Mimi Kunz is a visual artist and poet. A Buddhist monk once told her to ‘put the mind in the body’ — advice which has shaped her life and art. Curious about the body as a language, she observes its universal expressions and personal characteristics, pointing out the unconscious gestures through which we read each other’s bodies.

Mimi studied Painting and Graphics at the Staatliche Akademie Karlsruhe, Germany. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her artwork has been shaped by residencies in Europe and Vietnam, exhibited in Brussels (Maison d’Art Actuel des Chartreux, ODRADEK) and internationally (Casa del Arte, Concepción, Chile, Nature Art Biennale, South Korea), and can be found in private collections across all continents. Mimi works with ODRADEK in Brussels and The Artling online. Her work has been supported by the Goethe Institut Hanoi and the European Union.

Living in Brussels with her young family, Mimi lets her life and work merge and inspire each other. This might mean that a child will crawl on stage while she’s reading her poetry.

This conversation delves into the personal complexities of Kunz’s new poetry collection “Mother Tongue” and explores how the project interwove with the birth of her daughter and the beauty of motherhood.

 

Femke van Son: What are the primary themes of this poetry collection, and how did they shape its construction?

Mimi Kunz: The collection is about the first year with a baby, from pregnancy to the first steps. It’s about the moments of awe, fear, and joy that this time entails, and about the body as our first language. It’s structured in four chapters. Each chapter opens with a poem called “So what’s it like, this love?” (I,II,III, IV) which shows another aspect of that question and introduces the theme of the chapter. The chapters are called The Beginning, Octopus, New Moves, and Here and Then.

FvS: What inspired you to undertake this project of combining poetry with these guo hua style figures?

MK: It all started a few weeks after my daughter was born. A friend asked me, “So what’s it like, this love?” I didn’t know what to say at first, and the answer came a few days later, in the form of a poem. I was so inspired by the body language of my baby, by our physical communication, and what becoming a parent did to my sense of self and time. I didn’t have many hours in the studio, but whenever I went, what I had observed formed on paper and built a sort of record of this time. Body language has been my theme in art for many years. I worked with dancers and painted to sound, but I didn’t expect that having a baby would become a major source of inspiration, that this would fuel my work. I’ve painted with calligraphy brushes since 2009. And I wrote poetry in parallel and have brought the two together in different ways before but never like this. The paintings and poems grew, and I only thought of combining them in this way only after a year or so, when I had a collection.

FvS: How does the interaction between art and language shape your poetry?

MK: Oh, that’s a great question. I’ve always been interested in ideographic languages, and in art as a sensual language. I like to express content through form. In poetry I love what rhythm and melody can do—the role sounds play, and how, as with songs, we can feel it, even when we don’t understand the whole. Visually, often when I have trouble finding the right form, there is something at odds with the content too. After a first draft, the shape and meaning have merged, and I work on them as one.

FvS: What did your process look like for “Mother Tongue”?

MK: I wrote the poems mostly while walking my daughter, circling parks and circling tables for hours. And I painted in whatever time I had in the studio. When putting the poems and paintings together in the manuscript, I started to form the text on the pages. Then I sent it out and published a few individual poems and paintings in magazines. The whole shape and form of the book really developed in the past year when I worked with Alexandra Huddleston, my graphics editor and publisher at The Kyoudai Press.

FvS:Was there any particular reasoning behind the unusual size and format of the book?

MK: In the beginning, I looked at poetry books as examples, but my publisher pushed me to just “go to a bookshop and pick up anything you like visually,” saying, “It can be a cookbook or travel guide, no matter, we can go anywhere.” She sent me a lot of videos and pictures of Asian art catalogues and Japanese books, which we took on board style-wise, and I was inspired by the picture books I read daily. I like that the font is big and how, in children’s books, images and text interact quite freely, moving on the pages. The format of ‘Mother Tongue’ is the same as an Awagami bamboo paper I use for painting—the idea was that the book should stay open easily, without being too wide, and allow someone (who might hold a baby) to leaf through it, reading without having to hold it up close.

FvS: The calligraphic shapes of your poems sometimes match their accompanying image, but other times form radically different shapes, such as in “Choreography.” Can you elaborate on your reasoning for either matching or deviating from symmetry with the accompanying figures?

MK: Yes. The poems and paintings are equal expressions of an idea, not one illustrating or describing the other. They compliment each other, sometimes showing a related angle, sometimes a different one. There are many repetitions in the book, which express the nature of these experiences—there is a lot of feeding and sleeping. However, it’s never the same, and we found it important to vary, both in terms of readability and rhythm, how the texts and visuals play together, so that form and composition reflect that idea.

FvS: Who would you say are your biggest poetic influences and did any in particular inspire you for “Mother Tongue”?

MK: My oldest influence is Rainer Maria Rilke. He combined the density of the German language with a melody and lightness that’s unusual for German—which is why I’m very drawn to poets writing in English. One of them is Maggie Smith. One of her most famous poems, “Good Bones,” is about how parents want their children to love the world, knowing that there are bad things and dangers, and hoping that they will find something good and make it better. She is one of the poets who write about parenthood in a very honest and subtle way, expressing universal experiences through quiet observations. I read her work before I was pregnant and came back to it often afterwards and while working on “Mother Tongue,” and it influenced my approach to the subject.

FvS: “Mother Tongue” is a very personal project for you, being about the birth and first year of your daughter’s life. Was this a maternal urge in poetic form?

MK: I don’t know. To be honest, I was hesitant about having children at all. I imagined it to be very different. I heard a lot of parents say they don’t read much anymore, and that scared me. I braced myself for a time when I wouldn’t get to paint a lot or engage in poetry. The opposite happened, and yes, now I like motherhood.

FvS: Were you ever hesitant to share this story with the world, given how personal it is for you and your family? What motivated you to publish it?

MK: I was hesitant, but not because it’s personal. I paint intimate moments, but the figures could be anybody—they are often taken from my life and experience but might as well be somebody else, as these interactions and feelings are common and universal. The same for the writing; I think the only individual feature in the book is a special handshake and the shape of a toe; everything else could be written by another mother or parent with another baby. I was hesitant because I didn’t grow up with many examples of artists who brought this subject into their work. However, it’s such a big part of life, as universal as death, and I think it’s important to express and share it, especially for women and in the art world. I’m really happy to belong to this generation in which more and more artists and poets address different aspects of this theme and embrace the multitude of roles we play in life and how they can inspire each other. I think being a parent makes me a better artist, as it grounds me physically, and being an artist makes me a better parent, as it’s like a room of my own, even when I’m rarely alone—rather than “I’m a parent, so I’m not a full artist,” or “I’m working, so I’m not present as a parent.”

FvS: In your bio, you say that a Buddhist monk inspired your approach to life and art. Is this just inspiration or something deeper?

MK: Yes, he said, ‘Put the mind in the body.’ It’s not about a particular religion or belief; rather, I’m interested in physical expressions of spirituality, in a kind of sensual philosophy maybe, in the how of things defining the what. During my studies, I had a calligraphy teacher who made us draw lines for hours, showing how the breath influences everything we do. He showed us how to keep a line steady over a long paper, and how to decide when and how it ends. He said, “Keep the strength in; don’t let the ink run out.” This made a huge impression on me, as it can apply to so much in life.

FvS: Any other works in the making?

MK: Yes. I’m working on a second collection of poetry and painting. This time it will include death and be more about a whole lifetime and generations, rather than one particular period and two characters. In the studio, I’ve started to work with really thin Japanese paper, and layer paintings made on different papers, and I’m integrating wood to make more sculptural works, using both very light papers as well as handmade, thick ones, and bamboo paper. Next year I’ll focus on readings of the ‘Mother Tongue’ book, and I have a duo show with the artist Ellie Shipman in Bristol in the summer, which I’m very much looking forward to.

For more information on Mimi Kunz and “Mother Tongue” here.

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  • Femke van Son is an editor and writer with an honours bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She is a two-time consecutive recipient of the Kaleidoscope Literary Award for Undergraduate Critical Writing, and her short story “Apotheosis” was published with the Firework Arts Journal.