"The Human Endocrine System Represents a Kind of Poetics" Adam Dickinson on his Poetic, Chemical Autobiography

Adam Dickinson's cerebral and innovative poetry has garnered him honours including nominations for the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the ReLit Award. His newest collection is Anatomic (Coach House Books), and it shows Dickinson pushing his creativity even further. For Anatomic, Dickinson used his own body as a poetic laboratory, biomonitoring and microbiome testing his blood, saliva, feces, and urine to discover the exact chemical make up of who he was as a physical entity.

His discoveries - including the presence of pesticides and flame retardants in his bodily fluids - shaped the poems in Anatomic, which themselves are shaped to mimic the structure of the various chemicals and hormones Dickinson studied. Linking details from his life and body with historical events, including oil spills, notable poisonings, and more, has created an utterly unique collection, a chemical autobiography that questions our acceptance of the substances our bodies are absorbing and the political and economic models that drive that acceptance. 

We're excited to welcome Adam to Open Book today to take our Lucky Seven series, where we ask seven questions to unlock a writer's newest work and their process. Adam describes the experience of using his own body as a testing ground for his poetic inspiration, tells us about the literary value of getting a sweat on, and offers a refreshingly honest answer to the question of "what are you working on now?"

OB:

Tell us about your new book and how it came to be.

AD:

I had this idea that I could write a book inspired by how the environment “writes” our bodies. This writing is happening to us all the time in healthy and unhealthy ways. It occurs in the form of microbes in our intestinal tracts that help to digest food and assist with many necessary metabolic functions. It also happens in the form of chemicals, which we are exposed to daily, that mimic hormones in the body and can lead to potentially toxic effects.

It took me a long time to sort this out, but I eventually arranged to have my blood and urine tested for chemicals such as pesticides, flame retardants, PCBs, phthalates, heavy metals, and other substances. With the help of some microbiologists, I had my microbiome sequenced from stool samples and from swabs of various parts of my body (hand, genitals, ear, nose, and mouth). The plan was to tell the stories of some of these chemicals and microbes. How did they get into me? What kinds of evolutionary histories do the microbes have? How are they biologically active? Who made the chemicals? How have they been used industrially, militarily, and agriculturally? While important factors such as race and class affect exposure histories (and I tried to be responsible to these as I was writing the book), the chemicals and microbes are in all of us. Consequently, the stories of what I found in my body are closely connected to the stories of people in my community and beyond.

OB:

Is there a question that is central to your book, thematically? And if so, did you know the question when you started writing or did it emerge from the writing process?

AD:

It seems to me that the effects of chemicals and microbes on the body constitute a form of writing. The human endocrine system, with its constant flow of hormonal messages, represents a kind of poetics – a poetics increasingly overwritten by the Anthropocene (our current historical moment in which humans have become biogeochemical forces on the planet).  I have PCBs in my blood, which means I have the products of a multinational company inside me (Monsanto). I have microbes in my gut that are strongly associated with a typical Western diet and its emphasis on processed foods full of salt, fat, and sugar. How can I use poetry to respond to this writing, make it legible and urgent, and rewrite it as a form of cultural critique? This was all very clear to me from the beginning; the difficult question was what formal strategy or conceptual procedure to take? 

OB:

Did this project change significantly from when you first started working on it to the final version? How long did the project take from start to finish?

AD:

It took me approximately seven years from start to finish. I had at first imagined a more abstract, perhaps even asemic, mode of writing for the book. But I had stories I wanted to tell. I had a lyric subject—in all its permeability—to deeply, metabolically interrogate. I finally settled on the prose poem and its emphasis on the sentence as one of the key formal modes for the book. Hormones are dramatic phenomena; they respond to stimuli and produce effects. They are sequential sentences in cascading anatomical stories. To contrast with the prose poems, I also employed very short lines in a number of sections to underscore a sense of the more atomized drip of these chemically and microbially inflected substances into the biological and cultural metabolism of a body. I certainly changed while working on this book. The intense self-scrutiny caused me to experience serious anxiety and obsessive behaviours. I lost a lot of weight. I stressed over the results of my testing. 

OB:

What do you need in order to write – in terms of space, food, rituals, writing instruments?

AD:

To be honest, one of the things most important to my writing is intense physical exercise. This was something I came to realize and require while working on this book. I regularly bring drafts of poems to the gym with me so that I can read and edit them as soon as I am done my workout. I find my thinking and editing skills to be keenly honed in those immediate post-exercise moments. I guess the blood is everywhere inside me still running. I seem to be able to go to places I don’t expect. As it happens, I am editing this right now after a workout.

OB:

What do you do if you're feeling discouraged during the writing process? Do you have a method of coping with the difficult points in your projects?

AD:

Sometimes I imagine that different parts of my body keep their own pets, or tend their own livestock, or maintain their own security forces. And then these pets meet occasionally in the street as they are being walked. Their urine damages the grass on neighbouring lawns. The livestock escape their enclosure through a poorly maintained fence. Through a series of seductive miscommunications, the security forces hit upon an unlikely theory that embarrassment is good because it presupposes community. Embarrassment reminds us we are not alone. 

OB:

What defines a great book, in your opinion? Tell us about one or two books you consider to be truly great books.

AD:

I have a couple of books that I read exclusively in the rain. The pages get wet. I dry them. Then I take the swollen book out again next time. The cover doesn’t close very well. One of these books is Le parti pris des choses by Francis Ponge. 

OB:

What are you working on now?

AD:

I’m still recovering from Anatomic.

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Adam Dickinson's poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Canada and internationally. He has published three books of poetry. His most recent book, The Polymers, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the ReLit Award. His work has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, and Polish. He has been featured at international literary festivals such as Poetry International in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the Oslo International Poetry Festival in Norway. He teaches poetics and creative writing at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.