The 2018
Metatron Prize
for Rising Authors
Ivanna Baranova
confirmation bias
Ivanna Baranova is a Slavic-Latina writer and photographer based in Brooklyn.
Who are you and what’s your zodiac sign?
hi everyone! my name is ivanna baranova.
i’m a slavic-latina writer and photographer based in brooklyn. my mother is a guatemalan immigrant. my father is from a family of slovak refugees. his parents were poets, too, and though i never met them, i imagine we know each other through writing and dreams.
my work has appeared for ÄLPHÄ, glitterMOB, Hobart, Montreal Review of Books, NTS Radio, Pacific Dissent, Peach Mag, Poetry Is Dead, Prism International, Sub Pop Records, VICE, and elsewhere.
confirmation bias is my first book.
i was born and raised in the pacific northwest―seattle, washington and vancouver, canada. here now in new york, i miss the west coast’s water most―wet, emerald forests, endless rainfall, lake washington, the pacific ocean, and an infinite charge of tiny, negative ions floating abundantly through the air! i carry those geographies daily through my relationships, movement, and art.
i’m a pisces.
What is confirmation bias about?
confirmation bias is a book of poetry that observes recurrent themes of my lived experience―femme conditioning, queer and racialized sociocultural identities, slavic and latinx diaspora, nausea under capitalist hegemony, experimental therapy, and substance use, to name a few.
these poems orbit love, belonging, affect, anger, collapse, radical acceptance, healing, and intimacy with critical, spiritual curiosity. confirmation bias is “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.” through this book, i’ve wondered:
- how can we transcend the beliefs and behaviors that demand our psychic reproduction?
- how do we nurture new relational patterns to evolve higher authenticities, compassion, and intra/interpersonal accountability?
Could you tell us a bit about the process of writing confirmation bias?
i wrote these poems while living in vancouver, seattle, bellingham, montreal, santiago, and new york, contending with a series of difficult emotional and metaphysical encounters.
confirmation bias evolved through sporadic written documentation and audio dictation―but really, the process began well before any of this work existed, when i urgently left the east coast in 2011 after surviving a fucked up assault and resultant spiritual breakdown. the book manifested through fighting for healing and the kinds of love i learned―from others and in myself.
in summer 2018, the manuscript came into full form while i was simultaneously working through a writing residency in banff and participating in an mdma-assisted psychotherapy trial for ptsd in vancouver. the magic i encountered through those events and because of those memories is still being expressed heavily through me.
i can hardly believe confirmation bias is real and feel such dizzying gratitude to share it with you all. i hope reading this book helps open space for what you need.
What are some books you’ve read and enjoyed lately?
The Performance of Becoming Human ― Daniel Borzutzky
Women in Public ― Elaine Kahn
Red ― Chase Berggrun
While Standing in Line for Death ― CAConrad
Mercury — Ariana Reines
This Wound is a World ― Billy-Ray Belcourt
Tropico ― Marcela Huerta
The Politics of Experience ― R.D. Laing
The Last Sext ― Melissa Broder
Women ― Chloe Caldwell
The Body Keeps the Score ― Bessel van der Kolk
Violet Energy Ingots ― Hoa Nguyen
Dark Pool Party ― Hannah Black
Silverchest ― Carl Phillips
number one earth ― jasper avery
Peluda — Melissa Lozada-Oliva
Anything else?
🙂
glow stick
somewhere in me
exists
a so-called
original urge
to align
with the astral
body
but then
i see
all planetary
anatomy
aspiring
to life eternal
among
The Galaxies
regardless
home to u-turns
cultural autopsies
and finite
emancipations
of this social
imaginary
but baby
if not
hopeful
then really
what
should i be?
notice
to eclipse
green lights
in these americas
i will
have to
learn to run―
what else
should i think
about motion?
your face comes
to memory
like a slow
collision
thus the traffic
of desire
awake again
in its daily
insurrection
yesterday
i felt free
in a way
i could not
explain
then today
my thoughts
exhaust
their own
resolve
ask
are my feet
planted firmly
to the―
why is the ground
against
my―
where are my feet
in relation
to the―
what is the cause
of this
flick flick
flickering?
another day
and closer yet
to the final click
of the proverbial
dimming glow stick
such that
in the mourning
stardust blooms
my not my guatemalan
apogees
and the hours
just go on
flowering
hello
relentless garden
standing
in my heart’s
early window
watch with me
the sun
beam down
in the same
direction
it burns
what else
is there to do
but witness
this world’s
precarious
devotion?
funny
it’s not
always the eye
that’s black
but rather
the rings
that surround
the iris
refracting
and refracting
the glimmer
of this endless
body phenomena
frenetic as love’s
epiphanic
little motions