#49 Sylee Gore, writer & artist

'having the mental space to write is itself a privilege'

Sylee Gore is a poet who works as a translator and editor in the fields of art and photography. She won the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Fiction and the Lord Alfred Douglas Memorial Poetry Prize, and has received fellowships from VG Wort and National Endowment for the Arts.

Her first poetry chapbook, Maximum Summer (Nion Editions, March 2025), has recently been covered by The London Magazine, Poetry Foundation, Rusted Radishes, and Tears in the Fence. The Berlin book party, hosted by Hopscotch Reading Room, takes place on 15th May 2025 in the cemetery café and garden of LISBETH.

Where do you write?
Kitchen table, library carrel.

What's your most tempting distraction?
The people I love. The ease of silence.

What's that we hear on the speakers?
When working hard on a piece, I’ll loop a single track for hours.

Perfect bookshop to hide on a rainy day?
An indulgently epic list, for Berlin: Anakoluth, Another Country, Autorenbuchhandlung, b_books, Belle-et-triste, Bildband, Bookinista, Bücherbogen, Buchhandlung Walther König, Curious Fox, Dussman, Ebertundweber, Ferlemann and Schatzer, Hopscotch Reading Room, InterKontinental, Kohlhaas & Company, Marga Schoeller, Mundo Azul, Odradek, pro qm, Saint George’s, Shakespeare & Sons, She Said, Zabriskie, Zadig, Der Zauberberg – I could go on (I should go on!). Berlin is blessed with many perfect bookshops.

Favourite word in the English language?
“Elsewhere”.

Three writers (dead or alive) to have dinner with?
Any three of my poet friends. We meet too rarely!

What's your most treasured book?
This volume, inscribed by a teacher. The trio of chapbooks I received when Claire, Jane, Lyn and I began corresponding about my publishing something with Nion Editions. When I saw the watercolored fish pasted into Ed Roberson’s Aquarium Works — there’s one in each copy — I felt so touched by the care and generosity, the gusto of that gesture. It inspired me to handmake each cyanotype inserted into Maximum Summer.

What can we always find on your desk?
Here are some of my notebooks from the last few years. I like to bulk buy them at a nearby stationery store.

Dream writing location?
A desk opening onto a sea, a glacial lake. A table in a garden outbuilding. The eaves of a museum, all to myself. A vast draughty space to pace. A deconsecrated church with sleeping mezzanine and kettle. Benevolent municipal spaces. A view of teeming streets behind insulated glass.

(Even as I daydream, I’m aware that having the mental space to write is itself a privilege.)