Misha Honcharenko is a Ukrainian artist, writer and translator. Skin of Nocturnal Apple is his debut poetry collection, published with Pilot Press. Written in the years prior to Russia’s invasion in 2022, Skin of Nocturnal Apple offers a window into the life of a young queer man living and working in the future war-ravaged country. Matthew Kinlin interviewed Misha via Zoom about his poetry collection and his unpublished novel Trap Unfolds me Greedily which expands on his relationship with horror, before conducting an interview via email.

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Matthew Kinlin: I know you use tarot so I thought a good way to start the interview might be if you think of a question that you are willing to share with readers and then describe the card you choose.

Misha Honcharenko: Tarot is a very vigilant and demanding tool for working with images, symbols and their context. As a discipline, they can personify various slants of a conscious, fierce look into a very intimate field for the creation or interpretation of this or that construct. I will get one of the cards and see what it can indicate about my presence in the literary or artistic area in general.

So, my deck is relatively well known and it’s called ‘The Light Seer’s Tarot’. This one evokes some kind of weightlessness and acertainty in the images and artistic choice of the author. I’ve got Two of Pentacles; pentacles belonging to the minor arcana module of the tarot system and they usually depict a seed, to grow your own passion, effort, sexuality principle, earthiness, but also it can be quite hectic.

A deuce card is about opposites in my case, since I can be quite vulnerable and thoroughly meticulous in my actions, in the discipline of my writing routine or even communication. A kind of union, but I would prefer to see it as anonymity, a kind of authorship. The balance comprises red, yellow, brown, orange and grey colour choices. It heartens one to follow the wiser choice, and to surrender tranquility.

MK: I also know you collect some crystals. If your poetry collection Skin of Nocturnal Apple and your unpublished novel Trap Unfolds me Greedily could be represented as crystals, what would they be?

MH: Not that I collect voluntarily, no, but I have one stone that I once saved from a trip to the sea visiting my aunt in Odesa, when I was just a child. From my point of view, I was 6 or 7 years old and my mother decided to collect some stones brought from the beach. And in some sense, it awakened a sense of freedom in me. The second stone was bought in a very small space (‘a witch store with antique touch’) and the capacity of this particular second stone seemed like a solution to me. To have as a nice accompaniment to some of my decks. It’s an amethyst. Purple mirrors and reflects, depending on the broken edges, as if exhaling from that stone.

On the face of it, there is a grand alternative choice between them. ‘Skin of Nocturnal Apple’ may be that first stone from childhood: the formation of a value of youth and an impoverishment that carries the truancy of hedonism. This is a story about the absence of any modification. This stone seems to be cut off from most of one whole object. Not wearing this type upon your skin and flesh. It’s funny that the collection is literally about the opposite – about stolen skin, about the dotted foundations of the mechanism of love, when it is extremely callous and far-fetched.

‘Trap Unfolds me Greedily’ is nevertheless closer to the amethyst and to the process of the unconscious and the possession of horror and a sense of decay. The story of the real events as a road to unknown tropes, overly protecting this path. But an abundance of it – as a fiction. An extremity of sorrow, fucking, eating flesh, raping and loving. It can be very unpredictable in terms of genre and definitive obscenities.

MK: As the title Skin of Nocturnal Apple indicates, it feels like a physical work filled with many textures; an unravelling of skin, both seductive and painful, which took me to something like Scarlett Johansson’s alien-costume in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, bodies coming undone in liminal zones. How do you understand these textures of the poetry?

MH: Alienation and prosthesis of a glitch-like formalism can be a perfect mix for the understanding of texture. The way thatsingular narrative is breaking down all over in poetry and non-existent works. I don’t like to observe or to read lines that are soulless or aren’t penetrating. There are very brilliant poets out there but I’m more into poetry that is used error-free in fiction or experimental works. Personally speaking, skin can tear down and beguile the personification of detachments, noteworthy character and realism.

Jonathan Glazer is one of my favorite directors ever and this film in particular gives an insight into the significance and requirement of sound editing and the use of an image that is itself deadpan. The costume of the Johansson’s character represents a dying gap between asocial hunt of the necessity of duality and the humane but also finds a place for a blank dark hole with no feeling of the self. The landscape zones are quite phenomenal even though they’re also a punishment.

Seduction is a drenched death that has no limitations.

MK: There’s an insidious romance at times, specifically in the use of second person. Lines such as, ‘Radically I am never waiting for you,” reminded me of Paul Celan’s work, who writes, “My most bitter dream slept with you.” In Skin of Nocturnal Apple, these moments of sentimentality are often infected with violence, or a turning inwards, cannibalistic even. Are you speaking to another or yourself?

MH: If we take into consideration the tempo of the voice in my poetry, it doesn’t really fall into aspecific category of self or towards a secretly addressed person. It depends. I’ve committed some words or phrases or even paragraphs through the foundational figure of my own life. It could be the foundation in my youth as a kind of temple for receiving gifts that are delusional, where everything is too tied to the sin of being carried away for anyone else’s eyes.

Some people were so into the idea of making my skin tremble that I felt this semblance and used it in my poems. Violence is the most tender way to deconstruct the malady convulsions of love. Love is a milestone where it all begins. Even though my love isan imaginative act, to highlight agathering of unity. Paul Celan is also an important figure of my knowing and deepening of the culture of poetry.

I’m referring to a limbo of uneasiness and an obscure language that is like a ghostly referral, a protruding alpha. Sexless creature.

MK: You described the poems to Nick Blackburn as “improvisational acts.” I could sense their spontaneity and erasure. Some pages are left blank and the dates often function as titles. It feels like an anonymous text; an unknown diary or a series of intercepted messages. Marcel Proust writes, “The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed.” How do the poems relate to time?

MH: Over time, to be honest, they feel very isolated (an island soil as in the ‘Enys Men’ film by dir. Mark Jenkin) and imprinted on paper that documents my incapacity to be careful in my actions, in textures that supposedly cover a panorama of outlines, but still act according to the principle of demonstrability and the generous broadcast of my nudity. Nudes are the best form of surgery to feel that dark hour.

Actually, my brilliant publisher – Richard Porter – we’ve discussed every step of making my book in the best way possible. I urge you to support small presses and especially the work of Richard. He’s the sweetest. To be in this community of powerful queer force is a privilege, truly. And I feel blessed that he chose to do breaks (those exact blank pages) and it feels like an exhibition of phantoms surrendered by the joy and disturbance. An inviting tour-de-force.

Time doesn’t heal, but it transfixes to placate rumination and loosely makes the approach to be caught in its own trap. It is deranged, I do agree with the selection point. Probably,this is redeeming. Wheredoes the improvisation endwhen there’s a full-time circling conveyor of slightly visible quotes or phrases?

MK: You spoke with Nick about the work of Clarice Lispector, specifically her Agua Viva novel. Lispector often wrote about animals. If you could transform into any animal, what would it be and why?

MH: She’s the queen, yes. Um, I would definitely choose to be cougar, in order to embrace that power.

MK: You described Agua Viva as a “witch house”. I would say Skin of Nocturnal Apple feels like a handful of bright glass, the act of seeing a ghost in the afternoon, light streaming through a window. There’s a scene in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour where the protagonist is visited by the spirits of two Laotian princesses in broad daylight. Does the book operate like a haunted space?

MH: Thank you. Definitely. With ‘Agua Viva’ there is a witchcraft in motion. It makes me petrified with some sense of aftermath. But I can’t say that mine is comparable to her powerhouse. Lispector is just incredibly resourceful in her use of language and textual coloring, as if she’s trying to come to grips with herself and her heavy arsenal of words. The shape reimagining slow tension, the independence of human immanence. I think in that particular film by a masterlike Weerasethakul, there is a great chance to see the capture (handling of light, and foremost – a hypnosis by the slowness). Sanity. A fastidious control over every intrusion.

MK: If Skin of Nocturnal Apple is a diurnal book, then your unpublished novel Trap Unfolds me Greedily is definitely night. I’d say the book moves further into horror. Some of the more revolting elements felt akin to something like Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Death on the Installment Plan or more recently, Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season. Can you describe how these abject parts relate to yourself?

MH: Hmm, predominantly it is related to the night, and captures some haunting time lapses. To discourage, to disarm the reader. My hunch is that the novel is generally more violent and brutal than the first book, because I wrote it in a period of despair. Due to constant power blackouts, shelling of neighboring towns, family problems, and very little space for oneself. So, I used this opportunity to do an experiment and write every day and it doesn’t matter how and how much – but just do my craft. My body was like a helmet that was not able to protect it enough from the attacks of the past and torn from the insides. Feverish acid trip. A perversity and clarity of swelling. Stream of consciousness and zero given fucks are the perfect timing in order to be kept up to date in the major character knot, embodiment with no cutbacks. Those disturbing sketches are intentional and real and confusing actual sizes of life. Everything happening can be related or not. It’s a choice.

MK: Down to the gothic font, I found Trap Unfolds me Greedily more baroque, medieval almost, with descriptions such as “evil gnarled keeper”. Some episodes took me to Pierre Guyotat’s Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers, or B.R. Yeager’s playing-card work Pearl Death, bringing us back to tarot. The novel presents numbered sections like an arcana of torture: “The legs are attached to the blades, and the heels open the flesh.” How do you relate to its horrific images?

MH: I took the liberty of changing the specifics of the fontto make it look at least appropriate, apocryphal. Playing with the era and authoritarianism over the text. A maneuver with the use of cards that may have similarities with tarot or a gaming system in general intrigued me, and B.R. Yeager is one of the best modern writers working in the horror genre. It is extremely important to have a similarity with your own visual production, if you can create it yourself. Arcana of torture sounds so fucking great, I love it. A reversed meaning behind the violent apprehension and madness. A sort of manner of speaking from the view of ‘Strange Landscape’ by Tony Duvert. It is full of concern and unsettling scenery including graphic gay sex, raping, violent description, child abuse and lots of other appalling material. But what makes me interestedin this book is also making a left field amplitude for delicacy and close interactions.

MK: The book explores an extremely neglected childhood, to the point the narrator often feels unreal. There’s mention of “an illustration of Pinocchio” on the wall, which reminded me of Anne Sexton’s poem, The House: “In dreams, the same bad dream goes on. Like some gigantic German toy, the house has been rebuilt upon its kelly-green lawn. The same dreadful set, the same family of orange and pink faces carved and dressed up like puppets who wait for their jaws to open and shut.” Are we inside the bad dream of a marionette?

MH: Legitimately, this bad dream is mutable. It relishes on the verge of being confronted by the pitchforks of being a child. The marionette? Don’t think so. Narrator is both me and the gloom of the sampling of other people’s origin that somehow is gathering the daguerreotype of a collective hearing of these voices. A musique concrete, basically. The structure is a chaos and I don’t really want to change it. It makes sense, adds more acuity to the reading’s discovery and pleasure.

MK: In the midst of the horror, I found an ambience that took me to something like Jane Schoenbrun’s film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. The voice speaking to itself inside an empty room, an intimacy that feels very close, a blankness. Can you explain how these different parts interact?

MH: The dysphoria is tied tothe context of it, but mymain goal was to have that subliminal form of revenge. A very solid film, it’s altogether a very sharp storytelling. Creepypasta to a degree, a certain object stuck in a stretching pollution. The house, the camera, the lo-fi screeching, the painted face. I reckon different aspects of the film inspired me not to be precise about the body, rather to be incredulous of the environment. Happily, joint of a bleeding ear, hearing within the loud sound. That takes me back to the finding of reality ina black metal allegory. Sounds embody the arch ofthat lunatic slaughterhouse. Creating a weight. Some parts of the interior are not about making sense or not de facto concrete, but once you’ve finally found the core, purging alleviating breathes the explicitness of life. Strictly speaking, a bildungsroman. Or Gesamtkunstwerk. My raw title of the novel sounded like ‘Krankenhaus: Love Story’. (A hospital.)

MK: Your novel is more graphic in its exploration of sexuality, specifically in the “Ode to Daddy” poem, with lines such as, “Boy that hole that’s mine,” and “Your hairy boy cunt that sore.” How did you construct this section?

MH: That poem is a hideous high point interlude that was created via sexting. Fraction of words, even physical appearance made this happen. It falls into the zone of a dialogue. It is straight anguish loaded with theluxury of recognising your body.

MK: Jack Skelley writing for Los Angeles Review of Books argues that autofiction continues the trajectory of new narrative writing. He mentions texts that feature explicit gay sex such as The Works of Guillaume Dustan and Thomas Moore’s Forever. I’m currently reading William E. Jones’s novel I’m Open to Anything. How do you relate to the term autofiction?

MH: To be fair, I agree with Jack. It continues and swears by the notion of craft crossing the line of plain fundamentality. Autofiction is a technical word, I’d use something else to locate this fusion of genres. But above all it is an accessible method of keeping one’s life and safety in one literary whim. Semiotext(e) ingeniously picks gems of literature, now and back in a day. Like Nate Lippens’ Ripcord that will be out next year, it’s one of the best examples of a daring and blow-by-blow heavenly reunification.

Some favorites from autofiction are: Thomas Moore. Jenny Hval. Edouard Louis. W.G. Sebald. Tove Ditlevsen. Kathy Acker. Annie Ernaux. Herve Guibert. Chris Kraus. Olivia Laing. Wayne Koestenbaum. Jayne Tuttle. Garth Greenwell. Constance Debre. Maggie Nelson. Ann Quin.

MK: Towards the end, Trap Unfolds me Greedily explores a sense of queer: “Queer progresses, transforms, protects, loves.” How do you understand the term queer?

MH: The word queer foresees air, purity and self-improvement. Self-sufficient apparition. Enlarged control. A volcano bursting in sudden layers.

MK: The novel uses an epigraph from Ágota Kristóf’s Three Novels, detailing the lives of two brothers born into an occupied, war-ravaged country. Can you describe your experience of living and writing in Ukraine since the Russian invasion?

MH: War is the worst thing that can happen to humanity, there is no justification for a russian (with a small letter r) invasion and an attempt to destroy our cultural identity. Our language. Our consciousness, which exists for a very long period of history. I believe that the war united us all, Ukrainians, and that this force is of immeasurable order.

Everyone who is silent, everyone who is directly involved in the destruction of my country, who is involved in looting, who rapes, who kills, who kidnaps, who tortures, who continues to remain silent no matter what – they will all be punished. They are all rotten to me. Loathe them.

It is difficult to talk about how I live during the war with people who are not present here with me, at the same interval. At arm’s length. And in fact, in our reality it is difficult to accept that someone dies not from a rocket, but from the time.

Writing unblocked me in a very accidental way and I wrote the novel in about 3 months. Now in the process of the third book (this will be the second poetry collection). Can’t say much more.

MK: Skin of Nocturnal Apple was your debut book and released on Richard Porter’s Pilot Press, which presents work from established writers, but also accepts submissions from new artists and offers open invitations for their anthologies. The novel is dedicated to Nate Lippens, whose My Dead Book novel was published in the UK by Porter. Can you discuss how the collection reached Pilot Press?

MH: I’m in a total awe of Nate’s talent and he’s one of my closest friends. Around summer time we’ve started chatting last year – when the war was in a peak phase. Every phase of the war is a peak, for me. The pain is immutable. So, we’ve been discussing his revolutionary ‘My Dead Book’, which is a very important book; and he mentioned that I could send manuscript to the Richard. My book was always refused by lots of people and somehow, I felt that this could be the chance. Didn’t believe that something majestic could happen. And the next day I got a green light about my book – I was so so so thankful and overjoyed for the given opportunity. Richard loved the collection and then it all started. I’m still pinching myself because to be alongside to such talented and open people – it is an ecstasy.

Adedication to Nate seems to me a logical sense of our friendship. Of the kinship. The way he amazes me every bit of the thinking process and the discussion of art, people, love, cruelty, being an artist, a writer, someone who’s far from here but still experiences, going far beyond awareness and the binding of age limits.

MK: Wolfgang Tillmans featured some of your collages at his Berlin project space Between Bridges, as well as interviewing yourself and Richard Porter at the launch of Skin of Nocturnal Apple. Can you speak a bit about this and the process of making the collages?

MH: Yes, I consider this one of the most important places and events in my life. Entirely grateful for Wolfgang, for his team at Between Bridges, for Richard to help with the organizational moments and for making this real. Wolfgang is one of the most significant people in my youth and still. Every time his art, his photography, his music amazes me. The interview went extremely well and I felt the utmost happiness for the fact that my idol and my publisher were in the same space.

I hope that someday it will be released on some platform. For now, it’s in archive mode. But this fact makes me satisfied. It is a pity that I was not present in person, did not see the faces of people who were interested in the conversation. Some of my friends who came to support me then. There is a video on my Instagram where I read poetry in the first minutes of the event. Several of my works: digital collages and the first pages of my collection were printed as if it were a great trajectory in order to slowly master this territory. The realm of remembrance and exposure. With such love and warmth, I rememberall those moments.

MK: I know we’ve both been devouring the final series of Succession. What do you enjoy about these despicable people?

MH: I just finished A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux and there was an interesting quote – ‘to have received the key to understanding shame does not give the power to erase it’. I don’t think there’s any guilt or shame of being atrociously quirky. I find them all disturbing and fascinating at the same time. There’s no rule for the hatred. This is the best series on now. The characters are subtly thought out, cruel sharks inside a quasi-system and reality, which is controlled by a puppet. Well, in general – the emergence of primary communications. all this can be compared both with the presentation of the camera work, and with the sound and script. Golden material to work with. And to have fun with. My favorite from all of them is Gerri. She’s my spirit animal.

MK: Lastly, if you could spend the entire day with any character portrayed by Isabelle Huppert, who would it be and why?

MH: Malina dir. Werner Schroeter.  I would never, but I like risks. An uncut version of a nightmare.

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Misha Honcharenko is a Ukrainian artist, writer and translator. He started his Instagram profile as a form of art diary combining weirdness in context of objects and landscapes, exploring himself via photography for almost 8 years now. His work has been mentioned in i-D and Worms magazine. His debut poetry collection Skin of Nocturnal Apple was published with Pilot Press. His first novel Trap Unfolds me Greedily is yet to be published. Instagram: @michgonch

Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His two novels Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press) and Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press) were released in 2021. His novella The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit) and first collection of poetry Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books) were released in 2023. Twitter: @garbagemagician.