Hasanthika Sirisena work has been anthologized in This is the Place (Seal Press, 2017), in Every Day People: The Color of Life(Atria Books, 2018), and twice named a notable story by Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo and is a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award recipient. She is currently faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and Susquehanna University and she is acting editor at West Branch magazine. Her books include the short story collection The Other One (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016) and the forthcoming essay collection Dark Tourist (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University 2021).
Kristina Marie Darling: You are an accomplished cross-disciplinary practitioner, whose work exists in spite of and beyond the categories of writing and art. How did you first become interested in creating cross-disciplinary work?
Hasanthika Sirisena: I started drawing when I was very young. I never thought of myself as very smart and I struggled with English and with writing. Drawing allowed me to have confidence and gave me a means of articulating myself. I went on to study fine art at the Art Institute of Chicago and, in fact, have a BFA so I have a long and deep training in visual media. I really only started writing in my early thirties and for a little while I stopped drawing. Cross-disciplinary and hybrid work has allowed me to merge these two identities.
KMD: Tell me some of the ways that cross-disciplinary work is or can be politically charged.
HS: Cross-disciplinary work often asks us to think about and rethink our assumptions of form. For example, I’m currently reading Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson’s The Trojan Woman, A Comic. I was delighted when the book arrived and was the size and heft of a children’s book. The translation itself rethinks what it means to actually make a translation. The opening references James Baldwin and Joan Didion (and probably a few other writers I missed.) I can’t read Greek but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by assuming that the original play doesn’t allude to Baldwin much less quote Didion. The playfulness here—with the boundaries and capaciousness of language and intent—force me to confront how we decide who gets to make art and the audiences they make art for.
But it’s the images themselves that are extraordinary. The images stand in for the actor and ask us to meditate on what an illustration—either drawn or acted—actually is. How does an illustration contain force and agency? All this for a work that is also a profoundly antiwar message.
Honestly, just asking us to stop and think and deliberate is a political act.
KMD: I’d love to hear about one piece from TQ that you selected or curated that stayed with you. What made it memorable?
HS: Well, I wasn’t the one who selected Sarah Minor’s “A Poetry Comic” in Issue 25 but I’m deeply in love with it. Everything is so expertly rendered, from the quality, and energy, of the line drawings to the beauty of the language. I feel I could stare forever into the flames of “Photos from a fight appear to capture two people in love” panel.
Laci Mosier is a former student of mine and I want to plug her collages (also in Issue 25). She is dedicated to the physical process of cutting, slicing, tearing—as opposed to computer generated collages—and I loved the physicality, humor, and deep intelligence of her work. (Quick note: I also do a lot of digital drawing and painting so I’m not at all against that.)
KMD: What advice do you have for poets who are interested in creating hybrid or cross-disciplinary work, who excel at writing but perhaps don’t have the technical facility with film, collage, or visual mediums?
Also, if you still are hesitant, collaborate with an artist. I’ve been long seeking someone who’d like to work with me on an illustrated book.
KMD: What do you look for in a submission of cross-disciplinary or hybrid work?
I don’t start out looking for anything. I hope to find something that uses visual sequences in clever and novel ways—that goes beyond what I expect from a comic or a work combining text and image. I would also love to see more work from queer and BIPOC cartoonists and artists.
KMD: What’s next? What can your readers, as well as TQ’s growing audience, look forward to?
HS: More comics! I hope!
Comments