BIG JO

Big Jo is from the mountains. Making sounds sets their soul on fire, as does consensual violence, pink clothing, and lying on a mate's floor drinking god knows what and writing disturbing poetry. Their richly imagistic works have seen the light of day with Pressure Gauge Press, Small Packages Journal, Ruckus Slam, and the Queensland Poetry Festival.

All-Stars is Big Jo's second appearance in PASTEL.

Your originally appeared in PASTEL Issue #2, with your poem 'Ocean Music'. While your style has certainly evolved since, your work retains the disturbia that gripped PASPals at the time of your debut. From which depths did the inspiration for 'Ocean Music' bubble up from?

Ocean music is a strange thing, really. It is a narrative which exists in the space between depression and recovery. In that space, I am still in the clutches of a crippling 6 month long depressive episode, but I have become aware of my patterns and of my sadness. I am no longer empty, but a sombre mood clings to my bones. Ocean Music is about desperate desire, of reluctant hope, and of the physical paths I walked in my deepest depressions.

Much of your work includes themes of upset and melancholy. Might you consider your writing to be a therapeutic form of self-expression, and/or expulsion?

An expulsion, certainly. My work is the necessary first step to allowing myself feelings, to the facing of fears, to the marriage of repeated failure and happy life; to the ultimate understanding that failure is a curve of the path, not the end of the road.

Who inspires you, both as a writer, and as a non-conformist individual?

I am inspired by many people. My favourite writer is Sooyong Park, a Korean scientist who wrote a book about the behaviours and lives of Siberian Tigers. I am inspired by hip hop innovator Travis Scott, and by queer hip hop icon Frank Ocean.

My foremost influences, however, are my colleagues and peers: Mulan Theory (producer, beatboxer), Don Esteban (best friend, vocalist, songwriter), Chessie B (vocalist, rapper). These are the members of Cantalopez Collective. One day you'll hear them talked about like Odd Future or A$AP Mob.

Your All-Star return means you're sharing new work with PASPals, and this piece is certainly a departure from 'Ocean Music's languid setting. Where do 'Dulcet's origins stem from?

Dulcet is about sexuality, about self acceptance of my (at the time) bisexuality. It's sensual, engaging with the grotesquely sadistic part of who I am. It's a contradiction of sorts, too. Who is the most lusted after, boy or girl? A vanilla reading would imagine this to be the boy, but a sadistic reading reveals it is the girl, the sexual partner who is (consensually) beaten. Dulcet is a poem which deals with the first part of my journey into orientation, gender, and kink role.

Maybe you'll read the second and third of these poems within the pages of a future PASTEL Magazine...

Much like 'Ocean Music', however, your imagery is largely referential to the nature of water. Is a connection with the ocean, or oceanic imagery, a deliberate symbolic choice, and what might you suggest inspires your consistent return to the water in your work?

I don't know, actually. My relationship to water is unlike that of most Australians. I am from mountainous ground, born of rain-forest. I know the dripping water, the howling storm spray, the cool creek offerings, but am less acquainted with beaches or coastal life.

I suppose I return to water in poetry in much the same way as I dream of open ocean and rough seas; oceanic plains as vast as our continent. It is a dream relationship, a singing to the earth. Water means less to me than it means to the world. So I dream an ocean monster, and I write a trickling stream.

'Dulcet' walks the line between the delicate and the violent, ultimately relinquishing to the latter in a startling conclusion. In 'Ocean Music', you seem take a melancholic walk down a similar dichotomy. Where do you believe your interest in such a divide stems from?

It stems from a lifetime spent trying to define myself. If I could just be straight or gay? If I could just be a man or a woman? If I could just be a rapper or a writer? I am all of these things, at once. So I find great comfort in walking precipices. Edges, purgatories, and in-betweens. No definitions, but millions of choices.

My gentleness and my brutality are as one. They both express love. Sometimes love is sensuous touches over a period of hours, sometimes it is a whip to the genitals and a spit in the face. I'm an unabashed sadist, and a proud Hufflepuff.

How do you hope the subversivity of your poetic contribution to PASTEL All-Stars resonates with readers?

Dulcet means a lot of things, and good poetry should, but I'm a sucker for the pretty words. Especially when the prettiest thing in the room is also the most violent.

Find Jo on Instagram: @skiptosummer, where she goes by her artistic persona Pastel (like pale) Don (like mafioso) or Domme (like dominatrix). She will also be releasing music in the new year, accompanied by Cantalopez Collective.

To enjoy Jo's All-Stars contribution, pick up a copy of PASTEL Magazine All-Stars at pastelthemagazine.bigcartel.com

And head over to 4ZZZ.org.au/program/PAZZZTEL to catch Big Jo's debut on Zed Digital's PAZZZTEL, prezzzented by Phoebe & James.