Reviews/Interviews Editor Ann Beman interviews Allison Blevins about Cataloguing Pain, a hybrid collection of lyric essays and poems that explore motherhood, sexuality, and queerness. All this through the prism of learning to live in a disabled body at the same time as her partner’s gender transition.

What incited you to write Cataloguing Pain? 

The book began as a way to make sense of trauma. I was diagnosed with MS after experiencing partial paralysis of my legs. I had a very difficult time navigating the medical industrial complex. Many of my experiences with doctors and medical staff were, and still continue to be, traumatic. At the beginning, I was sent home from the hospital paralyzed with no testing or imaging. At the same time, my husband was beginning the process of his gender transition. This wasn’t a trauma for me, but it was a major event in our lives. The two things happened simultaneously. Our experiences seemed so oddly parallel. It would have been impossible to avoid writing about them together.

Was there a ground zero poem – a poem that launched the trajectory of the collection?

The first piece that began the collection was “A Catalogue of Repetitive Behaviors.”  I was newly diagnosed as neurodivergent and was thinking about how repetition is an important aspect of my personality. This connection made me drawn to the catalogue form. Cataloging made sense as a way to keep track of my experiences, to keep them safe. But it also made sense as a container. I’m aware my work can be highly lyrical and sometimes difficult. The cataloguing was a way to organize the material, to make it easier to understand.

This book is a hybrid of poetry and lyric essay. How do you decide what form a piece takes?

Frost wrote, “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”  I think about this often when discussing form. Cataloguing was conscious, but deciding between poem or essay was not. I write everything by hand first. The essays became essays because I had so much more to say. They wanted to be more narrative. They wanted to accumulate meaning over multiple pages.

Let’s talk about the title. Why “cataloguing”? Where in the process of writing the collection did the title emerge? 

The title emerged after the second piece I wrote:  “Cataloguing Pain as Marriage Counseling.”  After the first piece, I knew I wanted to write catalogues. After the second, I had the title of the collection. I often write titles before the pieces in a collection. I have an idea of where I want the collection to go and how I want it to arc. That was true here. After I had the title of the collection, I started writing titles of the pieces I wanted to include.

In the opening piece, “Cataloguing Pain as Marriage Counseling,” you ask: “What makes me Allison if it isn’t walking or touching or these words and my memory of writing them?” Where are you with this question? 

I think the question is the answer!  As a writer, I worry about what I am without words. MS threatens to take everything from those living with the illness. The catalogues allowed me to list those fears and realities, to make MS more understandable to those who are unfamiliar. They also allowed me to keep track for myself. Much of the book is recording my life with my husband and children in order to remember. It is a historical record that makes me feel like my memories are safe. I still struggle with these questions. If there is peace for folks living with chronic illness or chronic pain, I haven’t found it. It is the nature of “chronic” to be never ending. I can’t come to terms with that. 

In “A Catalogue of Repetitive Behaviors,” you say you “track pleasures through color and sound.” Synesthesia colors, enriches, and sometimes haunts your poetry and prose throughout the book. Can you talk about synesthesia in relation to the cataloguing of pain? In relation to the cataloguing of a life?

I’ve been accused of synesthesia before. I learned about the concept when writing my chapbook Letters to Joan. It is an ekphrastic collection based on the art of the abstract painter Joan Mitchell. She had synesthesia. I don’t know if I have it, but I wonder if my neurodiverse brain thinks with synesthesia. Like most folks, I have a deep desire to be understood, to explain. The appearance of chronic pain in my life only complicated this desire. Pain is a nearly impossible concept to describe, but sufferers are constantly asked to describe it. Medical personnel aren’t interested in lyric descriptions of pain. They want concrete:  stabbing, burning, numb. But pain isn’t concrete. It transcends and evades. Pain is analogous to life in this way. Listing isn’t enough to communicate meaning in either case. For me, synesthesia is about feeling, about breathing my feelings into my words.

In a couple of the pieces in the collection, you effectively reference editors’ responses to your work. How do such responses influence the ways in which you operate as editor of a literary journal? [Blevins is museum of americana’s Executive Editor.]

As an editor, I lead with kindness. I respond personally when I can. I encourage editors I work with to respond personally. Writers love personal rejections!  One of the rejections I mention in the book led to a major revision of the piece “Elegy for my Wife.”  I was grateful for the personal feedback from the editors, even though it was very difficult to read. They changed the trajectory of the piece.

What is your definition of Americana? How does it apply to this book? 

For me, Americana means anything rooted in American culture or history. This is a broad definition that includes almost everything!  While this book is intensely personal, I think queer lives and disabled lives are a universal part of American culture and history that can be overlooked and othered. Our stories need to be uncovered.

What’s next? Do you have projects in the works?

I do. This year I’ve finished a chapbook that explores addiction. I finished a lyric speculative nonfiction collection that investigates two main characters and their marriage. I’m also working on a third chapbook with my writing partner, Josh Davis.

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ALLISON BLEVINS is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022), and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill(Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing, the Executive Editor at the museum of americana and she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series in Pittsburg. She lives in Minnesota with her partner and three children.