In Conversation: Marcus Myers & Rivka Clifton

Marcus

Rivka and I have a unique bond as poets and co-editors. We met in 2012, during Rivka’s first and my last year in the MFA program at UMKC. Before, during and after we formed Bear Review, we’ve shared work and encouraged one another. This sharing and cheering each other on, discussing craft and aesthetics, swapping and giving books with and to each other has led, in some ways directly and in others indirectly, to our creating Bear Review. While co-editing Bear Review, we learned each of our appetites and affinities moved us to appreciate poets from very different parts of the contemporary U.S. poetic fractal. Rivka’s aesthetic choices often led us to accepting more avant garde / experimental poems, which I appreciated or learned to appreciate, while mine led us to poems expressive of personal experiences. I can only speak for myself, but I definitely noticed Rivka’s tastes making an impression on me, in particular her brave embrace of the surreal, abject and grotesque. 

Rivka

When I met Marcus, I saw poetry as a way to escape my body. I didn’t know the term dysphoria then, but poetry was a way for me to be other than what I was. When I read Marcus’ poetry, I admired how deeply he looked into his own life, how he was unafraid to face it. The more medical transitioning has aligned my body with my self-image, the less I feel compelled to run away through poetry, the more compelled I feel to see my experience as continuous with my self as a writer and artist. Marcus has always been a teacher for me in that regard; his poems laid the groundwork for me to be more autobiographical. Poetry feels most itself when it lands somewhere between autobiography and completely disconnected from the writer’s life. I believe having this conversation around aesthetics, subject matter and poetic arcs will be help clarify things for me as a trans writer and may be beneficial for other writers thinking through their aesthetics as well.

This event is Free, with a suggested donation of $5.

Marcus Myers

Marcus Myers lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he teaches and serves as co-founding and managing editor of Bear Review. Author of the chapbook Cloud Sanctum (2022), his poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Common, Contemporary Verse 2, The Florida Review, Fourteen Hills, The Los Angeles Review, Mid-American Review, RHINO, Salt Hill, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. 

Rivka Clifton

Rivka Clifton is the author of Muzzle (JackLeg Press) as well as the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). She has work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, and other magazines.