“I do not like these patients [with schizophrenia] … I feel them to be so far distant from me and from everything human, Sigmund Freud wrote in a letter at the beginning of the previous century. For such a colossal figure in mental health matters, this callousness is jaw-dropping, but what it illustrates is the extensiveness of prejudice towards people suffering from illnesses of the mind. These days we try to pluck the stigma that’s so deeply rooted in our history from our daily thoughts and actions. We work at dismantling preconceptions through art.

The chapbook has taken on a variety of forms in the digital age. Produced by Poetry Is Dead and curated by the magazine’s founder Daniel Zomparelli, Sixteen Pages presents a series of sixteen-page digital chapbooks from around the world that visitors can view using a smartphone or tablet. 

Think back to when you started writing. What’s an earlier influence you outgrew, abandoned, or turned against?

When I was 4 or 5 years old, I recorded myself talking into a voice recorder, telling stories about whatever images came into my head. Later found by my older sister, these stories provided ample entertainment for my family - both because I was unreserved in my thoughts and also because The the content and characters were considered absurd by my family. A common thing I do is to place myself in binaries within colonial narratives, as either a part of, or in resistance to. The story feels stronger to me when I let myself be both. Storytelling is old; mixedness is old. I’m visually writing to get closer to old.