Isobel O'Hare's Erasure Poems Comment on the Public Act of Making #MeToo Amends

Critic and poet Meisha Rosenberg interviews Isobel O'Hare—known for her viral "erasure poems, made from the redacted statements of celebrities accused of sexual assault and harassment during the #MeToo reckoning," now collected in book form and titled All This Can Be Yours (University of Hell Press)—for The Rumpus. From their conversation:

Rumpus: There was this quote from your introduction from writer and activist Blythe Baldwin where she’s drawing a distinction between the difference between a verbal apology and actually making amends, and I wanted to talk about that.

O’Hare: Sure; I think that the process of making amends is a private one. Our conversation behind that quote was about twelve-step programs and addiction in particular. Part of the twelve-step program is making amends to people you’ve harmed and going to them privately and saying, “I did you harm. And I want to acknowledge that and be accountable for that,” without the expectation that that person has to forgive you or feel a certain way about it. The public apology was—what I think Blythe was referring to there—was the fact that they’re so public and they’re so impersonal, a lot of them. And it’s like they had the same PR guy writing them. You know, it’s like, “I remember it differently,” or “this is not who I am” and “she didn’t say no.”

In an ideal world, the person would say something like, “I caused someone harm and I fully intend to approach them and make amends for that harm” and not go into all this “it was different back then” and “times have changed.” Some of these statements are really poetic [laughter], really elaborate language and intense attempts to explain the situation.

Rumpus: Yeah. Their language almost becomes rhetoric or something in the realm of legalese, or PR.

O’Hare: Exactly. It’s damage control language.

Read it all at The Rumpus.