Featured Poem: Divenere

Often, we regard art as a thing of unmistakable beauty. Hundreds upon thousands of poems have been written about the creative process and how that beauty is built. Most choose to focus on the creator and very few choose to focus on what is being created. Going the opposite route, Divenire focuses on the process from the point of view of the creation itself — in this instance, a statue. With haunting prose and a dark undertone, this poem sets itself apart from the crowd. I caught up with salvaje to learn a little more about this breathtaking poem!

Give us a quick summary of Divenire

I honestly can't really come up with a basic, surface-level summary without it sounding really corny. Yeah, saying, "It's about a sculpture that comes to life," would summarize the narrative element of Divenire, but...that's not really the point, per se.

What is the inspiration behind this poem?

Anyone who has read a lot of my poetry (if that hypothetical anyone exists, I guess) has probably noticed that I have a tendency to write two-part poems. Here on Mibba—as opposed to the full document that has all of my poems—it's not as noticeable because I like to give them all different titles, but if you were to ask which one goes with which other one, there's a pretty good chance that it'd have a buddy. It's like I'll write a poem but I still don't have the emotional closure or sort of catharsis that I look for after a really good poem-writing session.

Divenire's buddy is I Am Not David. It probably seems like I'm rambling a lot here, but the reason all that info about buddy poems is necessary is because they always share inspiration.

I Am Not David and Divenire are no different. The inspiration behind these two is a little difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't been in a similar scenario. Although I don't feel comfortable going into intimate detail, the basic inspiration deals with body image issues and the desire to... rework, I guess, myself into someone and something new. It's an overall dissatisfaction with life; it's about a strong desire to change but a lack of patience, hence the emphasis in both poems about cutting into the stone and using knives—a faster solution than just waiting for things to become better—to sculpt a better version of my life and my body.

How did you choose the title for it?

I was going to title it I Am Not David II but Divenire worked better for a variety of reasons.

Divenire is an Italian word for 'become'. Read the first line of the poem and you'll see why that's relevant. The Italian origin is more of a reference to I Am Not David and the themes of creation and whatnot. The David referenced isn't the Biblical David (except by extension); it's a reference to Michelangelo's David statue. And, well, Michelangelo was Italian.

It's also been one of my favorite words for awhile and I was delighted to finally have a relevant place to use it.

What was your favourite thing about writing Divenire?

I guess my favorite thing is that it's not what I usually write; I like going for more abstract and visceral (and sometimes graphic) imagery that's otherwise sort of abstract and more of a confused stream-of-thought style. Since it's still my writing, Divenire has some elements of that, but really its structure is more narrative than the poems I usually write. It's like...weirdly coherent in some places. Because of this, I keep going back and forth between liking and hating the poem. It's not what I'm used to, but I think it was good in that I did something a little outside of my comfort zone.

Do you have any writing rituals that you follow when writing poems?

Yes. I like waking up at four in the morning after a somewhat disturbing series of dreams and then proceeding to scribble down little of lines of words that come to me. Either I write an entire poem in five minutes or a couple weeks, since these early morning writing sessions are either two lines long or full-length, whatever that is.

What do you look for when reading works by other site members?

I really like it when I can feel the amount of thought and emotion put into a poem or story, though I usually read poems and short stories nowadays because I'm so busy. I can't really explain it, but there are certain things that just resonate with me and make me think about them days or weeks later; there are so many writers on here with astounding potential and although I'm not the most active on Mibba, I'm glad to be among them.

Is there anything you would like to say to anybody that reads your poems?

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Even if you just skim through my stuff, even if you don't comment, don't recc, that's okay. The thought that someone else is reading my work—that it's not sitting abandoned in a random journal somewhere—is very special to me.

Finally, do you have any other poems that you think people would enjoy?

I hope some people have enjoyed Divenire, at least. Obviously, I Am Not David is the companion so I'm going to recommend that one. Waking Dreams features a lot of my usual incoherence, but it's somewhat close to the narrative style. I guess that's it.

Special thanks to losing control. and isak valtersen for editing!