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LIANNA
SCHREIBER
2021 / interview series / POETS & THE PANDEMIC
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NAME / PENNAME / WHAT YOU WRITE:
Lianna Schreiber. Poetry, fiction. Often I tug at strings that resemble a midplace.
WHERE DO YOU CALL HOME?
Romania.
WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU DID TODAY?
Set water to boil. Checked my email. Brewed strong tea.
WHAT CREATIVE WORK WERE YOU DOING THIS TIME LAST YEAR?
I was revising a couple of short stories I’d written that November. They’re Gothic, somewhere between horror and fey tale, and at their core about the ugly, red, real kind of love. Which, I realize, is a rather redundant statement. I ended up shelving the project they’re meant for — a collection of flash fiction and novellas inspired by the folklore I grew up with — due to academic commitments, but I intend to get back to it as soon as I’m able.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE HARDEST PART OF THIS YEAR REGARDING YOUR CREATIVE WORK?
Physical time, if I’m honest. Specifically, a lack thereof. The pandemic hasn’t slowed my life down in the slightest.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOUR CREATIVE WORK THIS TIME NEXT YEAR?
The cavalier answer: in a few magazines. The real answer? I don’t know. Which isn’t exactly a new thing, or a consequence of Current World Events, capital letters not so much Georgian as warranted. It’ll be there, that much I can tell you. But what it’ll look like remains to be discovered, by you as well as I.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST STARTLING THING YOU'VE LEARNED OR EXPERIENCED SINCE THE PANDEMIC BEGAN?
I’m a daughter of the former Bloc. Very little about ignorance, corruption, negligence or gross incompetence has the potential to startle me, you understand. And so rather than surprised I’ve been saddened quite a lot. The most chilling thing I’ve learned this year is that Wall Street has begun trading in water. Not only that, but it’s become a hot investment. To say that I’m unsettled is to word it kindly.
HAS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AFFECTED YOUR ABILITY TO CREATE? HOW SO?
I suppose my inspiration has borne the brunt of it. I’m not particularly good at turning trauma into something useful, much less beautiful; it’s why I don’t write about my childhood, except in heavily veiled ways. It’s why I never write about my teenage years. And I haven’t yet had the time to sit down with myself and sort out what this has done to me, refine what I’ve lived through this year into pure, raw feeling, feeling I can then use as fuel for better things. It certainly hasn’t helped that I’ve been indoors so much — I’m a Romantic, I need nature. And I’ve gotten very little of it.
HAS COVID-19 CHANGED HOW YOU VIEW AND/OR NAVIGATE THE WORLD? HOW SO?
Not really, no. I am as I have always been — only a little sharper. A little meaner, maybe. I’ve run clean out of patience for the small griefs of the day-to-day, and I’m much quicker to secede myself from any situation I do not care to be involved in. But I handle life, and indeed others, with much the same touch.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD WILL LOOK LIKE 5 YEARS FROM NOW? 10 YEARS FROM NOW? HOW DO YOU THINK THAT WILL AFFECT CREATIVE FIELDS SUCH AS WRITERS, ARTISTS, ETC.
To tell you the truth, I don’t imagine much will change. People are creatures of comfort, and the greatest comfort comes from habit. Even as the gaps between social classes widen, even as unrest swells and crests, even as we will see more and more riots over what in a just world would be completely avoidable shortages of basic necessities and loss of human life, most people will go on as they have been. I’d originally drafted a much more acidic response to this question — I harbour a lot of resentment over how the governments and powerful citizens of the First World have historically treated Eastern Europe, and Romania specifically, as alternately a pawn, a resource, a bargaining chip, an easy code for “criminal”, “evil”, “uneducated” in their movies and books, a destination for sex tourism, so on and so forth — but I don’t think it’d be particularly helpful to anyone to point out that water is wet, this late into what feels like the end.
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[contd.]
Still, I will say this: these gaps I’m speaking of, these mawing things and seeds of understandable revolt. I don’t think those who hold in their power the broken systems people are calling for a reform of will bother to consider more than the smallest, most meaningless of concessions. And what little we can do about it; we can only do in agonizingly slow increments. I guess what I’m saying is, arm your heart for great frustrations. Great disappointments, too.
Also, I think there will be a worldwide push for digitization. Remote work, remote education. In theory this is a wonderful idea, but in practice…I don’t think people realize just how many households don’t have access to the internet, let alone the devices required to actually make use of a cybernetic landscape. Many people barely have electricity. This to say nothing of those with health issues that mean they have trouble with virtual work or virtual classes. Without proper support for the disadvantaged, the only people who stand to benefit from the implementation of such tools are those who perhaps least need them.
But maybe in all this I’m being pessimistic. For our collective sake I hope that’s the case.
And as for art? Art will go on. It always does; it is the unruly child we birth whether or not we want to, a strange and lovely, lonely creature destined to outlast us. Cave paintings will be here even when all that’s left of our Earth are endless sand dunes. Cave poems, too. And as with any tragedy, a lot of drivel will arise from this — works that capitalize off cheap sentiment, countless stories and movies and songs of a transparently one-dimensional, calculated somberness, titled things like Corona, Apocalypse and You, Before, In Paradise. And there will be a few works of actual value, works which nobody will think to include in any pre-university curriculum, either because they will not be met with critical acclaim or because they will fail to fit the ruling class’s political agenda.
I also think we will see a surge in Absurdist and Surrealist art, which I for one welcome. And given twenty years, there will be memes in the MET. I’ll bet you a fiver there will be memes in the MET. Possibly under a name like “The Irony Movement of the 2010s” (and its successor, “The Post-irony Movement of the 2020s”), “Neo-Dada”, or indexed neatly as a subset of Postmodernism.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST REWARDING PART OF THIS YEAR?
The homemade food. I’ve been busy, yes, but busy and at home is very different from busy and away from it. Especially since much of what I like to cook requires marinating, sitting, simmering. A catlike cohabitation between myself and my ingredients.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF / YOUR WORK IN 5 YEARS?
See question six. I know I’m going somewhere, but where exactly that somewhere is, your guess is as good as mine. But I’ll be there — and I’ll show you something interesting. That much I can promise.
WHAT NEW SELF-CARE HABITS OR PRACTICE HAVE YOU PICKED UP SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE PANDEMIC?
I’ve become very liberal with the block button across all social medias, but that’s about it, really.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE WAY TO UNPLUG: BOOK: MOVIE: ETC.
I’ve spent a fair bit of my spare moments this year listening to my favorite bands and staring at the ceiling. You can fault 2020 for a lot of things, but you can’t fault it for its music. I’ve also found myself returning to comfort media, which has meant a lot of thumbing through the Discworld and quite a few rewatches of Studio Ghibli’s catalogue.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR MOST RECENT WORK AND WHERE PEOPLE CAN FIND IT.
Well, there’s a spooky little story the good folks at Red Bean Press have been kind enough to publish in the Halloween issue of their zine, and there is, of course, the content on my blog. I post new poems often.