Written by Farida Amar
I am honored to introduce you to our new Editor, Kythe Heller. Kythe has been a friend and collaborator of mine since 2010. We met in Boston, in a space that was half above / half below ground, during an interactive installation I built for a project called Neurosapien. Kythe was one of the participating musicians, crawling into the space with a violin, wild hair and a passion for howling into the abyss. After that show, we continued to howl together in celebrations of shared ideas / time. Kythe is overqualified to take on our publication and completely thrilled to do so.
Kythe has collected a BA in English from Reed, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence and an MDiv from the Harvard Divinity School and is currently a Harvard Doctoral Candidate working on a dissertation titled Sublime Frequencies: Resonance, Religiosity, and Aesthetic Languages of Unsaying. In addition to this ferocious hunger for self-enlightenment, Kythe invests the majority of her time not spent learning into sharing her knowledge with others. As a teaching fellow for the Harvard Divinity School, she primarily focuses on Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Art, Film, Visual Studies and Critical Media Practice. She also teaches Language and Thinking at Bard.
Diving into a variety of topics that address the intersection of tangible and intangible worlds; for her, this is the place where magic becomes possible. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships and residencies for her work including the Mellon Foundation Grant for Critical Media Practice, a MacArthur Foundation Grant to support her poetry fellowship at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts writing fellowship.
In addition to academics, Kythe is a widely published poet and writer, student of Sufi teacher M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, musician, and avid ritual designer and performance artist. She also runs her own art collective called VISION LAB, an experimental arts and research collective creating artistic and literary works, performances, collaborations, and other innovative spaces of engagement combining radically imaginative cross-disciplinary conversations and experiential practices spanning the areas of contemporary spirituality, social and environmental justice, technology, and literary and artistic practice. Excerpts of Kythe’s writing on the myth of the phoenix will be published in SOVO// Issue 8, titled Contemporary Folklore. You can also order a copy of her most recent book titled Firebird, published by Arrowsmith Press, by clicking here.
In her first two months, Kythe has facilitated a transition to an entirely submission-based system for writers and established connections with independent literary and publishing resources. She has brought in an incredible Associate Editor, Caroline Coxe. She has worked closely with our team to define the themes for the next full year of production, and with the submission deadline for Issue 9 recently coming to a close, Kythe will now begin working directly with writers for the first time.
I asked Kythe a few questions so you could get to know her a little. Here’s what she had to say:
Who are you, why do you believe you exist?
I am no one. I want to be very small, like a grain of sugar dissolving in the mouth of an ant. Whatever truth is — is alive. Do not let it dry up in you, but dig deeper and let it flow more and more, like a river. Nothing is impossible: maybe one thing has gone away but the other lives on. If you search within your heart, you will find it there.
Where are you from, where are you now, and where do you want to go?
There is no ‘before’ and ‘after,’ just as there is no birth and death. We can be free of these ideas in this very moment, filled with the great joyful silence of all that is.
How did you find SOVO// and what were your personal reasons for joining?
I found SOVO// because of Farida Amar, and I joined SOVO// because I have enormous admiration and love for her and I would walk from Boston to Los Angeles in order to see her smile.
Define the craft of writing in your own words.
The craft of writing is a listening with all your being, and the translation of what you hear in that listening into shapes of sound, image, sense, and idea.
What are some of the moments of your life that you are the most proud of?
Being proud of moments in my life isn’t important to me.
What are some mistakes you’ve made and what have you learned from them.
This is a story told to me by my Sufi teacher:
Once upon a time there was a coconut. The outside was so hard that you could not break it open with your bare hands. It had to be smashed against something very hard to break it open. But the water inside was sweet, though a little salty. And the white flesh lining the inside of the shell was even sweeter than the water. If you scrape the flesh, then mix the coconut shreds with a little water and squeeze it into milk, it will taste even sweeter. And if you boil that milk, the whiteness disappears and the milk changes into oil that can be used for many purposes. All these things, the sweetness, the whiteness, and the oil, came out of the same coconut. Every part has its own use. Your heart is also like this coconut. Just as you broke open the shell, extracted the flesh, and adapted it for different purposes, you have to crack open your heart, examine each section, and learn how to make it useful.
What is something you want to do before you die?
I want to die before I die.
Who/what inspires you most?
When it’s cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.
And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.
What is your favorite book?
One that has not yet been written.
Advice for aspiring artists?
Stand up straight.
