New Book Spotlight
anOther Nemesis
A mini-interview with Ai Jiang, Angela Yuriko Smith, Eugen Bacon and Maxwell I. Gold
Tell us about your new book?
anOther Nemesis is a dark and thought-provoking poetry collection co-authored by the four of us: Ai Jiang, Angela Yuriko Smith, Eugen Bacon and Maxwell I. Gold. The miscellany unravels sinister speculative poems themed “The Colonizers”, “Primal Sources”, “Nameless Others” and “Crooked Ontologies”. It reconnoitres words as weapons, reshaping to the unworldly, casting transfigurations of that which was never meant to be changed, and featuring poignant behind-the-poems by each poet.
This extraordinary assemblage interrogates the ways cultures, language, information, and the lack thereof, are used as a means of control; how voices will always rise against systems that rewrite identity, suppress truth, and silence dissent; the distinctions of purity and diffusion and the infinite number of fates upon which our existence is simultaneously contingent; how Ubiquitous indifference can sometimes be the cruelest villain of them all…
What aspect of the book was the most fun to write?
Ai: Rather than fun, I think writing the poems was extremely cathartic, as well as the post notes that revealed what had unconsciously made its way into each poem. It’s always difficult to start, but once I do, there’s almost a state of natural flow.
Angela: The most fun part of writing anOther Nemesis was imagining how these mythological and archetypal forces might exist among us today, not as distant legends, but as living presences embedded in modern systems, bodies, and language. I loved exploring what roles these figures would serve now: how a god, a monster, or a nameless force might show up as bureaucracy, as inherited trauma, as cultural erasure, or even as quiet indifference.
There was something thrilling about taking the ancient and making it immediate. I really enjoyed having a part in letting mythology bleed into the contemporary world in unsettling, intimate ways. That imaginative freedom, that sense of transfiguration, was a real thrill. I was reshaping the unworldly into something recognizable, and letting poetry become the space where those dark transformations could speak.
Eugen: I wouldn’t especially call it fun, but poignant? I think all the prose poems talked to me deeply, but the section Colonizers—contemplating distinctions of purity and diffusion across races, the calibrations, ideologies and mutilations that others (and sometimes we) impose on us—snatched a particular impact. The post-poem reflections were also starkly revealing about what was in the subconscious.
Maxwell: I wouldn’t necessarily say fun, but cathartic; exploring the banality of the mundane and the indifferent not showing monsters for the sake of themselves, but how humans themselves can be monstrous. There’s a quote from Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and author of the memoir If This Is A Man, where he says “monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” That, to me, hits at the core of what this collection represents.
If there is one emotion or theme that you would hope that the reader connects with, what would that be?
Ai: Reclamation.
Angela: Vigilance, the courage to remain awake and aware in the presence of distortion.
Eugen: Indignation.
Maxwell: Truth
