just one (chapbook) thing: juliet cook’s ‘mondo crampo’

by Nathan Moore

Mondo Crampo, by Juliet Cook

“I like to think of the Mondo Crampo poems as being intelligently bawdy.”

Along the lines of Jessica’s Just One (Book) Thing column, this is the first installment in a series I’ll be writing in which I ask a poet a single question about one of his or her chapbooks. I’m hoping this series will not only give some insight into poets’ views of their work but also some exposure to the huge range of chapbooks being published.

Poet Juliet Cook is editor of Blood Pudding Press and the online magazine 13 Myna Birds. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including Diode, Octopus, Robot Melon and Womb. Her chapbooks include The Laura Poems (Blood Pudding Press, 2006), Girl Gang (Blood Pudding Press, 2007), Planchette (Blood Pudding Press, 2008), Gingerbread Girl (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Projectile Vomit (Scantily Clad Press, 2008).

Cook’s chapbook, Mondo Crampo, was published this year by Dusie Kollektiv 3. The poems in this collection are darkly humorous, surreal and macabre. Cook has generously agreed to answer a question about the work.

I should note, before delving into the question and answer, that there is adult language below. It appears in the context of poetry, but still: If you are shy about this kind of language, you might want to avert your eyes.

Many of the poems in Mondo Crampo are built on images of the body and food. Would you say something about the importance of these themes in your work?

I’m interested in presenting startling juxtapositions related to the intersections of personhood and consumption, especially personhood as it is situated, perceived and interpreted in the realm of the female body. I’m interested in juxtapositions that seem initially unlikely and maybe even disturbingly absurd, yet upon closer consideration are actually troublingly apt.

I’m interested in the various definitions and implications of consumption. I’m interested in the weird conflict inherent in many women’s desire to be perceived as consumable, even though they don’t really want to be consumed. Being perceived by others as a hot commodity or desirable object does come along with a certain sort of power, but it also seems to increase the likelihood that one will be critiqued, criticized and attacked.

I’m interested in the fine lines that exist within relationships that some perceive as dichotomies, such as love/hate — or maybe to put it more specifically, how can a woman’s feminism coexist with her self-hate or how can her creativity coexist with her self-destructive impulses? I’d like to think that an ongoing pursuit of creativity, even in the midst of contradictions and certain kinds of negativity, will eventually lead to a circuitous yet significant sort of accretion that will take precedence over self-effacement.

I’m interested in the subjectification of objectivity and the objectification of subjectivity. In some of my poems, I want to objectify my own subjective experience of being a conflicted female in a way that is unique, fun, funny, but also authentic in my own warped way. I also want them to be genuinely provocative. In certain real-life settings, I can be kind of quiet and unassertive, but it’s not because I’m meek or prim or hung up on keeping up appearances or trying to adhere to some false sense of propriety; it’s more because of a strange sense of self-consciousness and often feeling out of my element or ill at ease. Well, in the realm of my poems, I’m in my element, I’m in control, and I’m going to slant things, skew things, skewer things and shake things up however I want to and it’s not going to be quiet or demure or docile. It’s probably not going to be palatable to people with tame taste buds either.

On a side note, I like to think of the Mondo Crampo poems as being intelligently bawdy. They have a feminist sensibility underlying them, but it’s not an academic treatise kind of feminist sensibility. In fact, I’ve gleaned a special kind of delight (perverse glee?) by using pornographic language in some of my recent poems. I enjoy recontextualization, and I think it’s fun to pluck porno words out of a porno context and place them in a poem. I know Mondo Crampo includes some cum sucking, some dog fucking, some throbbing meat and my personal favorite, a reference to bukkake; I was thrilled with myself for managing to use that word in a poem.

I was similarly thrilled with myself for managing to use “meat curtains” in a poem just last week, although funnily enough, I spent a few minutes thinking about whether it should be “meat curtains,” “beef curtains” or are the two terms interchangeable. “Meat curtains” was used in a new series of poems I’m working on called “Designer Vagina,” which will hopefully make my body-consumption issues even more uncomfortably in your face. Or in somebody’s face anyway. Since I’m working on this series, I think it would be fun to start calling all my poems designer vaginas. That seems apt to me. My poems as some kind of excessive hybrid of surgical precision and questionable aesthetic appeal.

Mondo Crampo is sold out, but Susana Gardner, who runs Dusie Press, will soon make it available online as a free PDF. Juliet’s chapbook Pink Leotard & Shock Collar has just been published and can be purchased through the publisher, Spooky Girlfriend Press. Learn more about Juliet Cook and the work she publishes by visiting her poetry blog, Doppelgangrene, the Blood Pudding press blog and the Blood Pudding Press Shop.

Nathan Moore is community director and columnist for Read Write Poem. In his spare time, he plays with his children and with fire. Never at the same time. He blogs at Exhaust Fumes and French Fries.