Abigail Chabitnoy Is a Damn Bandit

Abigail Chabitnoy (@achabitnoy) is the author of HOW TO DRESS A FISH (Wesleyan, 2019), winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted in the international category of the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry. She was a 2016 Peripheral Poets fellow and her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Boston Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, LitHub, and Red Ink, among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Colorado State University. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Witter Bynner Funded Native Poet Residency at Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, Colorado. She is a mentor for the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing and an instructor at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is a Koniag descendant and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak.

1. What is the best thing that has been said/written about your writing?

The recognition my first book, HOW TO DRESS A FISH, received was well beyond what I expected. To simply be on a short list with powerhouse poets I’d read as a student, like Sharon Olds and Natalie Scenters-Zapico, was incredible. And I had the most supportive mentors both at Colorado State University and in the indigenous literary community. Probably the best thing that has been said came from the book blurbs themselves. Of the poems in my first collection, Sherwin Bitsui writes, “they restore worlds” and Joan Kane, most graciously, writes, “Poems like these change worlds, connecting us to each other and all else that sustains life.” Other poets have been equally gracious in their introductions at readings and events, and I can only hope to continue to deserve their high regard in future writing.

2. What is the worst thing that has been said/written about your writing?

I can’t say that I follow social media enough to have a terribly juicy answer to this one. I’ve been fortunate enough to have my early work extensively workshopped before putting it out there in the world. It’s always hard to hear that a certain work you’re especially proud of isn’t communicating clearly in the way you had hoped to your audience, but that’s the critical feedback that allows us to improve and push a piece to reach its potential. I find the feedback I get most often, especially on first reads, is that the connections I’m drawing aren’t as clear as I thought, and that I have more work to do to provide my readers the clues they need to follow the thought trajectory I’m trying to lead them to. In an early read of my second manuscript, a poet I greatly admire told me very candidly that they did not think I’d put my best poems first, or had arranged the poems to show off my best work—which of course made me second-guess everything! But it’s just as important to learn when to take advice, when to follow your instinct, and when to do a bit of both (it’s almost always a bit of both).

3. What is the best writing advice you’ve been given?

When I was an undergraduate student, I was convinced I was going to go on to write fiction. I loved the work of Jorge Borges, Italo Calvino, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa—and wanted to jump right to a similar bend of experimental fiction. It was the brilliant educator, translator, and poet in her own right Michelle Gil-Montero who made me realize I was in fact writing poetry all along. She was also the first to help me overcome an early tendency toward didactic writing, which I think is something to be particularly aware of in the current climate. There’s an understandable inclination to write toward the current environmental, social, and political crises; in my own practice I too have felt lately that to write as though everything was fine is somehow irresponsible, or a cop-out somehow. But how to do so in a way that is not limited to this specific point in time, is not dated and too quickly irrelevant? How to write something lasting, worth revisiting, that takes advantage of the flexibility of the form and its capacity for multitude and searching? How to do so without preaching? In my own writing, I find myself often looking for threads to pull and connect, ways of writing parallel to broader concerns. I think this comes from trusting the work and trusting the reader, which my first mentor encouraged me to do more. Of course my work is going to be influenced by and reflect our current turmoil because that is the experience I’m writing out of. I don’t need to perform activism or perform anger or anxiety—those emotions are bound to inform the writing. So long as I’m open to the writing. That is, so long as I listen to the poem and allow myself to dwell in that Keatsian space of negative capability without forcing too much pre-conceived control and intent on the work. Listen, trust, write, revise.

4. What is the worst writing advice you’ve been given?

I can’t recall any really terrible advice, at least in terms of the writing itself. There’s always a variety of opinions when it comes to advice with publication procedures, how to order a manuscript (which was especially difficult to navigate as I put together my second manuscript, and the first written without the close mentorship of an MFA program), etc.. But I suppose the same old adage of “write what you know” is one that always deserves a grain of salt. I personally tend to write toward discovery or uncovering or greater understanding, and typically need some kind of research topic or question or direction for those days when I don’t quite know where to begin with a poem. So know what you write, but that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert when you start. Poetry especially is a medium friendly to generating more questions than answers—so long as there is sufficient sincerity and scrutiny, which only you as the writer can honestly answer.

5. Who writes like a Damn Bandit?

I feel simultaneously like I just read all these terrific poets I’m blanking on, and that I have a shelf full of writers I can’t wait to read (and should have already read by now) but keep getting pulled from to do other things!

Joan Kane, Franny Choi, Tracy K. Smith, Evie Shockley, Douglas Kearney, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, Ada Limón, Mai C. Doan, Jake Skeets, Michael Wasson (look for his debut full collection from Copper Canyon Press). Of course I always go back to Alice Notley and Eavan Boland. Too many others to list here, and inevitably I’ve forgotten some truly great poets already. (I’m also a huge graphic novel fan. Saga, Monstress, Wicked + Divine…)