Letitia Despina

Early onset intertextuality, aged seven I would copy poems and pass them as my own, while at the same time faking illiteracy so my grandma would read for me. I grew out of lying and thieving the only way I knew how: telling the truth. but then I also write. all the small details of life I want to keep in a forever book of life bits, like how the smell of freshly baked white bread, franzelă, is the smell of childhood. being sent to buy bread, the hot franzelă that burns the tips of your fingers, with its crisp crust and soft inside, barely out of the bakery you rip it apart with your gang, and the same grandma that puts up with your lies so tenderly cannot understand how fast a hot franzelă disappears among four small friends, she with her perfectly cut slices and her end of the bread that she keeps aside to give to her favorite.

I write more to talk less.

two books that punched me in the face and/or maybe the first that popped into my head: Argonauts, Maggie Nelson, and Black Spring, Henry Miller. I love some poetry, I love it with giggles on the inside. Ben Lerner, S.J. Fowler, Emily Berry, e.e., Maggie Nelson again. I love finding poetry in prose, sentences, or paragraphs that I'd like to keep with me forever. 

I’m not lost, just vibin(g).

Her debut poetry collection Instant Masterpiece of Shit was released in 2021.

the authors

  • Neus Casanova Vico

    Neus Casanova Vico

    I think my relationship with writing is the most stable one I've ever had. It's always there, I always carry it with me in the form of a notebook. Sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it gets more serious, sometimes it's because I don't have anyone else to talk to.

  • letitia despina

    Letitia Despina

    Early onset intertextuality, aged seven I would copy poems and pass them as my own, while at the same time faking illiteracy so my grandma would read for me. I grew out of lying and thieving the only way I knew how: telling the truth.

  • Dave Wood

    Dave Wood

    I love the frantic cut-up thoughts just before sleep, that’s my favourite time to write. It’s also when I’m least motivated to put anything down. But there’s something freeing about thinking something is good, wanting to write it down but losing to sleep, then never remembering it again.

  • lea rasovszky

    Lea Rasovszky

    Writing is part of my bestiary. Words are delicious, heavy, unreal, too real and I cannot be without them. On my body and on my art.