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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: Ghost Sister

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf. I’m Helena de Groot. Today, “Ghost Sister.” Sebastian Merrill loves the ocean. He grew up so close to it, in Connecticut, that in winter, when the leaves were down, he could see the water from his bedroom window. And after school, his grandmother, who lived down the street, would often take him for long walks. And together they would look at birds, find sea glass, or paint—each would set up their easel on the sand. Summers he spent with his other grandparents on an island off the coast of Maine. They had a vacation home there. That’s also where he went during the first months of the pandemic, to work on what would become his debut collection, titled GHOST :: SEEDS. While he was at the house, Sebastian, who is trans, kept finding traces of the girl he used to be. “This house is a time machine,” he writes in one of his poems, “Our images are still / affixed to the fridge by rusty magnets, // held within dusty photo albums. // A rolodex on the coffee table spins to // your wide smile shining with braces, / hair messily braided, / our one body / frilled in a dress.” But what was this girl to him? And where was she? In his debut collection, Sebastian Merrill decided to go look for her, traveling through swells of water, and into sea caves all around a fictional island that looks a lot like the real one where he spent months writing.

Helena de Groot: And how big is the island? How long would it take you to, say, drive all around it?

Sebastian Merrill: It’s pretty small, but it’s connected to the mainland by a drawbridge.

Helena de Groot: Ohh.

Sebastian Merrill: So it’s not like as isolated as I think it becomes—in the book, I imagined it as like a much more isolated island.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: And so I think that, in certain ways, I feel like the island in the book is a very kind of stripped down version of this place where I grew up going. And I kind of took out a lot of the characters or the people who are actually important parts of my life there, right? Because I wanted it to be kind of really focused on this …

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: … the speaker. And their world.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And I felt, if I’m bringing in more people, then I have to explain who they are and what their relationship is to the speaker, and what they’re doing there, and who they are. And I feel like that’s maybe a different story.

Helena de Groot: Yep.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Can you tell me a little bit more about that landscape? Like just for someone who’s never been.

Sebastian Merrill: Oh, my gosh. It’s one of my favorite places in the whole world. Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s rocky coast, big rocks. And looking out, you can just see all the way out to the horizon. And sometimes the sea is smooth as glass, and sometimes the waves are—you get these big ocean swells. And so it’s just, the ocean itself is just this, it’s so alive. And what I love about this particular area is that there’s all of these beautiful little islands that kind of dot the coast. And so kayaking, there’s so many things to see and places to explore. And so it’s this really interesting kind of interstitial space between kind of the sea and the land. And there’s so many different types of birds and the seals are—I love the seals. There is this place called the Thread of Life. And first of all, I think the name is amazing. It’s really called that.

Helena de Groot: Absolutely. Yes!

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS) And just though the way the tide moves through that space, and because it’s further north, the movement of the tides is pretty extreme. So I think—I don’t want to get this wrong if it’s going to be on the podcast, but I think it’s around like eight feet at least. I mean, it changes with the moon.

Helena de Groot: Wow.

Sebastian Merrill: It also changes like if you’re at high tide or low tide or mid tide. And one of the beautiful things about going up in like early May and June is that that’s when the seal pups are being born and they’re so, they’re just so cute and small.

Helena de Groot: How small are they?

Sebastian Merrill: They’re like a … (PAUSES)

Helena de Groot: Like a loaf of bread?

Sebastian Merrill: Like a big loaf of bread or like a five-pound sack of potatoes, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yes, yes, yes!

Sebastian Merrill: And they’ll just kind of, they’re not really scared at that point of humans. And so they’re just kind of like bobbing around in the water on the rocks. And the beautiful thing about being in a kayak is that you’re—I’m so close to the water and I’m quiet. And so you can really kind of like be with the sea creatures. So that’s the setting. And that’s the place where I was really living when I was writing the bulk of the book.

Helena de Groot: Wow.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Can you set it up in a way, because we haven’t really done that?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, I think, so the book came about because I was struggling with, I want to write about trans identity, I want to write about this experience that is so fundamental to who I am that I almost feel like I can’t write about anything else.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: Until I write about this. But I was really struggling with figuring out how do I access this space. Because, when I thought about the question of audience and thought about anyone reading the work, I completely shut down. And I would just look at the blank page, and I just got really scared. I think in part because we’re living in a time in the world in which trans people, you know, (PAUSES) I almost don’t have the words to describe like what it, how precarious it can feel to be a trans person in America today. And, you know, when I first came out as trans in 20—let’s say 2011, and began my physical transition, that was at a time when I felt as though there were certain stories that I had to tell in order to access the gender affirming medical care that was necessary for my survival.

Helena de Groot: Like that you had to prove that you were really, really, really trans.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that the story that was expected was one that was very simple. Something along the lines of “born in the wrong body,” or “I hated my body, and I need this in order to love my body.” You know, and I think that the nuance there is that, sure, that might be a story for one person.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: But it felt more complicated than that to me.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: And then when I finally, you know, did come out and physically transition, I think it was really challenging for my family to understand. And so, I had this experience of being called the wrong name and the wrong pronouns by some of the people who had raised me, who I loved the most. And there was a real dissonance of feeling really unseen.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And almost as though I was being haunted by this person that I perhaps had been but no longer was. And I, I was really kind of grappling with what does it mean to know who I am, to know what pronouns and name feel right to me, and yet to still have this ghost of this person that I once was that I no longer am. And when I came out, my mother really articulated that she was grieving her daughter. And that felt really complicated, because I both understood her experience, and also, I didn’t necessarily feel as though anyone had died.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: You know? And I think within the trans community, there’s all this language around like when someone refers to the name that they had previously called, they’ll say, “It was my dead name.” And I got really kind of curious about, does this feel right to me as language to describe transition? And I had been reading T.C. Tolbert has these “Dear Melissa” poems. He’s a trans poet, and in his poems he’s writing to his former self, Melissa. And they’re beautiful. And I found them really inspiring. And Sam Ace, another trans poet, in the introduction to a re-publication of a book that was originally published under his former name, writes “Dear Linda” and writes to his former self. And, you know, I think that this is the way in which my work is very much in conversation with trans writers who have come before me or trans writers who were working adjacent to me. And so I started writing. I was like, “Okay, I can’t figure out how to write about my own identity. What if I start writing to my former self?”, inspired by the work of T.C. Tolbert and Sam Ace. And that was, that, like, unlocked something for me, and it just came flooding out.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Sebastian Merrill: But I didn’t feel like I could actually put in my dead name into the book. It felt too painful, too loaded. And at a certain point, it felt unfair to the former self to not give her a voice.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Sebastian Merrill: And I started getting curious, I was, “What does she, where is she? And what does she have to say? And how does she feel about all of this?” And prior to kind of starting this project I had been writing these persona poems in the voice of Persephone. And I didn’t really know why.

Helena de Groot: Huh.

Sebastian Merrill: They had just been coming to me. And kind of the real work of this book, I was in Maine. It was in the summer of 2020, so no one else was up at the house. Actually, one of the people who isn’t in the book but who was there for me while I was writing, you know, the bulk of it is my husband, Dane Slutsky. He’s also a poet. He’s the best. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sebastian Merrill: I’m so in love with him. And we, so we went up to the house together, because at the time we were living in this tiny one-bedroom apartment and it was full lockdown.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: You know, we had no space. And so I was like, “Let’s go to Maine, let’s go, let’s go.” And we drove up early in the season. It was like April, like late April, early May, cold.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: There’s no heating in this house. There’s no insulation. We have a wood stove. But we get there and we’re trying to be really respectful of the quarantine, which said that for two weeks you weren’t supposed to go out to any stores or anything. So we’d packed all of our food into the car. And we were so cold that we would walk around the island and look for driftwood to, like, cut up and, like, burn in the woodstove.

Helena de Groot: You didn’t even have wood to burn?

Sebastian Merrill: No, we didn’t have wood! That, you know, it was like there was.

Helena de Groot: Oh! So there was a woodstove, but no wood.

Sebastian Merrill: There was a woodstove, but no, like, we went through the wood that had been in the house like that first week.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: And then we were really cold. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Wow. And I imagine that the driftwood is damp at best.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: It’s probably wet, you know.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, it was snowing some of the time. And we ended up staying for the whole summer. And I had these kayaks, and I would go kayaking every morning, and just the poems would like come to me as I was kayaking and then I’d go home and write them down.

Helena de Groot: Wow.

Sebastian Merrill: And so, one day I was kayaking and I was like, I think, I think I need to give the ghost a voice. And I think maybe the Persephone poems are a way into that. And so I kind of had these poems I’ve been writing, and then I kind of started working those in and writing new ones, and it felt like it just kind of came together. It was, like, very intuitive and it felt really important that she was speaking. And it, Persephone felt like the perfect—what’s the word, like, a metaphor, or? (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah, or like a vehicle almost.

Sebastian Merrill: A vehicle. Yeah. Because in so many ways I feel like she is, she’s both alive but trapped in the underworld. And, and I really wanted her space to be—I was really fascinated at the time with, like, underground caves and just like, this idea of the underland.

Helena de Groot: Uh-huh.

Sebastian Merrill: I was reading, I think, Robert Macfarlane’s book Underland at the time, and that was really kind of like in my head. I was totally fascinated by his depictions of kind of the world beneath the Earth. Yeah, but I think my husband is like one of the characters in the book that I, at a certain point, because originally he was in it, and I said to him, I was like, “I love you so much. And I think that the speaker in this book needs to be alone. And so I’m taking you out.” (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: How did he react?

Sebastian Merrill: He was supportive.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: He was like, “Of course, that make sense.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah?

Sebastian Merrill: You know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. But I find it so interesting that the way that you phrase it now is you say, “I needed to be alone.”

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Because, you know, the book is, is, in a sense, already filled with relation. Right?

Sebastian Merrill: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: Like the speaker is divided or multiplied or, right?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: There’s this whole conversation about like, is it the two of us?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Is it two, is it us?

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Is it me, you, you know?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: By the way, on that note, just to start us off in this world of, like, multiplication and division, right, would it be okay for you to read just an excerpt from a poem?

Sebastian Merrill: Oh, sure. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Okay. I was thinking about on page 61.

Sebastian Merrill:

(READS POEM)

my ghost sister self. After all this time, I still don’t know what pronouns to use for you, for me, for us. Are we one or two? Am I and I. And you and you? When I was young, was I myself, my I? Or was I you? Or were we a we plural in our intertwined yet also singular self. I don’t know. We elude easy definition. Sometimes I miss your soprano. The smooth skin of your face, the softness I lack. Sometimes I almost forget how you existed. Yet, always. I feel you tight within, a second heartbeat inside my chest.

Helena de Groot: You know what I love about this excerpt is that smack in the middle of the page is the line, “I don’t know.”

Sebastian Merrill: Mm.

Helena de Groot: And I feel like everything else kind of just gyrates—is that the word?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Gyrates around it.

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: All of a sudden, it’s sounding very weird. (LAUGHS) And it’s interesting because you did just say “I needed to be alone in the book.”

Sebastian Merrill: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And then here you also say, “I feel you tight within, a second heartbeat inside my chest.” You know?

Sebastian Merrill: Mm.

Helena de Groot: So you also sort of seem to be saying, “I am never really alone.”

Sebastian Merrill: Right.

Helena de Groot: What was the experience of inhabiting her perspective or trying to?

Sebastian Merrill: I think thinking about them as persona poems was helpful.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And I think sometimes writing the poems in her voice felt really sad. You know, like, I think, I think there is this loss of experience that is, well, what if I hadn’t been trans, if I hadn’t transitioned, if I wasn’t queer? Like, all of these things are so important and so integral to who I am and things I love about myself. And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to be any other way. But I think there is this question of what is this other life that, that this other version of myself who didn’t hold those identities would have lived?

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And sometimes when I, I think I do feel like the metaphor of, like, oh, it’s almost like I had a sister.

Helena de Groot: Hm.

Sebastian Merrill: As an only child, I think I’ve always been really interested in siblings and kind of like, identity in that way.

Helena de Groot: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah. If I meet someone who has the name I used to have,

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Sebastian Merrill: I still feel like a certain affinity with that name, and it’s like a little echo.

Helena de Groot: But you know what I also found so interesting is like, you were talking about the way in which trans people are so often forced to really simplify the story, right? Like “I was born”—it’s like very binary.

Sebastian Merrill: Right.

Helena de Groot: “I was wrong before and I want to be right now and that’s why I want to transition.”

Sebastian Merrill: Right. Right.

Helena de Groot: And so I think when society demands us to be binary, I think it can be really hard to let in nuance, right?

Sebastian Merrill: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And so, again, I’m wondering, what did it feel like to enter a very ambiguous landscape in your poem?

Sebastian Merrill: Hm. I think it was really freeing.

Helena de Groot: It was?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah. I think the scary part is publishing the book and having other people read it. Because I, (PAUSES) I think the fear is that it will be used to (PAUSE) I’m searching for the right word, like, dis-

Helena de Groot: Like weaponized?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, weaponized.

Helena de Groot: Like used against you?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, like used against me.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: To say, “Oh, well, because your story isn’t straight forward, you’re not really a man.”

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sebastian Merrill: But I also think I didn’t really write this book for those people who might think that. I wrote this book for, first and foremost, trans people who might feel as though their gender identity feels more complicated or nuanced than a simple story.

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sebastian Merrill: And also, I think writing this book was actually incredibly healing, because it enabled me to really get in touch with myself in a more profound and deeper way. And when I first came out as trans, I felt as though I had to adhere to like a very specific binaried like, kind of like expression of my gender in order to be seen.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: As the person that I wanted to be seen. And I think that as I’ve become more confident in who I am and also, with the, for me, blessing of getting to physically transition and actually have my body look the way I wanted to look, I have actually gotten to become more fluid and nuanced and creative in my gender expression. And so it continues to be kind of this journey of self-discovery and exploration. And I think there’s real beauty in that.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, because you have long hair, for instance, right?

Sebastian Merrill: Right, yeah, I started growing out my hair essentially around when I, during the pandemic when I was writing the book.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) We were all growing out our hair!

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, didn’t have access to a hairdresser. And I started growing up my hair, which I hadn’t done since prior to my transition. And it feels really fun to realize, Oh, I do like having long hair. Like, this is a part of my self-expression that feels authentic to me and to how I want to be in the world. And it’s funny because, prior to my transition, I hated having long hair. Like when I was a kid, I really, like, wanted to chop my hair off, and did, and, you know, and it was complicated. And it’s so fascinating to think, Oh, at the time that was like one of the few signals that I could give of, like, I don’t want to be perceived as, you know, a woman with long hair or a girl with long hair. But now that I’m able to really embody who I am, I get to kind of feel like, Oh, it is fun to have long hair. This is this is something I enjoy.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: I was wondering if we can get to another poem.

Sebastian Merrill: Sure.

Helena de Groot: I was thinking the one on page 26. I love that poem so much. It’s so beautiful.

Sebastian Merrill: Thank you. So this is in the voice of Persephone.

(READS POEM)

Ghost. Persephone.

I name each day as my own, find forgetting the tang of grief takes time. Look, a pomegranate is a world I can burst open as a pluck each ruby seed, I repeat my golden name. My voice reverberates off the cave walls, echoes out over the still waters of the lake.

Helena de Groot: Can you continue reading? And so now you’re in the voice of the speaker, right?

Sebastian Merrill: Right. Okay.

(CONTINUES READING)

I find a comfort in the rhythm of the tides. Twice daily cycle covering, then revealing over ten feet of snails and seaweed. Slippery rock this long, slow breath, a constant reminder of the moon’s pull. But no transition occurs in pure isolation. It’s easier to carry my kayak to the water when the tide is high. I cinched tight my life vest before I launch. The snug hold around my chest reminds me of binding the ache of my back, my tight breath. I wound muslin over and over. Your breasts. Tried ace bandages. Duct tape. Compression binders. Learned how to hide your body so I might be seen. I turned away from you. I had to.

Helena de Groot: There’s something so heartbreaking about the direct address. Because some of it feels almost like an apology.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: You know, like, “I wound muslin over and over your breasts.” You know, “I learned how to hide your body so I might be seen. I turned away from you. I had to.”

Sebastian Merrill: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: What kind of feeling snuck into your direct address as you were addressing your, you know, ghost sister?

Sebastian Merrill: Mm. A real sense of, like, tenderness,

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: and love. I’m kind of like putting my hand on my heart because I think part of the nuance is that there is a sense of loss. This idea of turning away from aspects of oneself in order to allow other aspects to come alive.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And perhaps also sending myself some tenderness and love for the decisions that I’ve made in my life and the choices that I’ve made in order to, like, be my authentic self.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: I think that my experience growing up as a girl in like, the ’90s and the early 2000s, there was so much negative body talk in our culture. And I think one of the things that was confusing for me when I was first trying to figure out my identity and who I was, was, well, everyone I talk to you, all the girls I talk to are struggling with their body image and struggling with, with how they feel about their body. It felt very much a part of the culture in which I grew up to kind of critique one’s body in certain ways.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And I think it took me a really long time to disentangle and realize that my own feelings about my body were not just that I wanted to be skinny because that’s what I was being told I should be, right? And I think it’s like a really radical act for any of us to try to love ourselves as we are. And I think I had a lot of really negative self-talk when I was younger about my body. So I think in some ways, I wish I could have been kinder to my younger self.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: But I also wish that my younger self had been in a world that wasn’t so, you know, I think I have a line in my book where I say, “Small comfort I found, learning to hate your body, just as other women learned to hate their bodies.”

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Do you feel like, in a way, the process of transitioning has helped you with your body image and has helped you heal from the negative self-talk that, as a woman in society, you’ve been raised with?

Sebastian Merrill: Absolutely. I think I have two things to say about that. The first is that I feel really—I love being trans and I feel really grateful that I have had this experience because I don’t have any fears that I’m going to go through a mid-life crisis where I’m like, “Oh my gosh, actually,

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: “I should have done this whole other thing with my life,”

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: I feel very much like I’ve done a lot of the introspective work that I think sometimes if folks’ identities align more with what’s expected from them in society, it’s just very easy to say, “Okay, like, I’ll do this, I’ll get married, I’ll have kids, I’ll, you know,” and then maybe later it’s like, “Oh, wait, maybe I actually didn’t want this for my life path.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: And I didn’t really think about it because it was what I was supposed to do.

Helena de Groot: Right.

Sebastian Merrill: So I think there’s a real gift in having almost been forced through my own kind of assuredness of self, to go through a lot of that really hard work of figuring out who I am at a, perhaps a younger age than I would have if I wasn’t trans. And I said I had two things I wanted to say.

Helena de Groot: I know, you forgot the other one. (LAUGHS)

Sebastian Merrill: What was the question?

Helena de Groot: Well, my question was like,

Sebastian Merrill: Oh. Oh, loving my body and like, feeling good about my body.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: Okay. So the thing that’s really interesting is that I still feel as though I, every single day I’m like learning to love myself as I am. And I still feel as though, even though I identify as a man, even though my body looks the way I want it to look, I still feel as though sometimes I have that, a lot of, like, the negative self-talk that I grew up with about not being thin enough or, you know, all of this stuff that’s totally anti all of my, my values, right? Like, I’m very, like, body positive. And I believe that we should all love our bodies as they are. And yet I think it’s, that sometimes the hardest thing is to really feel that, even today.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: I think it’s an ongoing journey of learning to accept myself. And I think, especially in like the world of yoga, where, I think one of the reasons why I got into teaching yoga was because I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me leading yoga classes. And there’s, I think, real power in showing up in the body that I have. And I teach general yoga classes for everyone, and then I also teach classes that are specifically for queer and trans folks. And those are my favorite, because it’s such a powerful space for LGBTQIA+ folks to get to come together and breathe and move in their bodies and be in community.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: But sometimes I still feel certain pressures to, like, look a certain way or be a certain way. So I think just being myself is sometimes just a radical act.

Helena de Groot: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, the yoga I’m also very interested in because, you know, like I’ve heard several stories of people who transition and they are singers and they have to, like, get reacquainted with their voice, right?

Sebastian Merrill: Oh yeah.

Helena de Groot: Because the voice changes.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And how sort of identity, what an identity upheaval that is, because they always saw themselves as like a singer or someone who had a beautiful voice, and all of a sudden their voice does not obey them at all, anymore you know?

Sebastian Merrill: No, right, yeah, that’s my experience.

Helena de Groot: Oh, really?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah. Yeah, I was a big singer before I transitioned. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Ohh, interesting.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Do you still sing?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah that’s something that I’m—a while back I started seeing a voice teacher who’s married to a trans guy, because I had that experience of,

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: I used to sing, you know, and totally lost control of—and that’s like, I think that’s in the book, you know, I write, “I miss your soprano.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: You know, I think that there is this loss of, I just don’t know what the sound is going to be. And even as a yoga teacher, leading and, you know, the sound of Ohm at the beginning of class, it’s still a little bit of a question mark of like, what that’s going to sound like.

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Sebastian Merrill: But I actually will share that with my students as like, it doesn’t need to be beautiful

Helena de Groot: Right.

Sebastian Merrill: to actually be vulnerable with my students about, I don’t know what this is necessarily going to sound like, but we’re all here together making the sound of Ohm.

Helena de Groot: Wow. And I can imagine that for your students, it’s also, it must be a relief to hear that from you.

Sebastian Merrill: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: Like, “Look, I struggle with this, but I’m going to do it anyway,” right?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, right.

Helena de Groot: Like, “Why don’t we all just try, even though we feel not ready or something,” you know?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And so, okay, the voice being one thing. The body of course is a huge other aspect. Are there ways in which transitioning made you worse at certain things you used to be better at or better at certain things you used to be worse at?

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Because like, just, you know, muscle distribution changes and like, you know, did it affect your yoga practice at all?

Sebastian Merrill: I definitely have more muscle definition than I used to, and there’s things that I can do now that were much more challenging for me.

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sebastian Merrill: Like I’m a lot stronger.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: But then also I, like, I feel like my shoulders got a lot broader and so there are certain binds,

Helena de Groot: Mm, that are harder.

Sebastian Merrill: like, that I can’t reach in the same way, which is why I think straps are amazing, (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Helena de Groot: Oh yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: But I actually feel like I lost some of, yeah, some of the flexibility just because like, the muscles got in the way. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Totally. Yeah, exactly. On the flip side, can you do, like, arm balances that you couldn’t do before?

Sebastian Merrill: Oh yeah. Yeah, I love it. It’s so fun.

Helena de Groot: Wow. (LAUGHS)

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS) But I think one of the things when I started taking testosterone that felt important to me was to sustain my yoga practice, because I was like, I’m showing up every day because I really want to be embodied and be moving and building strength in like a really intentional way.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: I find it beautiful to hear that throughout your transition, medical transitioning, you wanted to do yoga every day, to stay in touch with your body every day.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And that sounds like a really profound spiritual experience.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Your silence with yourself, right?

Sebastian Merrill: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: You’re not doing anything else,

Sebastian Merrill: Right.

Helena de Groot: you’re not also reading an email, or also—right?

Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Like you’re trying to keep your, your thoughts centered on your movement, on your body. Did you ever cry during? Did you ever burst out laughing? Like, what were some of the emotions that came up as you did that?

Sebastian Merrill: Oh, yeah!

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sebastian Merrill: I still cry when I practice. I still laugh. One of my favorite things sometimes when I teach, I teach a joy-based practice sometimes. And one of my favorite things is to have all the students, we all lie down, and I say, “Okay, we’re all going to, we’re all going to fake laugh for like 30 seconds to a minute.” And it’s just like the most infectious, like, beautiful experience. And I’ll say like, “This is going to feel a little weird.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: “It’s going to feel a little silly. We’re all just going to laugh together.” It’s so fun.

Helena de Groot: Right, because it starts fake, but it becomes real, right?

Sebastian Merrill: It becomes real, yeah.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sebastian Merrill: I laugh when I teach all the time. I think I bring—yoga for me is such a joyful practice that I, I’ll, I’ll laugh when something’s really hard.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) I heard you do that!

Sebastian Merrill: When we were practicing?

Helena de Groot: I actually heard you do that, yes!

Sebastian Merrill: Oh! Yeah, there was some move that I hadn’t done before and I was like, Where do I go? You know, and so, I think,

Helena de Groot: It was like, from the side plank to like a sort of wild thing, you know,

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah. Oh that’s interesting.

Sebastian Merrill: So I think I’ll laugh when I’m practicing, I’ll laugh when I’m teaching. If I make a mistake, I’ll just laugh and say, “Oh, ha ha, like, left hand instead or whatever.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sebastian Merrill: And so I think laughter is a huge part of my practice. And then also, I deeply believe that our bodies hold emotion and trauma, you know? And I think sometimes when we experience a stressful situation or maybe even a traumatic situation, our bodies will go into a fight or flight mode. Right?

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And so there’s a tensing that happens of like, Oh, I want to run away from the scary situation, but sometimes we can’t do that, right? And so our bodies actually hold, we tense up the hips, because we want to run away, but we can’t. So we, like, we will tense up. And so sometimes I think that one of the reasons why I have cried in pigeon pose, I’ve had students cry in pigeon pose, you know, this deep hip flexor work, later when we’re in, hopefully a safer situation, when we’re actually taking time to breathe and actually taking time to feel our bodies, we’re actually able to let that go.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Okay, one last, I want to get to one last poem, and then we’re done.

Sebastian Merrill: Okay.

Helena de Groot: Because you said at the beginning, and I thought that was beautiful, that you’ve been reading your poems in class.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And so can you tell me about a poem that you thought resonated particularly well or lent itself particularly well to being taught in the context of yoga? And then, like, if there’s anything that stands out to you also in how people reacted maybe to it, like, is there, is there anything that we can read? And then then you can sort of tell me a little bit about how that entered into the space of yoga?

Sebastian Merrill: I will say that this was a challenge to myself. I think reading my poems in class and sharing my poems as a yoga teacher has been at the edge of my comfort zone. And has been a practice of, like, the loving kindness practice towards myself of saying it’s okay to read my poems in class. And so I went through the book and said, Okay, the six weeks leading up to my book’s coming out, each week, I’m going to read a poem from the book and teach a sequence connected to that poem, as a way for myself to get more comfortable sharing the work with folks. And so the poem that I started with is on page 9, and it’s the first of these poems that I, I call them my gender diagrams.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Sebastian Merrill: And they’re kind of, I think of them as not in the voice of the speaker or Persephone. So, is it okay if I read this one?

Helena de Groot: Absolutely. And also, the word “gender” is in every stanza, multiple times, and it’s capitalized.

Sebastian Merrill: Yes. That is important.

Helena de Groot: So it’s almost like a person. Right?

Sebastian Merrill: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, “GENDER” becomes this kind of like, entity.

Helena de Groot: Right.

Sebastian Merrill: Okay.

(READS POEM)

My gender floats on salts. My gender transcends time, folds into mass flows, gentle beneath the earth. My gender has a forgotten name. My gender. Youse is wrapped in grief. My gender is a plucked rose. A ghost. My gender wanders in the underworld. My gender is a full moon. A spring born seal pup. My gender is evergreen. My gender mirrors and twins glows like a firefly. My gender haunts. My gender sings the lights.

So I taught this poem alongside a heart opening sequence.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And for my queer and trans yoga class, actually, at the beginning, I asked each student to share their gender without using words like man, woman, male, female, masculine, or feminine. So kind of taking the prompt of this poem and then seeing what they would come up with. And it was, I wish I had written it down, it was like a poem in itself. It was so beautiful.

Helena de Groot: What do you remember? What were some of the things?

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah. I think one person described their gender like an old raincoat. And another was like waves washing on the shore. Another was, I think, like a fern unfurling. It was so beautiful. And in my other classes, I just invited folks to ask themselves and think about if I were to describe my gender without using these terms, what would I come up with? And afterwards, one of my students who’s this absolutely lovely cis woman wrote to me, and she had written her own poem about her gender. And it was just so, so touching. I was so appreciative that it had resonated for her in that way, and that even someone who wasn’t queer or trans kid could actually get something out of it,

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sebastian Merrill: and think about it for themselves. And yeah, and then the sequence was a lot of, a lot of heart openers, a lot of, some hip work.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Helena de Groot and Sebastian Merrill: (LAUGH)

Sebastian Merrill: And I, for that practice, I really invited my students to really think about it with every movement, “Is this being loving and kind to myself? And how can I be my authentic self on my mat as I’m moving, as I’m breathing?” And sometimes that looks like doing something different than what I’m offering, right?

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Merrill: And so really trying to empower my students to, to take the space that they need.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, I love that.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And in beginning, you said that you wanted to write this book, but the moment you thought about an audience, about anyone ever reading it, you just

Sebastian Merrill: Shut down.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, shut down.

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: So now that the book has been written, and now that you’re starting to come out with, you know, to share it, to speak it, to sing it,

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Right? You know, even like in yoga class. What’s it been like?

Sebastian Merrill: Terrifying. And beautiful. And surprising.

Helena de Groot: What surprised you?

Sebastian Merrill: That folks have really seemed to resonate with it. And I’m really trying to, like, if someone says something to me, I really am trying, like, this is part of my practice of really trying to not brush it aside, but actually really hear it.

Helena de Groot: When someone says “This was beautiful or I love this?”

Sebastian Merrill: Yeah, or “This resonated with me” or “Thank you.”

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Sebastian Merrill: You know, I had a friend who is planning on starting taking testosterone soon, and they—I shared the book with them and they read it and they were like, “Thank you. This is what I needed to, to read at this time in my life.” And just feeling like, Oh, wow, this thing that was important to me actually, might, if I’m, you know, might actually positively impact other people’s lives, feels like a huge gift. (MUSIC PLAYING) My hope for the book is that it finds the people who need it. Because I wrote the book that I wish I’d had, the book that I wanted to have been able to read earlier in my life. So, yeah.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Sebastian Merrill is the author of the debut collection GHOST :: SEEDS, selected by Kimiko Hahn as the winner of the 2022 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. He won a Levis Prize for Poetry and a Rodney Jack Scholarship for LGBTQ+ students from Friends of Writers, and received support from Tin House Workshop and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute.  Sebastian has also been a yoga teacher since 2018. He teaches online and in person at Amherst College and the Sanctuary in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he also serves as Artistic Director. To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions. I’m Helena de Groot, and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.