Interview: Poet Igor Brezhnev

“Engage in mutual aid. Educate each other. Challenge the greedy.”

This interview was conducted with Igor Brezhnev by NAILED Poetry Editor, Sam Preminger — *This interview was conducted with Igor Brezhnev by* NAILED Poetry Editor, Sam Preminger

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When I was introduced to Igor Brezhnev I had two questions on my mind: who is this large, beardy stranger and why is he assigning me writing prompts? I’d never seen him before, after all, and certainly hadn’t asked for any assignments, yet – having heard that I, too, was a poet – Igor immediately began encouraging me to write. To write more often, more freely. To take the smallest seed, even a single word, and create. In the years since it’s become clear that this impulse to inspire is as natural to Igor as is his own breath. In brief, Igor is a cornerstone of the Portland poetry community, working with expansive patience and passion to uplift the voices of others, to encourage them and to share their work. He is an organizer, an advocate, a collaborator, advisor, and friend. To borrow a term from Ilya Kaminsky, Igor is what we might call a “genius of compassion.” Beyond all this, he also happens to be a talented storyteller, a lover of cats, and a pretty decent singer if you catch him in the right mood.

For all the energy he pours into the artists around him, however, Igor also maintains a prolific writing practice, often authoring at least one poem daily. Most recently, he’s completed and begun publishing a series of books under the title nights since – one poem written for each night since he last had stable housing. These books meander through musings, praises, and cutting critiques to form a testament, laying bare the compassion of individuals and the indifference of people at large, the aspirations so many of us hold at heart alongside the cruelty of the larger systems we’ve stumbled into. And of course there are many excellent cats along the way.

It was my delight to sit down with Igor and discuss the latest volume of night since, as well as the wider world which sparked its creation.

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NAILED: You’ve just published the third volume of nights since, an eleven-volume collection you’ve been composing over the past few years. Could you tell our readers, in brief, what this collection is and what it means to you?

Igor Brezhnev: The succinct version is that nights since is a collection of 363 poems that do their best to document the emotional landscape of being without a home. I wrote a poem on each night between January 17th 2019 and January 14th 2020. I am still finding words as to what the collection means to me. Now that I have lived with it for two years I know the meaning will keep shifting over time.

As I was writing the poems it was an artistic coping mechanism—a kind of surety that no matter where I would sleep that night I would at the very least write a poetic reflection of the day or a moment in that day. Combined with performing the poems at various readings and open mics it was a powerful statement of being seen and heard and motivation to keep living, keep going, no matter what the world throws at me.

Now, I go back to these poems and see moments of beauty and of despair and I get to reflect on that. I get to reflect on living through it, on the multitude of helping hands along the way. I am certain that if I do at some point of the future have my own home the poems will shift their meaning again for me. And of course the meaning shifts as well as people who read it tell me of their take on it.

N: You’ve mentioned that nights since began on the day you handed over the keys to your last stable residence. Would you be willing to share what that day was like for you? What led up to writing the first poem – ‘I think of rivers’ – that evening?

IB: It was a very surreal moment. I remember walking from the house after giving my copy of the key back to Michael, without whose help and gracious offer of sanctuary my last full length collection of poetry would not exist. I was heading to Pied Cow Coffee House on Belmont to take up time before the late late night open mic on KBOO radio. Small things were etching themselves on my mind—traffic on Belmont moving along, headlights never stopping, other people’s lives flowing—a young woman was sitting at a table next to me and was writing something quite steadily. There was a sense of that motion both within and without. The world just kept going whether or not this one day meant something to me or not. I grew up on rivers. So it is a comfort. Rivers don’t really have a home. They shift, meander, constantly there is new water moving somewhere. So that’s where that piece came from. That first poem was written on the couch of a friend at 4 or 5am, before going to sleep to wake up two or three hours later and diving into the next day.

N: nights since has an end point, capping itself at 11 volumes. How did you know the project was ready to end?

IB: I like number 11. Somewhere along the line I decided to break the project up in volumes of 33 poems each. I didn’t know how long the project would last—initially I planned on writing until I had a home. But when the 11th volume was coming to an end I made a decision to stop. I felt that a year long window into this kind of life is enough and there was no end to the situation in sight. It also so happened that the 11th volume is also a more lighthearted and hopeful one, affected by an attraction. A good ending. Though, somewhere there’s a single poem I wrote later on night five hundred something—I might include that poem in the 11th volume to emphasize that the end is an illusory thing.

N: You pointedly don’t edit the poems in nights since, but release them into the world raw. Where does this urgency come from? What’s gained and lost from this process?

IB: I edited as I was writing, but finding that window to write before sleep was already hard enough—there were nights when I fell asleep with my phone in my hand with a poem half-finished and the next day was pressing itself already with its matters. Even as time became more available I decided to keep it as is. Whatever slip-ups in tempo or mistakes in grammar, they just make the point—there’s no time for the luxury of extensive editing. No time to reflect on the emotion, just feel it and record it. I think that when we live settled lives we have luxuries we are not aware of, and only see them when we are uprooted. I believe that the raw format of it is a part of this type of documentary poetry. It hides nothing—not the fact that this is my second language, not the fact that some days were not poetic, or that some nights were repetitive in their topic. That’s life. Unedited. As much as we would like to edit life we can’t—it exists only in the moment of now. This type of rawness of course might affect the judgement of the writing by people who exist solely in the luxury of being settled and comfortable, uncomfortable with ‘wrongness’—but that’s the point, right? Disturb the comfortable, comfort the disturbed. Make you think. Why is it the way it is?

N: Honestly, just between us (and our readers), did you ever skip a night?

IB: As I mentioned there were nights where I fell asleep with a half-finished poem. There were a few times when the poem was written the next day. But never longer than that. A kind of point of ‘pride of poverty’. I can’t change the world, but at least I can do this much. I have to. I must. Keep my own word to myself.

N: Why 33 poems in each volume? Does the number hold significance?

IB: I like repeating number patterns. It’s an odd quirk. They seem out of place, yet I see them often enough, perhaps I trained myself to recognize these patterns. Digital clocks showing 11:11 or 2:22 or 12:34, license plates or house numbers with these kinds of patterns. Maybe it is finding predictability and a sense of odd order in a very chaotic world that attracts me to it. So 33 seemed like a good choice.

N: You work constantly to uplift the artists, especially the poets, around you. What drives this passion? Is it, or should it be, compulsory?

IB: So many artists are appreciated after their death. Their lives sucked. They were poor, they were hungry, they were persecuted by the powerful and complacent. Yet after a few decades these same powerful and complacent claim them, profit by the work of these artists. So I’ve made it my motto to support living artists. To give directly to the artists when I can. Most of the time all I can afford is my time. Sometimes I have enough money to make something happen for these living artists. Art is how we evolve. How we become better. Question ourselves. Otherwise we are just consumption machines. World goes in on one end—shit comes on the other. We need the artists now, not after they die. I hold that if an artist will make art under the most dire circumstances that same artist will make better art if they know what they will eat and where they will sleep that day. Most artists I know spend their money on becoming better artists—tools, experiences that make art, that sort of a thing. Not the greediest bunch of humans. Yet, as we saw in the recent pandemic, all we consume is art—books, film, music, countless captures of art on social media. Shut that down for a few days and we humans will go properly insane. Support the living artists so they get better. They’ll make more art when they are supported. It’s as necessary of a job as a cook or a plumber. I can’t say that for being a CEO. Yet CEOs are comfortable on their yachts and artists suicide because they can’t pay rent or a medical bill. So yeah. I guess I’m on a compulsory side. Doesn’t much matter for me—I have maybe another decade or two in me, but, damn if others don’t have to go through the same ordeal.

N: You've suggested that an artist's work will improve if they aren't struggling. Do you think there's any truth to the idea that great art comes from hardship, or is this a myth in your mind?

IB: That’s the most dangerous myth perpetrated by the comfortable who do not engage in creating art and those too jaded—the ones that would have everyone suffer if they did themselves. We will always have suffering to draw from, if that’s what we want to create from—life is full of suffering. Let’s not add hunger, lack of comfortable shelter or access to healthcare into the mix. I believe that an artist who has those comforts would create even greater work. I believe artists create despite the hardships, not because of them. Who knows what beauty or peace would inspire an artist not in the throes of surviving, maybe our world would shift from worshipping violence and trauma in entertainment. Every artform is a craft, a practice and a set of particular skills—practice and you get better. Catch the luck and you’ll make something extraordinary. Might as well do it without being crippled by hardships by the time you’re thirty. Maybe even live longer and create more. Hardships mostly create unpleasant and dangerous coping mechanisms, not art.

N: Each volume of nights since features a quote from a Silver Age Russian poet. What binds this project to that particular generation of poets?

IB: These are the poets that I met poetry through. Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky, Mandelshtam, Gumilev, Blok, Akhmatova—these were the young, the tragic, the talented. I feel a kinship with them. These also happen to be poets that were maimed, driven to suicide or murdered one way or another by the cruelty of humankind. They too dealt with questioning belonging—some forced to emigrate, questioning old country and new country of residence. Yet they kept writing until the very end of their lives. Reminds me to do the same. Right as I was preparing to publish the first volume I finished translating my favorite poem of Mayakovsky’s, ‘Listen!’—it felt right to put a part of that translation on the back cover, a kind of connection through the ages, the cover also featured constellation Orion, and Vladimir’s poem examines the relationship to our wonder at the stars in the sky—it’s both a mocking and tender piece. That’s where that started. Second volume featured the image of the moon and an excerpt from Gumilev’s poem that also mentions the moon. Now it is just something to look forward to—find a poem that somewhat fits the feeling of the volume, translate a short little bit of it. Perhaps someone might start reading the work of these poets just because they saw it on the back cover of these volumes.

N: What’s something that surprised you during this project?

IB: The fact that I stuck with it. That’s the biggest surprise. The next big one was the fact that I have no more copies of volume 1 left in my possession, save for an author copy. Some poems surprised me—I never thought that some of these subjects would arise in writing.

N: What’s it like to write in a second language? Do you ever write in Russian?

IB: I rarely write in Russian. I have a difficult relationship with Russian culture. On one hand I greatly admire many talented people who originated in that culture, but I also keep in mind that those people were killed by the same culture. I’ve adopted English for better or worse, mainly because I’m surrounded by it, think in it, though I do switch between languages within poems. I feel that if a word or phrase wants to be in a poem in a different language than the rest of the poem—that’s a valid thing to do. After all, poetry is a reflection of life and I still curse in Russian after I stub my toe.

N: How do you feel about the language of homelessness?

IB: Home is both abstract and very very real. Do I feel at home in the U.S.A? Did I feel at home in Soviet Union? A lot of times the answer is “no”. Sometimes the answer is “yes”. But the fact that we have to work so damn hard to just have a shelter when we live in a world of plenty—that’s disturbing and disheartening. I’ve been examining what home means for almost a quarter of a century. From a very physical sense of not being able to afford renting shelter and being on the street (thankfully not as often as it might’ve been) to the abstract of not being home in one’s own body. I have the privilege of education—whatever can be said of the failings of Soviet Union, the primary education was very strong—that saves me on a daily basis. I also have had the luck to have met an incredible amount of good people—people who took me into their homes, fed me, kept me sane under most brutal circumstances. After a decade of this kind of life I’d say that a bed and a shower and a door you can close to the chaos of the world are the best inventions. Yet so many do not have access to it. Here and in the rest of the world. So many are made homeless by greed of the powerful few who displace entire groups of people in the name of profit or religion or ideology. So many are complicit in preventing people from having a home by willful ignorance or complacency. I wish we didn’t need a ‘language of homelessness’.

N: You mention that many people are complicit in preventing others from having homes. What action would you most like to see these people taking instead?

IB: Elect representatives that truly represent you—people like you, not the career politicians. Run for the offices. Organize. Hold those representatives accountable—if they get corrupted by being next to power, toss them out. Engage in mutual aid. Educate each other. Challenge the greedy. Our world would be very different if those responsible for owning empty buildings would face the public ostracism that we currently practice against the victims of other people’s greed—the actual houseless. Imagine if these landlords who evict families are confronted with lack of service wherever they go. Imagine if the actions of CEOs who drain their workers of life and bask in profit would have direct and public consequences—if it was their faces plastered on walls of shame. That would change things.

N: You’ve arrived at poetry after exploring various other mediums over the years, and seem to be sticking with. What makes poetry shine where others don’t? Do you ever consider jumping ship?

IB: Poetry is cheap to make. All you need is a pen, a sheet of paper and a burning life and you can write poetry. Other artforms, save for perhaps dance, require materials, tools, place to house all of that—at least to practice them fully. Poetry is the choice art form for the poor. Have language, will poet. I am poor and I want to still express myself through art so poetry it is. That’s what made me stick to it. I also live at a constant edge of not knowing which day will be my last. Poetry can be a fast medium. Write it and move on. Publishing is a different deal all together. But that’s the business of art. Not the art itself.

N: If you had more resources, what mediums or forms would you like to explore?

IB: So many. Poverty robs one of perception of stability—you start living, at best, in tomorrow, if not just in today. There’s no room for dreams which take years to practice and achieve. Things become centered on ability to finish a project before whatever small resources you have run out. Collaboration is another victim of poverty—I would love to work with other artists on new ideas, but these artists need to be reimbursed for their time, so there goes that. I think no artform lives in isolation, given the resources, I would definitely create more on the edges of artforms—adding music, visual art, film and theater to poetry. Perhaps even venture deeper in mediums I’ve long since relegated as inaccessible to me—like painting or music.

N: It's been over a year since you wrote the last poem in nights since. What's your world like these days?

IB: It's more or less stable. While I still do not have the income for my own home, thanks to my friends Red & Ed I have a shelter and food—without their help none of the involvement in the art world would be possible, indeed I might not be writing these words. The pandemic year was rough, as for most folks I know, but this year I've decided to finish publishing nights since and am slowly coming out of the lockdown depression. It will take almost a year and a half to get to the last volume (so far scheduled for release in August of 2022) so there's plenty of work. Thankfully I work with an excellent printing shop in Arizona—Impact Printing—where my dear friend Rob Craer takes good care of my books. I'm also recording the audio of nights since with Shady Pines Media, a recording studio in Portland, Oregon responsible for launching Shady Pines Radio a year ago. Brian Bauer, the audio engineer, has been one of the best audiences of one, and going for a recording day is always a treat for me. Writing the monthly interview column for NAILED 'The Poetry Closet' has to some extent replaced hosting a poetry event and working on other poets' books. I quite enjoy reaching out to poets and asking them questions both odd and serious. With luck, I'll get to resurrect Lightship Press and get back to publishing other poets' books. Of course, none of these bright moments of my life—publishing, recording, writing—would be possible without the people who choose to support me on Patreon and buy the books. So a lot to be thankful for. Who knows, maybe one day my dream of a small house on the Oregon coast will become a reality and we'll gather there to write less about suffering and more about the ocean.

N: How can readers best support you? If they have some cash to spare? If they don’t?

IB: If you do have cash, I have a Patreon where you can put a few bucks a month and read my poetry. Hopefully one day the income from that is enough to rent a room somewhere. I like that it gives me some semblance of predictable income. You can also buy books on my website. Hell, you can just send me money on PayPal or Venmo just because. If I have too much money, I’ll just spend it on other artists. If like me you don’t have cash lying about and happen to like what I do—share it, copy and paste the poems to your friends, share links, send me a note saying what you liked and why. And if you don’t like my work—support other artists. Often. Tell’m why you need them. That’s important. Finally, the greatest thing you can do to support artists is to alter the status quo. Be active politically, confront greed, confront violence and cruelty—maybe the next generation of artists won’t be begging for scraps and instead realize their full potential while still young.

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Purchase night since, vol. 3

To learn more about Igor (and buy more books), visit his website.

To explore some of the work Igor does for other poets, visit his column right here at NAILED: The Poetry Closet