Gayathiri Kamalakanthan & Jeanne Desurmont

Can you tell us a little bit more about your art form?

I’m a playwright, a poet and also a collage artist. I like using the two forms together, like poetry and collage to create a visual and literary piece. I like exploring and testing the boundaries of different forms of art.

Let’s talk about your workshops. How long have you worked with Writerz and Scribez?

I’m a relatively new facilitator, I joined in December last year.

Have you had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop already?

Yes! I facilitated one online with some young people. We experimented with the work from other artists and we played with the shape of a poem and moved from the traditional verse, using dialogue, music, pictures… I really enjoyed myself. I hope the young people did too. It was a five week project and it was really nice to find out what the teenagers have done the week before and in their spare time, and what they’d come up with on their own.

What kind of activities do you like to engage with during your workshops?

I love breaking language and remoulding language to fit as opposed to needing humans to fit into language. Also, I love looking at the shapes of poems. How do the poems look on the page? How might we draw pictures with words directly on the page? What are we asking readers to do in their mind, are we asking them to build a picture? I really love workshops where we're thinking about performance and movement, and how we connect with the person that we're reading to.

With whom do you most enjoy working with?

With everyone, really, though I have more experience with young people. But I especially love working with people that are turned off by poetry, people who think that poetry is never for them. I really like starting from that kind of idea and then being like, “oh, but you just told me a story about how you like to water your plants yesterday… that’s poetry.”

What would be your dream workshop to facilitate?

Something around breaking boundaries or defining words. So maybe with a group of quite young people. And we're thinking about constructs, things like gender, race, money, and how these things have been made up, and also language. And I'd be thinking about how we could create our own words, to mirror what we feel from our own experiences. So, a workshop about making up words and there's no such thing as grammar or spelling. I think that could be really fun.

Thank you so much for your insights, I would love to attend your dream workshop! Now let’s dig a little into the more philosophical, artistic questions. Why is expressing yourself artistically important to you?

I think when we feel like we have the power to create worlds and ways of existing in the world, then we can envision what freedom can feel like and build a world where, for me, it’s where queer Brown and Black people experience freedom. Freedom that I don’t feel every single day in this current world. Art, whether it’s like rewriting new worlds, or collaging a more pleasurable world, is the way that we create that in real life as well. I feel like as artists, we can literally with words and images, redefine what beauty is.

Then, what is beauty in your art?

Defining beauty is something that is infinite and there’re so many freeing, liberating ways of being beautiful. Feeling that, embodying that, I think that beauty is very powerful because it means we remove shame, we remove conformity. And then we’re removing the power of oppression.

What did art bring you personally?

Until this year, I think, to really wake up and choose to be slow, and that slowness is one of the greatest gifts that I give myself to be. You don’t have to clear your inbox to zero, it’s not about making the most amount of money possible. And so, if I spend the whole day reading and rereading one poem that I really love and thinking about the artist's intentions, that is a day well spent.

And what do you think art could bring to a larger audience?

I think, building a society, and a community where people feel seen by lots of different artists. I’m not saying that I could create all the art in the world and that everyone would feel seen by my art. We need millions and millions of different artists so different people can find what they need and that specific art feels good about themselves.

When creating art, do you think more about the process or the end product?

I wrote a play last year called “Period Party” and it’s in development at the moment and the dream is that at some point, it will be produced somewhere. But for me, it’s actually the process over the last year that I really enjoy. So you have directors, dramaturgs, actors trying out the lines, hearing them come alive, seeing what works and what doesn't work. Doing a lot of cutting and rewriting. It really made me feel like I'm a writer. I actually want to do the writing, as opposed to only doing it for the end result. I feel like making art is a 90% process. And then if you are in the right place at the right time, and people respond to the work well, then, and 10% is having it produced or seen or exhibited, performed. And so you've really got to like 90% of the process, while it's happening come to this sort of 10% of the final showing.

Let’s shift from the deep and artsy questions to something more light. So first, where and how do you work best?

Definitely in my own home. I feel safe and also logistically it’s easier for me. And I enjoy working in complete silence, or I’ll have an album that I really like.

What is your favourite snack when you create?

Definitely tangerines, it’s like a burst of energy in your mouth

And your favourite way to stay hydrated?

I love tea. But I recently went to the dentist and they told me to just be mindful about how much tea I'm drinking because of stainings on my teeth. So is it useful: is it actually damaging to a point where my teeth can’t do their job properly or is it just an aesthetic thing?

Your guilty pleasure?

So you can get these like frozen chocolate croissants from the supermarket and you put them in the oven, and then they pop up and taste like freshly baked chocolate croissants. And I love them!

That sounds amazing! I’ll definitely try some. Thank you so much for your time and for chatting with me!