Core Memories: Stephanie Burt
We believe the origin of our work as creators is important to consider and hold. In CORE MEMORIES, we ask artists and writers about their own creative beginnings. What led them to operate in their genre of choice? Was it a specific moment, an errant thought, a movement? Was it an insight, a person, a place? Years into their work, does it continue to resonate?
In this edition, we interview Stephanie Burt.
Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor. In 2012, the New York Times called Burt “one of the most influential poetry critics of [her] generation.” Burt grew up around Washington, DC and earned a BA from Harvard and PhD from Yale. Burt’s books include We Are Mermaids (2022), After Callimachus (2020), Advice from the Lights (2017), Belmont (2013), Parallel Play (2006), and Popular Music (1999). Burt is a Professor of English at Harvard University. She lives in the suburbs of Boston with her spouse, Jessie Bennett, and their two children. You can find her at @accommodatingly on Twitter, @notquitehydepark on Instagram, and @accommodatingly@zirk.us on Mastodon.
What is your CORE MEMORY?
In grade school I did a report on John Milton and copied out "Lycidas"—well, the first 20 lines—longhand. But I didn't go on to read more poetry: I was too busy reading science fiction. But in middle school, I read the 1960s and 1970s science fiction writers James Tiptree and Samuel R. Delany and they embedded lines of canonical poetry in their stories—Delany's The Fall of the Towers opens with a long epigraph from Auden! So I wanted to know what they were reading. And then I was off.
How has that moment impacted your current work or current artistic practice?
I don't know if I'm still writing science fiction. Still, I'm definitely keeping in mind—especially in the new book-—goals that I would call science fictional: how can we think past the current limits on love, on belonging, on mutual aid, on creation, on our physical bodies and our imaginative selves? What can we learn to see if we start listening to one another as well as to the competing voices in our own heads? How can we imagine a future unlike-—maybe better than—what we know? What if we could inhabit talking airplanes, or learn to control our mutant powers?
Are there any new projects you’re working on?
I'm one among five co-authors of an academic book about the X-Men, and I'm working on a book of essays on individual poems (not by me), tentatively called 30 Super Gay Poems!!! I'm also a co-host for the new podcast Team-Up Moves with Fiona Hopkins: we and our guests play superhero-themed tabletop role-playing games and then talk about them. Subscribe at teamupmoves.com or follow @teamupmoves on Twitter (while it lasts).