Meet C.M. Gigliotti - dipity Community Spotlight Q&A Interview no. 15
learn more about writer C.M. Gigliotti 's work through dipity's global interview monthly spotlight feature
Introduction
C.M. Gigliotti is a multi-hyphenate artist who was born and raised in Connecticut and has lived in Germany since 2019. She holds an M.A. in English from Central Connecticut State University and a B.A. in Creative Writing from the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. Her work has appeared in Longreads, Beatdom, Vernacular, VIA (Voices in Italian Americana), DoveTales: Writing for Peace, and the inaugural edition of the Connecticut Literary Festival Anthology, among others. She has also served on the editorial boards of several journals. You may find her taking long neighborhood walks, dancing in one of Berlin's many clubs, refining her mushroom burger recipe, arguing against the overuse of the term "rock opera," and/or rewatching HBO's Succession.
Preces and Responses #40
for A. P.
They’re paper-thin valentines, fragile, susceptible to tears, but from the Hauskonzert to the Konzerthaus there’s nothing stronger. Pastors preach fortyfold newness at Fastenzeit and choirmasters teach their choristers to pray. A congregation, too, learns to fall silent, the better to receive a sound never before heard. O Lord, open Thou our lips... Poetry: a guesthouse for the mind when the body, without expectation, fails. We spend late November to early March in every kind of Finsternis, poisoned sick with the certainty that salvation is for someone else. O God, make speed to save us... Home: B-flat major, or the bells of Gethsemanekirche. There comes a time in every soprano’s life when she must abandon the consonants and give herself over to vowels, much the way a child does. O Lord, shew Thy mercy upon us... Power: nothing after Eden, only the sweat of the brow under museum lights. There are more delicate ways of blending tongues, balanced as altar horseshoes, but that is not the job of the poet. O Lord, save our nations... Brevity: a Kiez for everything, and everything in der Nähe. You found a good man plötzlich as your vocal entrance who thinks of calling out to his ill-fitting neighbor in the Rewe even if she may not hear him she still remembers him for it. Endue Thy ministers with righteousness... Tolerance: Stanford and Farmer and Wagner all getting coffee. Parents read inscriptions in dead languages to inattentive ears, revealing to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom. Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris... Commitment: in this season of departure, an advent is defiance made perfect. Fragments of half a lifetime ago return to us. We exchange them like wabi-sabi, seizing redemption. O God, make clean our hearts within us... Divinity: appointments and homecomings and traffic jams and phone calls. You have a word for everything, but your self is untranslatable, as is this little part of you of whom you too will become a part in our universe of unending dissonance, a pitch that will settle in your inner ear without your ever reading it.
Q: What is the backstory of this poem?
A friend inspired this poem as she prepared to have her first child—I ended up presenting her with it the day before she gave birth! I used the “preces and responses” of an Anglican choral evensong service for the poetic skeleton, as an homage to the choir she and I sing in together. The italicized phrases are exact quotes as sung by the cantor, and in place of the phrases sung by the group in reply, I inserted observations about the musical life of Berlin, friendship, family, religion, and so on. I felt it was important to include German and Latin throughout the text to adequately capture the multilingual, multicultural spaces this community inhabits. Poetry is a spiritual practice for me, and I wanted to pay explicit tribute to that constancy even as my views on organized religion change.
Q: What were your most recent publications?
I have new poems in midsummer magazine, The Erozine, and CommuterLit, and a short story in Scraps, a publication dedicated to previously rejected work.
Q: Where can others find more of your work?
My Linktree: (https://linktr.ee/ceciliagigliotti) features my latest work, which includes creative and academic writing and music reviews among other things.
Q: What else do you do outside of the writing or poetry community? OR What else are you working on or excited about in the future? Any fun hobbies?
I’ve never limited myself to one discipline. I’m a musician, photographer, and podcaster as well as a writer/editor: not only am I always working on something, but my projects are often in dialogue with one another. I also stay involved in theatre and dance communities. Living in Europe allows me to expand my language-learning horizons—I’ve studied Italian since high school and German since moving to Berlin in 2019, and I’ve retained a bit of Mandarin from middle school—so I’m increasingly interested in translation. Aside from those, I love to run, or take a cup of coffee on a walk.
Q: When did you begin writing? OR What or who sparked and inspired your writing journey?
I’ve composed poems since age three or four, at first with transcription help from my parents. It’s the genre that has been with me the longest. My father is a literature professor at a university, so I grew up on an eclectic array of work, some of it centuries or millennia old. I sat in on a class where he taught the sonnet, which became a standby form. I learned at least as much about iambic pentameter, enjambment, caesura, and all those poetic devices from Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley as I did from Shakespeare. And they were women speaking on women’s issues—and, in Wheatley’s case, issues of abolition and anti-racism—which showed me that poetry could be timely and topical and reflect the real world.
Q: What advice would you give aspiring poets, authors, or fellow writers in the community?
I think most advice ultimately falls short because it’s so dependent on context. But I will say this: writing beats submitting. No matter the status of your submission/publishing goals, keep writing—that’s the practice that will carry you through everything else!
Q: What book(s) would you recommend to others?
I’m currently absorbed in Your Silence Will Not Protect You, a collection of Audre Lorde’s essays, interviews, and poetry as curated by Reni Eddo-Lodge. I’m constantly recommending Danielle Evans’ The Office of Historical Corrections, a novella and short story collection: her characterization and world-building just blow me away.
Q: What was the last movie or TV show you watched or recommend others see in the community?
Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Myself (2022) is a dark comedy about the outlandish things people will do for recognition in our day and age. Not for the faint of stomach, but I was really sucked into the protagonist’s distorted inner world.
Q: Which poets, artists, or writers inspire you?
Carmen Maria Machado for the line she walks between magic and realism, Walt Whitman for his fearlessness in playing with language and finding the extraordinary in the mundane, Roxane Gay for her ability to honor joy and rage side by side, Ira Glass for his fabulous storytelling voice, and Edward Hopper for just being a classic. Oh, and my friend Bernadette Geyer, who not only writes wonderfully but models how to keep a artistic practice thriving in a very full life.
Q: If you were stuck on the moon with anyone or could pick your space flight partner, who would it be OR if you had the opportunity to portray any book character in the world and star in a movie adaptation of their life's story or another in a film, who would you choose?
I would portray Helmholtz Watson from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in a heartbeat (incidentally, he wouldn’t be a bad space-flight buddy either, but I have no desire to travel to space). He leapt off the page from my first read; I empathized deeply with him as a wordsmith who wants to give everything to their work but is unsure how to. His monologue at the end of Chapter 4 breaks my heart. I believe I could bring an authenticity to the character if I were to interpret him onscreen.
Magdalena Bay - The Beginning
Q: What's one of your favorite poems in existence?
Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard.” I’ve known it forever thanks to a live recording I heard as a child. It’s so unassuming on the page, much like its subject, but the images and turns of phrase are funny and moving. It’ll be a lifelong companion for me.
To Check Out More of C.M. Gigliotti’s Work
Circle back to some of her work mentioned and linked throughout this Q&A and be sure to visit her Substack.
Please Def Follow:
@c_m_giglio
on Instagram + Threads
on Substack: https://cosifaccioio.substack.com/
Any other thoughts, comments, or shares after reading the interview?
[Interview Processed By VFORROW]
Thank you so much, C.M. Gigliotti, for sharing and submitting to Dipity Lit Mag! ~ Jazz Marie Kaur (Vevna Forrow).
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