Elias Lowe
Oyster River Pages: How is your art or writing informed by current social and/or political issues?
Elias Lowe: There are very few things in life that can be separated out from the realm of the political. There are few things which are untouchable by the ever-shifting conditions of political injustice. Many of the pieces I write are more overtly political than the one I have published here. But even concepts so plain like fear or death are caught up in sociological webs, influenced by capitalist industry and white supremacy. My writing is political because I have an identity, and I speak from that complex place.
With that said, current social and political issues often inhibit my ability to write. I can get caught in the head space of, “why does this story matter?,” “what are these words when whole worlds are falling apart around us?, “who the hell cares?”
ORP: We often think of ourselves as writing or making art, but the process often changes or makes us as well. How do you feel like your writing or art makes you?
EL: My writing provides me therapy. I’ll have a thought, a feeling, an experience that overwhelms me. When I put it on paper and give it meaning, it has less power over me. Even if I say, “What has happened here is incomprehensible. I cannot reconcile Y and X.” The confession is relief enough.
ORP: If you could add a prelude, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?
EL: Epilogue: Dear Mom, I love you endlessly. This essay is a part of me seeing you as a full human, in your complexity and wholeness. All love that is authentic, must be full.
ORP: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your relationship to art and writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?
EL: My writing since COVID-19 has been thoroughly halted. I am unable to write for lack of adjustment to the post-covid world. What world are we writing of now? How have our paradigms shifted? My life has a new tint to it, and I have yet to capture that tint with words.
ORP: Do you believe that hope is a luxury, a responsibility, a danger, or something else? Why?
EL: I’m certain that hope is a responsibility—to tomorrow, to humanity, to justice, to the people who can not hope right now. Years ago, at a protest, a particularly creative friend incorporated “Hope is a discipline” into a protest chant, and that’s always stuck with me. I am not hopeful in an optimistic way—I do not believe we are progressing, or that impossible concepts like good and bad have any linearity throughout history. I never know that tomorrow will be better than today. But I know that today was brilliant in its own ways. And if we do not hope, we are betraying that brilliance. If we do not hope, even for small moments of connection, of light, we are abandoning life itself.
ORP: What do you think is the most essential advice that most writers and artists ignore?
EL: Maybe most writers do not ignore this, but I think people have a hard time following through with it in general: Allow yourself to write bad, terrible, shameful pieces. I would never get to the good stuff if I didn’t write chaotic cliches, too.
Elias Lowe is a queer non-fiction writer and poet based in Pittsburgh, PA. They recently graduated with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and they're currently working as a substitute teacher. Elias's poems have been featured in multiple literary magazines including Cosmonauts Avenue and After the Pause. When not working, Elias spends their time exploring what it means to be human through creative writing and community building. Read Elias’s essay, “To Hold My Mother’s Fear,” in our current issue.