Aisha Sasha John, "total: poems" (Random House, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Aisha Sasha John, "total: poems" (Random House, 2025)
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Aisha Sasha John
Date: October 9, 2025

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Overview

This episode features Holly Gattery in conversation with acclaimed poet, dancer, and performer Aisha Sasha John about her 2025 poetry collection, total: poems. The discussion explores John's innovative approach to poetic form, the role of receptivity in her artistic process, the spiritual and quotidian elements running through her work, and her ongoing engagement with risk and vulnerability. The conversation is richly layered, delving into the playful, deconstructive, and mystical dimensions of John’s poetry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

A Book that Reignites Creative Play

• [01:53] Holly Gattery reflects on how total: poems reignited her own sense of creative play and freedom with language:

  "When I was done reading I wanted to go play in a sandbox and like build things and just putter around with words and language and see what becomes."

• The book is praised for its “gorgeous and breathtaking” refusal of poetic convention.

Receptivity as Creative Method

• [02:40] Aisha Sasha John shares her philosophy of “energetic economy” in writing:

  "There's like an entity of aliveness that we get access to through reading...and we can pass it on."

• [05:13] John details her receptive approach:

  "Both of my practices are receptive practices...I try to, like, merely report what arises in my consciousness...I just try and create the conditions where I can, like, listen really well."

• The host and guest agree on the transformative power of listening and being receptive, both in art and life.

Deconstruction, Play & the Intrinsic Sense of Language

• [08:31] John reframes language and poetic form:

  "I'm really into language's adequacy. We do a...there's so much that we can accomplish with phrases." "I used to call this practice like a nouning...It had to be the present tense. So it had to be in the moment, and it had to be. Never have thought or felt of before..."

• The process is likened to a meditation practice, capturing “novel experiences” through present-moment awareness and mindful listening.
• total uses fragments and juxtaposition rather than traditional sentences to allow meaning to emerge from how the parts "vibrate against each other" ([08:31]–[11:32]).

Capitalization & Formal Experiment

• [12:43] John discusses the origin of her “all caps” poems:

  "The capitalized poems have a different origin place than the ones that aren't...the all caps lines...made it like very symmetrical, very uniform. And it kind of gives me the vibe of like a ledger—like this on and on and on."

• She distinguishes proclamation from shouting:

  "To me they don't seem like they're yelling, but so much as proclaiming. But...a lot of the material in those all caps poems are like very...banal, like very quotidian experiences."

• This tension between amplified form and intimate content is highlighted as a significant aspect of the book’s materiality ([14:02]–[15:18]).
• [17:37] Gattery interprets the capitalization as “a form of purity of thought...reflecting not...being delivered to us or with the intention of it, you know, changed necessarily.”

Spiritual Life Writing & Finding the Sacred in the Everyday

• [19:14] John identifies her practices as spiritual:

  “Total is a work of contemporary mysticism. Because I think that's what it is for me. It's like I'm contending with being.”

• The book leverages “capital P Presence” made available through absence and loss.
• John references the “divinity of the everyday” as central to her poetics:

  “The way that we can celebrate and find beauty and miracle in every single element of reality, including the most painful. It's like breakup. Praise God. You know, it's like all of these things are available to be loved.”

• [22:06] Gattery strongly resonates, describing the work as having “so much faith, just faith in…every single thing… the daily sacredness.”

Performance, Risk, and New Work

• [23:16] John previews her next book, Trembling:

  "It's sort of tracking my mother's dementia...I am kind of really sinking into that in this work and wanting to really give myself—not...permission—it's like my job is to include what I'm afraid of including." "Having one's finger on what one is risking is what gives an artist their, like, voice."

• [25:08] Gattery responds emotionally, emphasizing the importance of risk in art:

  “If I'm not risking anything, I don't want to say anything...if I'm going to contribute to the noise, I better be...there better be something that's on the line for me doing it.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On poetic aliveness:
  • Aisha Sasha John [02:40]:

    "...It feels like there's like an entity of aliveness that we get access to through reading, also through life, but also through reading. And we can pass it on."

• On listening as creation:
  • Aisha Sasha John [05:13]:

    "I don't generate what arises in my consciousness. I just try and create the conditions where I can, like, listen really well."

• Poetic logic & fragments:
  • Aisha Sasha John [08:31]:

    "Often they're sensational. And so there is a way that I'm...sometimes translating sensation into language. But...I think, because I have this long poetry practice...often I'm not translating. It arrives to me in language."

• On capitalization and ‘proclamation’:
  • Aisha Sasha John [14:02]:

    "To me they don't seem like they're yelling, but so much as proclaiming...there's this juxtaposition between the form, this like amplified form, and the sort of quietness...of what's being said."

• Spiritual ethos:
  • Aisha Sasha John [19:31]:

    "Total is a work of contemporary mysticism...loss, how grief creates opportunities to be closer to God." "Like drinking a cup of water. Praise God. And, like, I think that's very much my poetics and my kind of ethos. Like the cat leaves a nub of ginger in the bed. Praise God."

• On artistic risk:
  • Aisha Sasha John [23:16]:

    "Having one's finger on what one is risking is what gives an artist their, like, voice."

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Key Timestamps

• 01:29 – Introduction: Host’s praise for the book’s transformative impact
• 04:51 – John’s background & artistic philosophy
• 05:13 – Receptivity and authorship in creative practice
• 08:31 – Deconstruction, play, and intuition in poetic language
• 12:43 – Capitalization, Tumblr origins, and material tension in “all caps” poems
• 17:37 – Host describes capitalization as “purity of thought”; John agrees
• 18:02 – John reads a sample poem from total: poems
• 19:14 – Spirituality, contemporary mysticism, and honoring the everyday
• 23:16 – John introduces her next book, Trembling, and the role of risk
• 25:08 – Host and guest reflect on vulnerability and risk as central to art

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Sample Poem (Read by Aisha Sasha John at [18:02])

"How did a nub of ginger end up in the bed? Answer the cat. When I said I have to be fibrous so as not to be consumed, I was not even fucking kidding. FYI, I am bleeding from my pussy Diva cat Kefir crazy cat. To the road. The roar. Everything urgent. ARR 401 Richmond. Ugh. Figured out what a gallery is. Does they are like churches where one can purchase the furniture. Does the cat fried egg understand me as a large coconut smelling cat?"

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Conclusion

This insightful episode offers both a vibrant introduction to Aisha Sasha John’s total: poems and a wide-ranging conversation about poetry’s possibilities, the sacredness of daily life, the nuance of form, creative risk, and the aesthetics of receptivity. It’s a compelling listen for anyone interested in contemporary poetry, process, and the intersections of art, spirituality, and vulnerability.

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Transcript

[Holly Gattery]

When did making plans get this complicated?

[Aisha Sasha John]

It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together.

[Holly Gattery]

Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets. Mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption.

[Aisha Sasha John]

It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[Announcer]

Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Upgrade your laundry routine with a durable and reliable Maytag laundry pair at Lowe's. Like the new Maytag washer and dryer with performance enhanced stain fighting power designed to cut through serious dirt and grime. And what's great is this laundry pair is in stock and ready for delivery when you need it the most. Don't miss out. Shop Maytag in store or online today at Lowe's. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Holly Gattery]

Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I am your host, Holly Gattery, and I am really excited to be joined today by Aisha Sasha John, whose fabulous new collection of poetry defies any kind of easy definition I could possibly try to give you and and is gorgeous and breathtaking. Aisha, welcome to the show.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Holly Gattery]

I have never read anything like this and I read a lot and I was saying to a friend that your book is one of those books of poetry that when I was done reading I wanted to go play in a sandbox and like build things and just putter around with words and language and see what becomes like. It really brought me back to why I started writing poetry in the first place. And it was to explore, to have fun, to reach parts of myself and understandings of the world that I didn't even think possible. And your book is just magical. So thank you so much for agreeing to join me today to talk about it.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Thank you so. Thank you so much and thanks for saying that. I resonate with the excitement that reading can bring. 1 and it's like the spirit gets alive in us and then we want to write and then we do write and then we pass on that spirit to others. So it feels like there's like an entity of aliveness that we get access to through reading, also through life, but also through reading. And. And we can pass it on. So I'm like, I'm really happy to be a part of the, like, economy. That energetic economy. Yeah.

[Holly Gattery]

I brought your book to the last workshop that I hosted as part of my poet Laureate position. And I used it as an example of how to let go in your brain of anything you think poetry can be. Because I. So many people I work with who are curious about poetry, but think it's not for them. All due respect to John Keats, I love John Keats. I can recite two of his poems by heart. But John Keats is not everybody's Jesus. Right. Like, he. He's not going to resound with everyone, and not everyone is going to be that kind of writer. And your book dismantles, in my opinion, everything that you think you should do and does its own thing and does it so beautifully. So for people who don't know about Aisha and her work, she is a performer, a choreographer, and a poet. She is the author of I have to Live, which was published by McLellan & Stewart in 2017 and a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize for Thou, Another gorgeous book published by the Resplendent Book Hug Press in 2014, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Re Lit Poetry Award. The Shining Material, which is also Book Hug and the Chapbook to Stand at a Precipice Alone and Repeat what is Whispered, which was with Ugly Duckling Press. That is an amazing title.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Yeah.

[Holly Gattery]

As a dance artist, Aisha is interested in performance as a site of rehearsing being, and in the power of reception as creative methodology. I want to ask you about that because it feels like the power of reception as creative methodology. I know it says as a dancer, but it feels like that could be applied to this book as well.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I was just actually thinking, when you mentioned Keats, I was just thinking about how, you know, I think of poetry or art in general as being responsive. Responsive to the day, to the times, to the being, to a person's being. And if poetry should change because life is changing and the ways we live are changing, and the people who are writing poetry are also changing. And so the experiences that are being written of require new forms. And so it makes sense that the form of my. This is relevant to me, but also like many other people that like that the form is new because the being is new. Like, I'm. I've only been Here, now. And that's true of every single person. And that's why I think. I think that's, you know, that's where the concept of the voice comes from. But, yeah, no, both of my practices are receptive practices, and I am obvious, I am author of them. But I also feel like I'm like a curator in a sense, because I try to, like, merely report and what arises, like, in my consciousness. And so I don't. I don't generate what arises in my consciousness. It. I just try and create the conditions where I can, like, listen really well. And then the. The authorship or the. The. The writing comes in in terms of allowing what is what arises to exist not. And making choices about how to frame it. I think I answered your question.

[Holly Gattery]

You did. And I adore what you said about reception and being receptive to this stuff. And what I immediately thought when you said that was, imagine how much of a better place this world would be if people lived in a state of reception. Instead of thinking about, what am I going to say next? That, you know, that would be. I mean, it'd be very novel. And I think. I think we'd all be happier. What I want to get into now is deconstruction. Because I'd love for you to tell us about deconstruction of language and your prioritization of play and intrinsic sense. Because I really. There were certain turns of phrases and, you know, just. Just lines in your book where I'm like, that makes total sense. But if you asked me to explain to you why it makes sense, it would take me a page. But in two, three words, you have made intrinsic sense, that really beautiful intrinsic logic that I feel like poetry can capture. I won't argue better than anything else, but I will argue at least as well as anything else.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm trying to. Or I see art as like a place of practicing, like intuitive. The kind of intuitive science or something. So the way that we experience. I said the objects of my consciousness. But, like, what really are the objects of my consciousness? Like, often they're sensational. And so there is a way that I'm. Sometimes I'm translating sensation into language. But something that is true about me and my mind, I think, because I have this long poetry practice is that often I'm not translating. It arrives to me as in language. A lot of people talk about, like, oh, language is so inadequate. And I'm just like. I'm really into languages adequacy. We do a. I feel like there's so much that we can accomplish with phrases. And the fragment is one of the. I mean, in lyric poetry, the line is the unit of lyric poetry. I would say in total. I mean, there's kind of more than one type of poem in total, but in the all caps poems, and there's a bunch of them, these fragments or phrases. I used to call this practice like a nouning because I was like. It was an act of nomenclature. Like, I was like naming whatever novel thing occurred to me. So there was this. That was the constraint. It had to be the present tense. So it had to be in the moment, and it had to be. Never have thought or felt of before in the way that it was. So I was interested in documenting novel experiences. And that present moment ness is a kind of mindfulness. It's like almost like a kind of meditation practice that I was doing. And so when you say deconstruction, it's. It's like I didn't deconstruct anything. It's more like I was dealing with like, phonemes. I don't know if that's the word, but I was dealing with like, the. The parts as they appeared and not putting the parts, gathering the fragments and allowing them to speak in terms of their juxtaposition rather than making sentences, letting the parts sort of like vibrate against each other.

[Holly Gattery]

So it might be better for me to say you deconstructed my expectations of what I thought I expected. Not so much that you were anything. Yeah, I think. I think that might be more accurate because, yeah, if you were purposely doing anything and this is your practices and this is how you interact and receive, then for me, it was a. Definitely a deconstructing of what I was expecting when I opened the book. And tell you the truth, I mean, I didn't. I didn't think I came to a book with this book or any book. I try not to come with much of anything. But no matter what you do, and I did. So I was gonna talk to you next about. Well, you, You, You. You did talk about it a bit, but about the capitalization of words in your poems and some, again, the capitalized poems that are almost entirely capitalized. Was there anything that you were thinking? I mean, maybe you're not thinking about this at all. I know when I write, I'm not really thinking at all about what someone who reads this might think. But if you did, was there anything you did want the capitalization to reflect to readers?

[Aisha Sasha John]

The capitalized poems have a different origin place than the ones that aren't capitalized. The capitalized poems were born on my Tumblr, which most people know is an online blog platform, social media platform. And you can, you can, you like Twitter is like most of what I don't use Twitter or X, but you can just use text. And so I would write these things, these lines on my Tumblr and I just thought putting them in all caps gave it like a kind of uniformity that I was interested in. So that it. And because it's a Tumblr page, it's like this sort of endless scroll. So there was something about the uniformity of these all caps lines that made it like very symmetrical, very uniform. And it kind of gives me the vibe of like a ledger like this on and on and on. And yeah, so I, I had it like that on the Tumblr. And when I would import these from the Tumblr into like a, you know, a word doc, I just kept them all caps.

[Holly Gattery]

And.

[Aisha Sasha John]

It felt like important to formally, I think for myself, distinguish them from the other poems that had different, that were composed in other ways. But yeah, I was talking about this in another interview very recently, and that interviewer thought of them as yelling. And to me they don't seem like they're yelling, but so much as proclaiming. But it's true that normally we think of something being proclaimed as something very important. And a lot of the material in those all caps poems are like very rather banal, like very quotidian experiences. And so if anything, they're like amplifying something that is like quite intimate sometimes. So there's this juxtaposition between the form, this like amplified form and the sort of quietness or the intimacy and the privacy and the interiority of what's being said. So, yeah, I feel like there's like a, a form, material, materiality, tension going on in those poems.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, as soon as you said that the interviewer thought you were yelling, I immediately reopened the book to one of the dog eared pages. I dog ear all my books. They're my books now. I can do what I want with them. I know some people are categorically against them, but I don't care. I'm not giving these books to anyone else. And I was, I was immediately struck by that. I thought, okay, well, I can understand that in a way because, you know, when you have, you know, somebody on social media, you know, just, you know, capping everything, you know, it can sometimes kind of come across as yellow. But I, I didn't have that reaction to your poems. I Thought, okay, well why? And then I opened it to bediling and I thought to myself, and this poem ends with that the opposite of abandon is cherished. So I can understand if you just hear somebody has a poem all in caps that it may seem yelly, but I think once you read your poems and that would banish from your brain because it's so gentle and so pure. And what I interpreted the caps as was being unconcerned with the effort of, you know, the arguably inconsequential effort of lowercase uppercase while thinking something like that mechanical of, of putting something in uppercase, shifting it or not. That that is a, that is a movement that does not reflect how these words would come to your brain because you wouldn't be doing that at all. You wouldn't put it, be putting the effort into it at all. So I took it as a form of purity of thought that it was reflecting not. And again, I didn't. Nobody told me that, you know, there were capitalized, capitalized poems before I picked up the book. So I came to them, just opening it and seeing it. And my first was not, oh, these are yelly or these are angry or these are shouting, but that this is just a organic thought that is not, it's, it's, it's not, it's not being delivered to us or with the intention of it, you know, changed necessarily. But you know, that, that was my interpretation or how I, I guess I thought of it.

[Aisha Sasha John]

That resonates with me as well. What, how you're framing that. That resonates with me.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're talking a lot about your poems and then I think now is a really good time for me to ask you to read to us from your collection so our listeners can get an idea beyond that one line I read of what, what this book is like, which is hard to do with one poem because these poems move a lot, but it'll give at least a sampler.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Okay. How did a nub of ginger end up in the bed? Answer the cat. When I said I have to be fibrous so as not to be consumed, I was not even fucking kidding. FYI, I am bleeding from my pussy Diva cat Kefir crazy cat. To the road. The roar. Everything urgent. ARR 401 Richmond. Ugh. Figured out what a gallery is. Does they are like churches where one can purchase the furniture. Does the cat fried egg understand me as a large coconut smelling cat?

[Holly Gattery]

Thank you. I remember the ginger one very well because I remember my cat leaves lots of stuff in my bed. And I was looking at him like, yes. So I'm a big fan of spiritual life writing, and I'm really interested in spiritual lighting of all kinds. And I felt it bubbling it in. An undercurrent of it in your work. And I was wondering if you would talk to us about how spiritual. Spiritual life writing plays out in your work. If you would say it does at all. But your work felt deeply spiritual to me. Maybe this is something I'm bringing with me to the work.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Yeah, I mean. No, I think it's there. I mean, I do think of all of my art practices as spiritual practices. And I. Months after the book was written and published.

[Holly Gattery]

Sorry.

[Aisha Sasha John]

Yeah, months after the book was published, I wrote a blurb and I was like, total is a work of contemporary mysticism. Because I think that's what it is for me. It's like I'm contending with being. And I. This notion of total has to do with. I mean, it has to do with many things, but one of them is the kind of capital P presence that is only possible. I don't know if it's only possible. That is available in absence. The book talks about the desert, and I was thinking of, you know, Moses in the desert and. Yeah. Just how loss, how grief creates. Creates opportunities to be closer to God. And I think also this sort of quotidian. What's the word concern that Total has, which to me is very lunar in terms of astrology. Like, what. What the moon rules in astrology, it's like. It's the divinity of the everyday, of the small things of the cat. Like, there's a beautiful poem by this artist. I think it's Paul Theck. I think his last name is. I could be mispronouncing it, but the poem goes like, eating a sandwich. Praise God. Taking a walk. Praise God. Like drinking a cup of water. Praise God. And, like, I think that's very much my poetics and my kind of ethos. Like the cat leaves a nub of ginger in the bed. Praise God. The cat regurgitates. Praise God. I'm sad today. Praise Jesus. And it's not necessarily Jesus. I'm not a Christian, though I was raised as a Christian. But the way that we can celebrate and find beauty and miracle in every single element of reality, including the most painful. It's like breakup. Praise God. You know, it's like all of these things are available to be loved.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, I. I think that's. I was raised Islamic. I always. I think I tell people now I'm Culturally Islamic. Like, I don't do. I don't eat pork and stuff, but I. I don't know. But I think. I don't know if it was being raised that way or if it's just the way that I am. But, you know, spiritual life writing, which I. It's this term that I. People sometimes like, back away from slowly, but really, it really just means for me, writing that addresses directly or indirectly any element of faith. And I don't mean faith necessarily religiously, but in. In your book, I felt so much faith, just faith in. In every single thing, as you said, the daily sacredness. And that's what I was responding to because often when I speak to people at spiritual life writing, they think I'm going to start talking about religious texts. And that's not what I'm talking about at all. I mean, it can be. It can be for certain people, it can be, but that's not necessarily what I'm talking about. And there's this big spectrum of it. So I really appreciate your answer. My final question for you, and this can apply to any of your artistic practices that you'd like to share about, but what are you working on now?

[Aisha Sasha John]

I'm working on a book called Trembling, and it's sort of tracking my mother's dementia, and she's got Lewy Body dementia, slash Parkinson's. And so she has, like, tremors in her hands. And for the. When it started to happen, I would call her and ask. She lives in Vancouver. I'm in trod. Call her and ask her how she's doing. And she'd be like, oh, my hand's trembling. And so the word trembling just took on this particular kind of note for me. I started paying attention to it and also thinking about trembling as, like, the somatics in terms of the semantics of fear. And I think I'm really interested in risk as an artist or I think definitely, I think risk is sort of the material of performance. And I think risk is what gives. Having one's finger on what one is risking is what gives an artist their, like, voice. And so I am kind of really sinking into that in this work and wanting to really give myself not. It's not even about giving myself permission. It's like my job is to include what I'm afraid of including. And to be honest, that's always kind of what I say. And somehow with trembling, it's like I've just got my eye on that. Even, like, really, really, really, really, really concretely, like, to embarrass myself in the service of telling my truth.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, I love what you just said so much. What you of what you say is infinitely quotable. But having one's finger on what one is risking, like, I got chills when you said that. And that resounds with me so much because if I'm not risking anything, I don't want to say anything. I mean, in my daily life, I say a lot of things where I'm not risking anything. I'm probably just annoying people. But and at least when I write, if I'm not risking something, I don't see the point in saying it because a lot there's already enough said that just doesn't need to be said. And there's enough noise. It doesn't need to be there. But if I'm going to contribute to the noise, I better be better be there better be something that I'm that's on the line for me doing it. And so I really appreciate that. Well, Aisha, thank you so much for joining us today on NBN to talk about your wonderful book Total, your collection of poems, the which is available wherever books are bought or borrowed and is published by McLellan & Stewart and was released in 2025. Thank you so much again, Aisha. Thank you.

[Announcer]

Thank.

[Holly Gattery]

You.