Godless and Full of God: The Millions Interviews Katie Marya
In her debut poetry collection Sugar Work, Katie Marya envisions America as a land of libidinal excess. It is Las Vegas, fried chicken, “Material Girl,” Atlanta strip clubs, and the cocaine that fueled her father. This freedom to embrace excess in our culture can be startling, perhaps overwhelming. Marya relates, in her title poem, how fraught it can feel just to eat a slice of cake, something her mother ate with relish. “I thought there was no / safe amount of sugar / so I took none.” In her imagination, Marya’s parents assume an epic quality because of the excess of their lifestyles. She writes of father, “Not here / but in the streets / lost in the animal—/ your life cracking / in the Atlanta sun.” Throughout Sugar Work, Marya asks how we might build a healthy relationship with pleasure. But hers is not a puritanical plea for restraint or against the pursuit of pleasure. Rather, she embraces nuance: pleasure, while stultifying, is also satisfying, comforting, holy, even.
I talked with Marya over Zoom to discuss Louise Glück, drummers, grief, sonnet writing, and Spaghetti-Os.
Jason Chen: You’re currently finishing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Do you consider yourself a scholar as much as you are an artist?
No, but I want to., and I have a lot to say about their work, but when I get down to the nitty gritty and am saying it in an essay, I still sort of inhabit this weird, performative voice. I think because I’m just a first-gen college student and am afraid of a big bad wizard telling me I’m dumb. But when I can do research that serves the art and not just a scholarly paper, then yes, I’m a good scholar.
