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DeeSoul Carson: You know, if y’all don’t get anything out of this episode, have beef with more poets
Victoria Mbabazi: Yes. And I think my issue is that I wish that I had more beefs, but instead I was just a victim screaming, you know? But…
DC: And we, and we can change that.
VM: We can change that! Let’s have more, what is the word? Partial, like impartial beef?
DC: Impartial, yeah.
VM: Yeah, impartial beefs. Where, both sides — who cares? But the work is great. I love that. That’s what I want.
DC: What we need. What we need.
VM: Yeah.
DC: Hello, poets of the internet. I’m DeeSoul Carson, and this is O, Word?, the podcast interested in craft, poets, their obsessions, and the things that keep them writing. Today’s episode is O, Persona! I’m here today with my dear friend, Victoria Mbabazi.
Victoria’s work can be found in several literary journals. They have two chapbook collections, chapbook, through Anstruther Press, published in 2021, and Flip from Knife Fork Books in 2022. Both are sold out. However, their first full length poetry collection, The Siren in the Twelfth House, from Palimpsest Press, 2024 is available where books are sold. Their second poetry collection, The Stone Who Strapped Me, will be available with Arsenal Pulp Press in Spring 2027. Not so long ago, they moved to the mysterious land of Toronto, Canada.
Victoria, hello!
VM: Hiiiiii.
DC: How are you?
VM: I’m good. How are you?
DC: Good. You know, you’ve moved so far away from us, over to Canada, but glad to be connected in this virtual space. Are you getting a lot of the cold up there too from this winter storm?
VM: What do you think? If you think that yours is bad, don’t you think it’s worse further…
DC: I don’t know what the extent of the storm is. Like, I don’t know how far up the, whatever it went.
VM: I could… I was unable to go to work the other day, because the snow was quite bad. I was surprised there was snow in New York, ‘cause last time I checked it was a tropical zone. So I guess the “island gyal” era is done for New York.
DC: I always like to start this podcast with a definition. So could you tell us in your own words, what is persona?
VM: I think if I were to say what persona is for me, it’s like the way I’ll be writing, like it’s very, it’s fleeting. It’s just like the thing I wanna take on in that moment. Like how Beyonce was, briefly, Sasha Fierce. I’m briefly, in this moment, writing this way.
DC: Okay. So it’s like this kind of fleeting embodiment sort of thing, like an alter ego?
VM: Yes.
DC: What draws you to that? How would you characterize the way that it shows up in your work? Because I am, I’m thinking of specifically, like I, I just finished reading through the full collection, [The] Siren in the Twelfth House, and I mean, there’s persona, like the whole book is kind of an extended persona of the siren.
And then there’s kind of these more specific instances of persona or heightened persona, if you want to describe it that way, that happens throughout the book. And so I’m wondering, how do you feel about the way that it shows up for you?
VM: So in The Siren in the Twelfth House specifically, I think that I wanted to embody like my most vulnerable, like, raw self. So for me, the symbol of Pisces, like as the water sign, it has no shell. So it’s hard to, like, reach, it’s most emotional and it’s not great at communicating emotion.
So it’s just through action and everything is personified or like, I don’t know if the word is objectified, but like, it just becomes, like, a physical space. So I just wanted to make a room of my feelings, and of a certain time period. So for me, the persona there was, if I was unmedicated, I think that that’s how I would describe it.
DC: I mean, that’s really interesting thinking about the persona of the self, so it’s not even just like you’re embodying, like, another voice. It’s like, it’s me at a different point in time, what you’re saying, me at a different point in time, like that’s another kind of persona.
DC: I like what you’re saying also about the raw self. Do you ever feel like using persona in a poem is a mask or do you ever feel like it’s maybe like a removal of a mask?
VM: I think it can be both. Like I think, like, sometimes when I’m writing a poem, and I wanna be, like, angrier. I think that it could be like a putting on of a mask because truthfully, most feelings that I feel are some form of grief. Like, when it comes to writing poems that are emotionally devastating, or piercing. So if I am putting on an angrier or cheekier, it’s in response to something like, some kind of betrayal or boundary or someone overpassing a boundary, then that would be the way that I go about it. Either if I’m removing the mask, it’s at it’s most sad, or if I’m putting on, it’s at its most comical or most angry.
DC: When I think about your work, and I think about the way that I see persona happening in your work, I think about it as an extension of intimacy. So the intimacy that we share with friends, the intimacy that we share with enemies, the intimacy writers share with their speakers that may or may not exactly be themselves. And so I’m wondering how you feel like persona or occupying these different valences of a self colors intimacy in your work?
VM: The question I’m always asking is what it means to be intimate. And then I think what the persona becomes is someone who knows what that means. So I’ve made a decision on what intimacy is or what love is in a poem, and then I go about defining it through my actions throughout the poem.
And then I think that The Siren in the Twelfth House was basically like a persona who’s decided they truly don’t know, and they’re hoping to know throughout, and then they are wrong at each turn as the houses keep breaking down, until they realize that love has to be some form of healing.
DC: Do you feel like persona gives you space to contradict yourself?
VM: Yeah, ‘cause I think that I love to just tell people what I like, what I could just be like, I’m being direct and I’m telling you what it is. Even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter ‘cause we’re living in my world right now. And it’s exactly what I said because I’ve decided, so it doesn’t really matter if I’m right or wrong because, it’s the world that I’ve built within a poem. So I do think it gives me permission to be wrong because no matter if I’m wrong or right, I am right. ‘Cause it just has to define the rules of what I’m writing right now.
DC: Something that’s also coming to me is, embodiment not just as a voice, but also like embodiment of certain forms. So I know your collection is dealing with astrology and it’s dealing not just with the signs, but it’s also dealing with the houses. It’s dealing with relationships between different signs and houses and, like, kind of the relationships that happened there. And because of that, I know a lot of your poems take different kinds of forms. So like you have one that’s in the form of a psychiatric assessment, or there’s one in the form of a game night, or there’s one in the form of I think, it’s like, it’s two signs, at the movies writing a play.
VM: Yeah.
DC: And so I’m wondering, when we’re thinking not just about where do the voices come from, but how does it feel … because I feel like I know your usual style. If I had to like, pick out poems, it’s like this poems, there’s not punctuation. They’re kind of, they’re enjambed in the middle of lines, so you kind of have to get a feel for the rhythm of the line as opposed to like it being laid out for you. And so, and so those moments of other kind of nonce forms, created forms, really stick out to me. I wonder what it’s like going into those, or if you feel anything going into them, versus like what your usual “voice” is.
VM: Sometimes I find form really interesting, especially when I’m reading prose truthfully. Like I love when a book is in letters or, I think I read this book when I [was] way younger that was just a series of phone conversations. Like, it was just playing telephone with a bunch of different people. So when it comes to poems, with playing with form, I love when it’s just an ordinary thing that becomes a poem, you know, you do that too, with the video game, like with the Hades video game, which is really cool.
So for me, I do feel a way because I sometimes I feel trapped by form. Like with the “Ninth House Stellium” poem, it’s just not, it’s just not who I am. Usually, I’m very stream of consciousness. But when it comes to, like, writing a play at the movies, it’s just absurdist. So it’s just stupid. So it feels really in my wheelhouse. It feels like I’m moving more into prose, which also in a way feels really in my wheelhouse. Like it’s not something I get to do a lot.
And I felt like, with this book, it felt like a draft of everything I want to do now, where I get to just try something because Jim Johnstone was just like, “I like what you do, do what you want.” And then I just did. I was very uncensored and I was doing what I want, and I just wanted to see if it worked. I only feel trapped if it’s quite traditional. If anything, it gives me, like, a good vehicle if I’m excited about what the form is.
DC: Do you feel like, when you’re doing these poems, it takes a lot of research on any of the particular — I know you’re already pretty knowledgeable about astrology and such — but for any of the poems that you’re writing, do you feel like it ever takes you doing a lot of research, background research to get the right kind of voice that you’re looking for?
VM: Research-wise with poems, it depends. Like for the signs, like for the houses in particular, I wanted to match a theme in each house in a dark way that breaks it or a positive way that rebuilds it. And that was really hard for some of the houses; there’s so many themes, like for the game night house, because the fifth house in particular is a pretty joyous house. It’s the house of play. It’s kids, and then there was suddenly gambling. I was like, that was suddenly like, I was like, okay, cool. That can be, like, gambling with my life or something. And I’m like, all of a sudden it’s not fun anymore, you know, games over.
So I had to do a lot of relearning on certain astrological aspects and how to subvert them. And to do that, you have to understand them first. And same with, like, aspects, because that was new to me at the time, which is really what made me wanna write the book. That required a lot of research, just making sure that my poem actually resonated with how this aspect functions.
It’s hard ‘cause with love poems or when poems are really intimate, people don’t really think about that. You’re like, oh, here’s all of my feelings. This person just thinking about feelings. And astrology too, like people don’t take it very seriously because they think it’s like a religious belief instead of, like, math, honestly.
DC: I think of it as like a guidepost. It’s less so much like a dogma and more sense like… I don’t know if probabilities are like the right word, but…
VM: Yeah. It’s all probabilities. It’s all probabilities. It’s also like, it’s degrees, it’s all angles. It’s just like, where is the sky today? And what this is, it’s all interpretive. It’s not religious in that way.
DC: I find it interesting how some people are so resistant to believing that they can be influenced by things outside of themselves. Like there’s things that I’m like… I think it’s nice to think about how we interact in the universe.
VM: Yeah.
DC: Like I don’t believe that nothing is influencing me.
VM: Yeah, well I think it’s funny ‘cause one time I was talking to this person, I think it was like an old coworker or something, and he was telling me how he doesn’t believe in astrology because he spent this time with a psychic who told him that he was definitely an Aries and he acted like an Aries. And he was like, “and she was wrong ‘cause I’m a Cancer.” And then he gave me his chart and he had no Aries placements.
He had a lot of cancer placements and all of them were in the first house, which is Aries. So she was sensing him as himself. She saw him; he didn’t have all the language to see why she would know, why she would think that about him. And how like that influenced him and… not that everyone’s gonna be right about stuff like that. Like, you’re gonna meet a lot of people who just say anything at you. But yeah, I thought that was fun. Like, how in denial he was, and even like him, you know, being so in denial at me was a lot like what she was probably sensing.
DC: Yeah. She was like, there it is right there.
VM: When it came to a persona in siren, I was like, okay, like the Pisces as an archetype, and then all these archetypes responding to Pisces doing shit. Especially in the first half of the book where I’m just focusing on oppositions. So we just talk about sister signs ‘cause they’re opposite aspects to each other. And then I just wanted to really be like all the Tumblr posts about signs. Like, how would a sign do this or whatever. ‘Cause that was really fun to read when I was in high school or something.
And then, the signs, how are the signs responding to this cosmic event where all the ways of life are being broken down as their relationship with their sister signs are in tension. That’s a backstory to like the current, the stream of consciousness that is the siren. Just like, nobody loves me and I feel really weird about that. Yeah.
DC: Do you…because I know now you’re working on a new project, The Stone Who Strapped Me — which, I continue to say, love that title. But I know you’re working on the next poetry collection, I know you’re also a very prolific prose writer, nonfiction writer, memoirist, however you want to describe it. Do you feel like the way that you approach persona in The Siren in the Twelfth House is coming back up for you again in these other projects that you’re working on, or do you feel like it’s something completely different that’s happening for you in these endeavors?
VM: I think that the siren, like the siren as a persona, is definitely more focused on themself as an isolation. And then everything else, in The Stone Who Strapped Me, it just seems… it’s like character studies of other people. And how they make me feel so, it feels more like character study.
Something has opened up inside of me that has made me more open to other people. So it’s like me in conversation more with those around me, whether or not I like them as people or respect them, or you know, find them interesting. I just am. Yeah.
DC: There’s an interesting thing happening there with interiority versus exteriority. Like how you embody the self in different ways, versus how you do observational studies of other people, is super interesting.
Thinking, you know, talking about persona, being an embodiment of intimacy, of course, is one thing. But, as we know, on the other side of affection is hate, which is its own kind of intimacy. And so I would love to hear more from you on how you feel that persona gives you an avenue for rage or disgust or disdain or any of those things.
VM: Okay. ‘cause I did say I really wanna talk about hate, because I have a lot of feelings about hatred and poetry. ‘Cause — and no one can see, but you’re smiling now ‘cause you want to laugh. But I love writing about how much I dislike someone. And honestly, when I have a drought, any kind of poetry drought, it’s like usually the first time, like, when I’m feeling angry, it’s like, great, I finally know what to do. I can finally write a poem and I feel great about it. And it’s because… that’s kind of what mixes in with persona, where, sometimes I want to embody the person, like when I’m really upset, I want to embody the person who’s upset me and mock them as I’m writing, because I feel that I truly understand them in a way that they may not like, and I just, and I feel so proud of the outcome of this mocking outcome, which is not great.
But you know what? They do it on SNL every day. And it’s fine. I think that, in [The] Siren [in the Twelfth House], I don’t talk about hate that much. I think that it’s more focused on like, I am angry in the poem, but it’s always an anger out of love. And in The Stone [Who Strapped Me], there is poems where I truly dislike who I’m dealing with. But it’s usually, it’s just a very deep indifference, usually. And lately I found it hard to do either of those things, write angrily or hatefully. And I think it’s partly because my life is quite softer now, you know, I’m just, I’m just happier now.
So I’ve found it hard to write disdainfully, and I found it to be a very powerful source for me. So I feel a stall in my writing, poetry wise, which is interesting ‘cause I think I’m feeling like Zuko, in season three. You know, when he’s with Aang and he’s like, “I’m about to help you, you know, defeat the fire nation. ‘cause I’m the greatest fire bender ever.” Then he goes, and he can’t; he has no fire. He’s no longer operating from a place of anger or hatred. So he has to go find a new fire. And I feel like that’s kind of where I’m at.
I haven’t felt angry enough lately to — I don’t think it’s ever gonna happen. And it might never happen again for me to use it. So I’m glad that I’ve had that period. Yeah. I’m glad for the shift, but I’m glad for my hate — my red — period.
DC: I think that kind of shift would, I think, startle anyone.
VM: I do kind of miss being kind of, like, ragebait-y in my work. I think.
DC: [Laughing] You miss pissing people off on purpose?
VM: Yeah, I mean like those subtleties, you know.
DC: There is something special with being known by your… or your enemies being known by you. I think about this with my students, you know, and they say something that really … it was like, wow, that was a really astute observation. You guys really had to be focusing on me to be able to like throw that one out there. And I always feel a lot of respect for them in that moment. I’m like, you absolutely cannot say that again, or it’s gonna be an issue. But like, you ate that. Yeah.
VM: Yeah! That’s, yeah, that’s usually what I’m going for. I think that that was my main goal with, I think, hate poems, was I want the person to feel so known, and I want them to feel so known.
DC: Almost uncomfortably known.
VM: Uncomfortably known and then uncomfortably proud too. And I’ve never felt that way reading about me, and I’ve always wanted to. I think that’s why rap battles are so fun, because they get to feel that way about each other all the time, you know, that kind of passion.
DC: Yeah. Now I’m thinking of your playlist that tracks the [rap] beef.
VM: Yes, because I love when a, how a beef starts with other beefs and how it just brings everything together, you know, like a whole…
DC: The confluence of beef.
VM: Yes. I think that we don’t talk about the romanticism of hate in a way that is fun anymore, you know? And I feel like that really brought that back. Even though people are like, “the Drake-Kendrick beef is dumb.” I’m like, well it brought back romance into, into rap, and I love that.
DC: One of my favorite disc tracks ever is 2pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” and I just think — that song’s insane. And I think it’s even more saying, ‘cause it’s like this is. The same man that was doing, like, “Dear Mama,” “Keep Ya Head Up.” And then he’s saying some really [laughing] heinous things on this track…
VM: It’s just, it’s the way it starts. It’s the way it starts because it’s like, what — Where do you go? You know that there’s nowhere good that’s gonna come from the rest of what he has coming up.
DC: It’s like after he said all that, it was like, the only way out here is someone has to die. Like, I don’t know what to tell you.
VM: He said, I hope all your children don’t grow. And he meant that shit, and I love that, I love that energy. And that’s what I wanted — that’s what I want in my work. It’s what I want in my work.
DC: We don’t have enough of that in poetry. We don’t have enough of that.
In a review of this collection, The Siren in the Twelfth House, that was featured by Stone of Madness Press, the reviewer described your work as, “the poems sound like prayers of assonance.” I was interested in the embodiment of a particular kind of energy, and like the interactions happening between these personas. But I was just wondering if you felt resonance with the way that they… like prayers, I think prayers imply a certain kind of relationship to an audience who can’t be seen. And I was wondering if you felt a resonance with that sort of aspect.
VM: Yeah. I really loved that because I do feel like… sometimes I feel like I’m trying to conjure something when I write a poem. And I feel like with the siren, it feels like a lot of spells, like spells, like behavior. Like, I just really wish this were… I think prayer, it’s like a form of begging, you know: In some way, I want this to be different. The original feeling is yes, there is like some person I’ve made God, which I shouldn’t have. I’m trying to reach them. So I feel like prayers of assonance was like, yeah, it was kind of apt, where it’s just like, I’ve made a god out of nothing and here I go.
DC: Yeah. Well, perfect, perfect. This has been such a terrific conversation and I really thank you for your time, and I would love it if you could close this out by reading a poem of your own.
VM: Okay, yes.
CELESTIAL HIJACKING
I’m sitting in the Black park listening to Black music thinking about the Black friend who doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. If I told you they didn’t want to talk to me because they love me so much you would have to believe me because you got to the end of this sentence. If every version of me is someone you know I’m sorry. The version most like best is the one they just met. The version you leave is the one you know. If you tell on me and don’t decorate the language you are selling me out in poor taste. I don’t understand space and I don’t always care what I mean. I think everyone who hates me should point a finger and see three fingers pointing back at them. I think missing me is the same as wanting me gone. I think being nauseous meant you were along for the ride. I spun you in circles pulled the moon from the sky and hoped you wouldn’t drown when the tides couldn’t control themselves. I did nothing to stop it and I knew the consequences but if I tell you it wasn’t on purpose please believe me. I’ve never cared enough to cause harm with purpose. I am ruled by Jupiter and when it cracked I became the lucky planet instead. If you made it to the end I got your attention. Don’t worry. Your discomfort is your friend.
Copyright © 2025 by Victoria Mbabazi. Originally published in Stone of Madness Press. Used with permission of the author.
DC: Thank you all for listening to this episode of the O, Word? Podcast, produced by me, DeeSoul Carson. If you are interested in this topic, I’ve added some folks recommended by our guest in the Substack post. The music for O, Word? is provided by Esoteric Creations. Check them out on Spotify.
Our guest, Victoria, offers this prompt: Describe the person you love as a beverage in four short sentences OR write your enemy writing a love poem about you.
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