you as a poet? And if you’d like to speak about the specific poems I quoted, please do.

ED: I was raised in strict, patriarchal religiosity; it was the source of a great deal of confusion and oppression in my childhood and catharsis in my adult life. Harkening back to your previous question about spirit, while I do not subscribe to a particular faith or religion, and do emphatically believe that what we have in this life is what we get, and nothing more, I do think there are undefined components of our existence which elude us, and so we refer to these things as magic and/or spirituality. Within this abstract understanding of the word spirituality, as a metaphysical human contemplation, I do feel greatly influenced by that which I feel, and believe I am acting within, but for which I do not have a name or defined understanding. It all feels intuitive, as life, and language, and song, and verse, feel intuitive. I enjoy playing with the idea, that, if there is a god, she is woman, and in direct opposition to that which confined me in my upbringing. Since nature, evolution, reproduction and life, feel inherently feminine to me, when giving a voice, description and narrative to an omniscient being, I want her to be female identifying. In “Church of the Orishas: A mother’s prayer,” I chose to juxtapose these narratives. Yemaya is a goddess in, and with whom, I can identify and have faith in. She is relatable and invokes faith in me; utilizing her to relay my personal narrative as a young mother, allows space for womanhood, and a sense of peace and strength, that was not present, or considered, in the religion of my childhood.

AW: In “Letting Go is Hard,” you write, “I’m not a person / but a place, a thing.” Is this echoing the type of objectification discussed in “Up/Pick Me” or is this touching on a different form of dehumanization/alienation? And if so, in what way?

ED: Yes, this is certainly echoing the same type of objectification that we discussed in “Pick Me Up.” When I wrote these poems, I was joyfully and painfully aware of how my physical body both elevated and inhibited my experiences. I appreciate you picking up on this and connecting these contradictions. Many of the poems in MS are struggling with this same contemplation and trying to make sense of the narrator’s personhood and concept of self.

AW: You have such a knack for association that it makes not quoting you at length difficult but there’s a great section in “As Things Developed She Was to Have All Manner of Revelation” that I’d love to ask you about. “Leaning on an enlightened pillar / of debt and obligation, / there is no catharsis / in communism, / or Christ in capitalism, / just a solo communion, / Yeezus and / I AM GOD (DESS).” There is so, so much happening in such a small space. I took it to be an exploration (or fever dream) of spiritual hunger; one goes to higher education (“enlightened pillar”) to expand their horizons, only to be fed a bunch of corporate speak and rubrics, spit into a society that cares only about the material, and with celebrities as the only thing resembling something like a divine figure for us to worship. Can you speak about this poem and is this interpretation anything like what you were going for?

ED: Oh my god, what you wrote here is so on point and beautiful and full of understanding. Thank you so very much for giving my work such generous and insightful consideration. I appreciate you and yes, yes, yes to everything you said; I have nothing to add.

AW: And to follow up, can you speak about your use of association in your poems, making one line suddenly change meaning by its context with the next line and what you enjoy about this close-knit style of writing?

ED: Are you referring to enjambment and the line breaks?

AW: Yes, I am.

ED: I have a close friend, Barbara Schwartz, with whom I have been in a poetry writing group for over eleven years now, and she is the queen of enjambment! She has taught me the power and playfulness of leaning into this poetry mechanism, to keep the reader on their toes! It is part of my poetic playfulness. When the question, the conflict, the contemplation, the meaning, the understanding can change abruptly, from one line to the next, that is exciting!

AW: And lastly, is there anything else you’d like to talk about? Any new projects, albums, collections?

ED: I currently have a full-length MS that I am sending out to publishers. I have also been sitting on a full-length, recorded and mastered, album that I am going to release in the future. My personal life has presented some extreme challenges in the last year that have left my professional life in shambles. So, there are many things cooking but, without trying to sound trite, I really have no idea what the future holds, currently.

Milk Spine is available through Dancing Girl Press & Studio

: A woman with long dark hair poses in front of a painting featuring a stylized portrait of herself with exaggerated features; a lamp is visible in the background.

Elizabeth Devlin is a visual artist, poet, singer and multi-instrumentalist. Her debut poetry chapbook, Milk Spine, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2025. Her art and poetry have appeared in Cobramilk Issue 2, The Opiate, Bomb Magazine, We the Tender Hearted and elsewhere. Elizabeth is a three time recipient of the Writers Residency, at Firefly Farms, through Sundress Academy, Knoxville, TN. Between 2017-2021, she was the curator and Founding Director of Bessie’s Brooklyn, a private art salon, which hosted numerous art, music, and literary events including: The Highwaymen NYC, pRose By Any Other, The POETrap and Token Folk Acoustic

Devlin has toured internationally for close to two decades. An autoharpist/singer-songwriter with avant-garde-folk sensibilities, she defies traditional song structures, weaving small worlds where magic and fantasies collide. Elizabeth’s third full-length album, Orchid Mantis (2017), received 4.5/5 from Impose Magazine and was the follow-up to the previously released albums: For Whom the Angels Named (2011), Ladybug (2011) and All Are Relative (2009). In Fall 2021, Devlin released her fourth album, Conscientious Objector (What A Mess! Records, FR). Devlin continues to tour and will release her fifth full-length album, My Father’s Country, in 2026. Elizabeth can be found in Brooklyn, living with her large family, loving on a ridiculously hairy dog, gardening and sipping a Thai iced Bubble tea, or, at elizabethdevlinmusic.com.

A black and white photo of Ada from the chest up in a black button-up shirt and a black blazer sitting in front of a curtain with moons and stars.

Ada Wofford (they/them) holds MAs in both English and Library Studies. In addition to working at a rare book shop, they are an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, the editor of We Call Upon the Author to Explain, and the non-fiction editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection. Their writing has appeared in The Blue Nib, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Autostraddle, Capable Magazine, Sundress Reads, and more. Their chapbook, I Remember Learning How to Dive, was published in 2020, part of which earned them a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Interview with Hannah V Warren, Author of [re]construction of the necromancer

Winner of Sundress Publications’ eight annual chapbook competition, Hannah V Warren’s,[re]construction of the necromancer, is a haunting reimagining of Hansel and Gretel that explores the themes of transformation, motherhood and creating our own fate. Editorial Intern, Ada Wofford discusses these themes with the author, as well as the significance of reimagining Hansel and Gretel today.

Ada Wofford: What can you tell us about the book’s inscription, “To the girls with the moss in their hair”?

Hannah V Warren: I’m thinking about women who had their own experiences with abandonment in their childhood, but that word means something different for everyone. In the forest, Gretel felt no more alone than in her home. This collection is for those women, the ones who felt lingering instability, no matter where they were—the ones who would have embraced Gretel’s forest and the ability to transform their bodies into something new if they could. 

AW: What is the significance of reimagining Hansel and Gretel today, in 2020?

HVW: We’re currently living in a moment where people are returning to fairy tale, to legend and lore, more frequently than ever. Funnily enough, a movie about Hansel and Gretel came out the same week this chapbook released. (I haven’t seen it, but I hope people revel.)

I think we all find comfort in these stories, the ones we’ve heard again and again. There’s an entrenched familiarity. At least for me, reinventions investigate the troubling aspects of fairy tales we take for granted. In the Grimms’ “Hansel and Gretel,” the tale ends with riches and forgiveness. Although their father supported their demise, the children are easy to forget all trespasses: “Now all their cares were at an end, and they lived happily together.” I wanted to write a new Gretel, someone who doesn’t need to end on forgiveness but instead focuses on her own recovery, realizing she owes nothing to her birth family, especially not absolution of emotional and physical traumas.

AW: Can you talk about the recurring theme of “forgetting” in the book?

HVW: I played with memory a bit in this collection, considering how we process traumatic events. It’s easy to go days, or even a week, without thinking about anything that happened over a decade ago. Then, you’ll smell menthol. Or you’ll hear someone humming. Or a man will brush against your arm. Suddenly, hot stones brim your gut. As Gretel grows older, her childhood memories become fuzzier, but there are moments that haunt her, that she can’t forget. The “forgetting” poems contain many of these specific memories for Gretel, those moments that always return.

AW: Can you speak about the use of spaces and line breaks throughout the book and what their function is to the overall story?

HVW: [re]construction of the necromancer is concerned with the blueprints of our bodies; how we put things back together when they fall apart. I love white space in a poem. Those blanks and breaks are almost as important to me as the words. I imagine them as instructions that guide Gretel, but she doesn’t quite understand how to follow along because she’s never transformed her body before. It’s like putting together a human skeleton when you don’t know where any of the bones go. In these poems, the spaces are sometimes jarring, pulling the language apart like stretched taffy. I think that’s what it would be like to grow a completely new body, to abandon the parts that no longer belong.

AW: What is the significance of the shifting perspective, from first-person to third?

HVW: In these poems, I wanted to create something immersive, atmospheric. In film, it’s really easy to shift perspectives, to show the audience something the main character doesn’t know. I thought a great deal about what the reader needs to know versus what Gretel needs to know, and I quickly realized that Gretel, after her transformation, wouldn’t care a lick about how her birth mother was getting along. Regardless, it was important to me that the reader know how the forest continued interacting with the mother, how this sentience cared for Gretel quietly. In the “Guide for” poems that come at the collection’s beginning and end, I hope the first-, second-, and third-person perspectives join together. The reader is not watching Gretel but instead becomes Gretel in a fractional way. The reader learns to transform.

AW: Can you speak about the themes of eating and consumption found throughout the book?

HVW: The generally unquestioned cannibalism in fairy tales is always so fascinating to me. In lore, eating other folks is a representation of evil, and that’s that. In this collection, one of my goals was to up the ante on every aspect of the Grimms’ tale. What we consume is such an important part of our identities. I’m from south Mississippi, and I felt like part of me melted when I lived in the Midwest for a few years. Where was the crawfish bisque, the okra, the fried catfish, the Cajun seasoning? I wanted [re]construction of the necromancer to be indulgent, gluttonous even. You can’t think of Gretel without thinking of cannibalism, so I twisted that part of the story to empower Gretel. Does that make Gretel a representation of evil, as well? Probably yes, but also maybe no. Throughout the poems, Gretel shifts from starvation to indulging whenever she wants.

AW: Can you talk about the theme of transformation in the book?

HVW: I love writing within the feminine grotesque. In fairy tales, women’s bodies are consistently changing in mimetic and non-mimetic ways, often to reveal something crucial about the narrative’s moral. I hoped to do something similar with Gretel. Children aren’t helpless, per se, but they are small and relatively defenseless, which the normalization of trauma only exacerbates. Gretel’s transformations are her body’s response to her inability to forget and escape the memories that haunt her. The animal and forest parts of her new form cannot remember abandonment or violation, and they help her attain a semblance of stability as she processes her experiences.

AW: Can you talk about the significance of motherhood in the book and how does it connect to the forest?

HVW: When I first started cobbling together this collection, I knew I wanted Gretel to escape the ills that plague her, which includes her birth mother, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it happen. Slowly, the poems I added revealed other mother figures. The candy witch from the Grimms’ story is the mother Gretel never had; she teaches Gretel to care for herself, to cook, to change her body. The forest, as well, acts as a semi-motherly figure in the tender slips where they interact, brushing away debris from Gretel’s skin, feeding her encouragement and dried meats. Throughout her time in the forest, Gretel realizes she can rely on others, but she must find a balance, relying on herself, as well, before she can rejoin the world.

Read [re]construction of the necromancer here.

Hannah V Warren is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia where she studies poetry and speculative narratives. Her poems have haunted or will soon appear in Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, and Redivider, among others. Follow her at @hannahvwarren and learn more at hannahvwarren.com.

Ada Wofford is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Library and Information Science. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a BA in English Literature. She is a Contributing Editor for The Blue Nib literary magazine, the Founding Editor of My Little Underground, and has been published by McSweeney’s, Fudoki Magazine, Burial Day Books, and more.