1_

This extended radiation in your literary and visual career makes us wonder which came first, your practice of literature or visual arts? 

. I was an artist from the beginning, an artist who wrote poetry and short fiction from time to time,

and this until I was thrown out of bed at four in the morning by a powerful dream that sparked my

first novel, The Stain. That dream was of such potency, it opened the portal to a tetralogy devoted to

the elements; Earth, Fire, Water and Air. I wrote for ten years without stopping, and I am writing still.

2 _ 

What is poetry to you ? 

I think of the poetic imagination as a wellspring at the heart of the self, the place of Eros, the breath

of life, essential to the creative process, our understanding of our selves and the world around us.

3_

You have a close and historical connection with the international surrealist movement. Do you call yourself a surrealist, as some call you?

How do you see the contemporary international surrealist movement and its future /Contemporary Opportunities and Mistakes?

Surrealism has informed my life from the beginning. When I was a very small child, I cherished a blue

robin’s egg. My first talisman, it would be broken by a drunken friend of my mother’s.A few years later, on

my first visit to a library, having climbed a spiral staircase and crossed a bridge of green glass that lead

 to the second story stacks, I saw the blue spine of a book, the same blue as my lost egg.That book

was The Misfortunes of the Immortals, written by Paul Eluard and illustrated by the collages of Max Ernst.

In other words, at the age of eight, I knew I had found my tribe! Max’s Loplop appears in my novel Phosphor

in Dreamland, but there is more to it than that. That blue egg would also lead me the alchemy and a passion

for the natural world, its wealth secrets and its creatures.

My process is surrealist ; it is a process that relies on dreams,intuition, synchronicity, and above all revelation.

I work without any preconceived ideas. I have often seen myself as in the alentours of surrealism because of

a certain all too human  tendency  to lean towards something that smacks of dogmatism.In this I am in good company;

Max Ernst, Gaston Bachelard, Roget Caillois, were all in the allentours.And, as women in surrealism have too often

been perceived as muses and overgrown children, I have often follwed my own path.

In terms of the current moment and the future, I see surrealism as having an important, perhaps essential place,

if we are to continue as a species and this because the movement is inclusive, it is international and has been so

from the beginning. And its vision has also always been ecological.Surrealism was born the moment plundered

African art hit Europe, a delerium inspired and inspirited by an art form that surged from an intimate understanding

of nature and the sacred (and not a churchy sacred either!!!).

4-

Do you think that the surrealist novel has developed since the last century?

. I do not know enough about the surrealist novel, but I do think it is evident that surrealism has had an immense

impact on the novel, on poetry, and all the arts. It has given permission to dream very deep dreams, to embrace the

ever mutable, the vast and the infinite realm of the human imagination. 

5 – 

You have interests in Gnosticism and ancient Egyptian mysteries.

You recently participated extensively in the International  Exhibition of surrealism that was held in Egypt last February. Tell us about this participation and your impression of organizing this surrealist event in Egypt?

. I was and am enchanted by this all inclusive, planetary project! Surrealism is and has always been international.

I am thinking: Cairo! Yes! And also:

 Lisbon! Mexico City! Baghdad! Tokyo! Prague! Durban! Paris! Buenes Aires, Trois-Ilets, and so on and so on!

I was enchanted and delighted that Cairo was suddenly at the movements center, Cairo that has been there and

active from the start!

6_

what is beautiful? And what is ugly?

. Beauty; The tenderness of lovers, the loving kindness of parenting, the first time a child , having just come into the world, smiles.

The tenderness felt between the different species; the moment one discovers a particular plant will heal us ; the sound of doves.

Sharing an interest in one another with a praying mantis, a butterfl;y, a bee, a bird. Bird song in the early mourning.

The dawn, the dusk, the moon. All this and so muh more is beautiful!

What is ugly: The dark heart of man.Our species carries a lethal bone in its throat.

7-

I will tell  you several names and tell me  what they represent to you

Andre Breton 

an essential, a wondrous thinker who continues to impact the world  in essential ways.

Sigmund Freud

Essentail, too, if often mistaken; he , too, was bewildered by women, could not accept the reality of incest;

or the vast capacities of the small child.But, despite his failures, he gave us a precious gift;’ a way into the mysterious

workings of the human mind, both salutary, wondrous, perhaps magnificent and also lethal.

Karl Marx

Essential as well, if we are to understand and overcome, once and for all, the abusive systems the rob our species

of its promise.

Penelope Rosemont, 

Penelope’s terrific book on women in surrealism did much to inform the world as to the profound impact

women have had within the movement. She and her husband did much to awaken the interest in surrealism in America. 

Suzana Wald 

: We met years ago and had any number of interests in common;

a passion for alphabets, clay and eroticism!