Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Tea Gerbeza, "How I Bend Into More" (Anstruther Books, 2025)

Date: September 24, 2025
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Tea Gerbeza

Overview

This episode features poet and multimedia artist Tea Gerbeza discussing her debut long poem, How I Bend Into More (Anstruther Books, 2025). The book is rooted in Gerbeza’s experience with scoliosis and reflects on embodiment, pain, ableism, trauma, and the intersecting aspects of her identity as queer, disabled, and neurodivergent. The conversation delves into the book’s formal innovations—particularly its use of visual shape and paper quilling—as well as its emotional and thematic depths.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origin and Structure of the Long Poem

• Lifelong Project:
  • Gerbeza describes writing this book "for most of my life," beginning with high school creative writing and evolving through undergraduate and MFA studies. (03:55)
• From Fragments to Unity:
  • It wasn’t until her MFA and conversations with poet friends and mentors that she realized her poems were "always connected to the next one." This realization led her to embrace the long poem form, moving away from perceiving each as a "distinctive poem." (03:55)
• Form as Narrative:
  • The long poem’s "off roads" and echoes mirror a "main, main tangents of a life"—honoring how experiences are "separate and yet bend and twist together." (07:49)

2. Paper Quilling and Visual Poetry

• Definition & Significance:
  • Paper quilling is "the art form of rolling and pinching and weaving paper strips into different shapes." In the book, these quilled shapes represent aspects of the body and identity, each strip a "piece of myself ... building into this sort of new body metaphorically." (07:49)
• Embodied Art:
  • Creating physical paper quilled shapes was "refreshing and restorative"—a form of tactile engagement when words alone were insufficient. The quilling also allowed Gerbeza to "finally be able to look and feel joy and reconnect with my body." (07:49, 11:40)
• Linking Visual to Emotional:
  • The process of quilling and placing shapes on the page paralleled bringing together disparate parts of identity—"to relish in the fact that all of these identities can safely live within me and connect to each other." (07:49)

3. Shape and the Stage of the Page

• Visual Metaphors:
  • Much of the book is concerned with the "shape" of things: from the literal curvature of Gerbeza’s spine, to the line on the page, to the petal or rose motifs in the visual layout of certain poems. (17:17)
• Physical & Poetic Resonance:
  • The repetition and placement of certain shapes (e.g. petals, rods, straight lines) echoes both the medical interventions on her body and deeper questions—"what kind of shape am I and why and what does reclaiming a shape sort of look like?" (17:17, 22:00)
• Integration in Craft:
  • Early drafts involved physically cutting up the text to embed within the visual images, emphasizing the tension between inflicted shapes (from ableism, surgery) and self-made, reclaimed shapes. (19:57, 22:00)

4. Themes of Connectedness and Disconnection

• Intersectional Identity:
  • The work explores how neurodivergence, queerness, chronic pain, and trauma are deeply interwoven—"one experience is shaped by another experience." (06:09)
• Medical and Societal Gazes:
  • Gerbeza discusses how medical ableism was obsessed with the "shape of her spine," and how shape became a site of both scrutiny and reclamation. (17:17, 22:00)
• Visibility and Self-Perception:
  • With scoliosis, "the thing people are ableist towards me about the most is something that I can't really see for myself." The book, and particularly the act of paper quilling, allowed her to "finally be able to look and feel joy and reconnect with my body." (11:40)

5. Vulnerability and Embodied Joy

• Nakedness and Power:
  • Including photos of her back was a profound act of vulnerability ("me taking those photos was very difficult") but also of empowerment—"there’s a sort of power in being vulnerable with myself that I wanted to explore." (25:30, 28:05)
• Vulnerability as Resistance:
  • The book makes a case for vulnerability as a "way that I was able to reclaim these things and find my way back into myself," pushing back against ableist and patriarchal norms. (25:30, 29:18)
• Turning Vulnerability to Joy:
  • Ultimately, "vulnerability can turn into joy. Like, at the end, being vulnerable with myself ... I wanted to really be vulnerable with myself." (25:30)

6. Future Projects

• New Long Poem:
  • Gerbeza is working on another long poem about her family's migration from Yugoslavia to Canada, exploring post memory and intergenerational trauma—especially the experience of her mother being pregnant during war. (34:10)
• Essays and Friendship Poems:
  • She’s also collecting essays and writing about "the complexities of queer and disabled friendships," describing them as "love poems to my friends." (35:19)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Long Poems:
  • "The poem, there was too many tangents and too many connections for any of the poems to be distinct from each other ... the way that you have to read it all to understand the story rather than reading distinct poems ... is really essential to the book." (03:55, Gerbeza)
• On Paper Quilling as Metaphor:
  • "I imagined them to be literally pieces of myself or pieces of my body that I myself was building into this sort of new body metaphorically." (07:49, Gerbeza)
• On Vulnerability:
  • "In this sort of act of extreme vulnerability of being naked with myself and capturing that on camera ... that’s when I sort of thought to myself, like, this is a powerful thing for me to do." (28:05, Gerbeza)
• On Shape and Ableism:
  • "A lot of my experience with external ableism was so focused on the shape of my body ... the main concern was like, what will the shape of her spine be? What will the shape of her body be? It has to be perfect. It has to cure her. And lo and behold, it didn’t." (17:17, Gerbeza)
• On Friendship Poems:
  • "I want folks to celebrate their friends just as much as their romantic partners because they’re so essential to our lives and our survival." (36:54, Gerbeza)
• Host’s Response to Vulnerability:
  • "It took my breath away ... for me it was, oh, such vulnerability. I don’t think I could do that. And I was like, well, maybe you should ... and just sit there with this picture of your back and not look away from it." (29:18, Holly Gattery)

Important Timestamps

• 01:32 — Introduction of guest and book; summary of themes
• 03:55 — Gerbeza discusses origins as a long poem and interconnectedness of the book’s parts
• 07:49 — Explanation of paper quilling and its metaphorical significance
• 12:32 — Reflection on frustration, control, and interconnectedness of body and mind
• 17:17 — Discussion of visual layout, shapes, and physical resonance with disability and selfhood
• 22:00 — Surgery’s impact; reclaiming shape and body
• 25:30 — Vulnerability in writing, inclusion of back photos, and healing
• 28:05 — Power and emotional process behind self-photography and final movement of the book
• 32:11 — Gerbeza reads from the book’s opening poem
• 34:10 — Current and upcoming projects: new long poem, essays, and friendship poems
• 36:54 — On friendship and its literary celebration

Overall Tone and Style

The episode’s tone is intimate, thoughtful, and artistically playful. Holly Gattery, the host, brings both scholarly and personal engagement, frequently reflecting on her own reading experiences and vulnerabilities. Tea Gerbeza responds candidly, blending poetic insight, emotional honesty, and craft talk.

Recommended for Listeners Who

• Are interested in contemporary poetry and visual forms
• Appreciate candid discussions about disability, identity, and trauma
• Value poetic playfulness and vulnerability as artistic strategies
• Want insights into multimodal and embodied creative practices