Allegra Stevenson-Kaplan
NationalPoetryMonth.ca April 15, 2023
Misery Index by Allegra Stevenson-Kaplan appears on NationalPoetryMonth.ca on April 15, 2023
From Allegra
I want to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude to Amanda/AngelHousePress for providing us with this amazing platform for community-building and the discussion of artistic practice and inquiry! I am delighted to have the opportunity to share a bit about my collage poem, “Misery Index,” with you and to delve into the creative process behind it.
Recently, I’ve found myself captivated by the concept of cataloguing—or indexing—one’s own life. I have been “collecting” in some capacity since I was a child: plucking single earrings and shiny coins from the sidewalk, hoarding receipts and scraps of loose paper, and painstakingly cutting the stamps from every envelope I received in the mail. Collage is the art form most closely aligned with this impulse for me, and “Misery Index” is an exploration of this preoccupation on multiple levels. It is also an exploration of what it might look like to catalogue heartbreak.
In large part, the inspiration for “Misery Index” was sparked by my rediscovery of Bernadette Mayer's fascinating “Anthology” from Poetry (1976), which I recently found available online in the Eclipse Archive here. As I sat with her series of lists, I was drawn to the way she juxtaposes seemingly pedestrian subjects like “Crops,” “Dog Breeds,” and “Comets” with more abstract entities like “Nonmetals,” “Disasters,” and “Time.” By anthologizing these catalogues one after another on the same page, she implicitly suggests that they are all equally significant, and therefore equally deserving of our attention.
When I set out with the intention of creating any kind of found poetry, my process begins firmly rooted in a visual, tactile place. With this collage poem, I started by piecing together the visual backdrop for the piece. I was interested in collecting textures—strands of pearls, masses of ladybugs, shiny copper coins, embossed fossilized patterns—that evoke the physical sensation of touch. I also found myself drawn to circles and ovals in their various formations, such as the halved peaches, the pearl brooch, and even the whorls of the ear.
It was when I came across the words “Misery Index” in a ratty copy of National Geographic from the 1980s that the meaning behind the piece started to come together. I quickly became interested in images that represented different iterations of love, like the hand with a bouquet of roses, the reflection of the mother swan with her babies, and the historical portrait of an unnamed loved one. I wanted to create a catalogue of young love, and then embark upon an examination of what the slow dwindling of that “rose red glow” might look like. The vulture, then, came to represent the inverse of the swan, becoming a symbol through which one might enter into the darker aspects of love and misery.
Ultimately, my aim with this piece was to illustrate both the everyday rituals of love—gifts of pearls and flowers, picnics on gingham blankets, the sharing of a single bed—as well as the pain of its eventual dissolution. The collage poem wound up being a fitting medium through which to explore these ideas, and I am very grateful to be able to share this piece on NationalPoetryMonth.ca!
About Allegra
Allegra Stevenson-Kaplan is a queer emerging poet based in the unceded lands of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples. She recently completed her Honours English degree at the University of Victoria, where she served as a Poetry Editor for The Warren Undergraduate Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Warren Undergraduate Review, The Albatross English Undergraduate Journal, Unstamatic Magazine, KULA Journal, IDEAH Journal, and elsewhere. She is currently a poetry reader for PRISM international magazine. Find her @allegra__kaplan on Twitter.
Visit NationalPoetryMonth.ca daily in April for poetry.