In Other Words: An entanglement of o & E

The O-obsessed olivier met with Noa Micaela Fields ahead of the launch of her debut poetry book E. Searching for the trans souls of their chosen vowels, they role-played in conversation as o and E.

Photo credit: Ang Zheng

o: I have a few questions for you. But first of all, how would you like to be addressed? Many people ask me if I am o or O; they are essentially the same unless I am amongst others— Are you e or E, when are you which?

E: It is a matter of the ear’s preference for major or minor chords. You can call me either.

o:  Do you talk to Noa? How does she hear you?

E: Noa Micaela Fields, as you know, is an echodeviant poet. She mishears everything through the glitch of her hearing aids. So I have learned to speak to her from within: a trans feminine spirit that she can tap into.

o: On the pages/poems, you are so coy and assertive at the same time. I feel a similar way, but I am elusive and avoidant. This is not a question— just something I am noticing and jealous of you as another vowel.

E: We vowels are mischievous tricksters. I delight in enabling new possible valences of the self to emerge. Principles of excess and edging apply.  Enjamb me in reverse pleasure.

o: Who is another letter in the alphabet you can or do rely on?

E: I’m entangled in a longstanding on-and-off relationship with “A” ever since the great vowel shift. Noa’s poetry collection, titled in my honor, mishears my beloved’s poem of a life, Louis Zukofsky’s “A.”  That book, befitting the tuning pitch of the orchestra, is deeply musical. In music, E is a harmonic fifth above the key of A, so we’re closely related. E’s song hollers back / devours A’s reverie / nourishing faggory.

o: Here’s to our entanglement, my dear—

(o gestures to cheering a fake drink)

E: It’s an invisible thread that ties together the shared melody lines of A and E below the surface, but close readers will be rewarded.

o: Would you like to be seen?  

E: For who I am, yes, and on my terms, not only in the shadows of “A.” Those who seek me find traces of me everywhere. Noa is exceedingly adept at espying me, like Waldo,  at large in the city: in zines, signs, graffiti tags, other people’s poems. I don’t mind being exposed so long as I am not taken for granted. Truth is I can be a bit of an exhibitionist.

o: Would you like to be heard?

E: Hearing is something felt in the body. Like how reverb holds you, physically, emotionally. Hear me out: some high-energy feelings can only be felt with a string of eeee’s, a chorus of dolphins squealing. E feelings! E feelings! Mmm ass against the art.

o: Funny that you admit being an exhibitionist, I do see “e” everywhere, as you know, everyone loves to use e and depend on e to form what they want to show. But hearing e requires more attention as e seeps into, well, everything.

E: Sometimes it’s hard to recognize the extraordinary within the everyday. Poets sometimes resort to ostranenie—also called estrangement or defamiliarization—to find a new point of view as a technique of attention.

o: Oh, sounds like the good o’ case of painters’ romanticisation. The moments of mundanity becoming the muse? I used to have a painting professor who ran until exhaustion before he painted. So the familiarity with his own arms and hands and brushes are all disrupted by succumbing to the failing of the body. But speaking of body. In our cases, the cases of ...letters, the body seems to be submitting itself to a different kind of scrutiny. O and o are mostly the same with most fonts, and I roll myself away amongst other letters when being written. E and e are so drastically different. How is your body feeling?

E: In the wintertime when I’m sleepy I frequently curl into a lowercase fetal position. But, like a good mother, I erect myself and ignore my own needs to make myself of service to those who depend on me. E’s feminine forms are variable.

o: Would you like to be curled in someone’s tongue?

E: Exquisite sensation, though it’s better if I dissolve under the tongue. My effects are best felt when I am taken sublingually.

o: A dose of E! E is for feminising effect.

E: What’s cause and effect, manuscript or girlhood? I do not know what came first, nor do I know the next shape to follow. Both cases of rewriting, as body and name acquaint each other. Maybe they’re bookends.

o: I adore bookends - well -  maybe only the traditional library bookends that were made to be “hidden”... “Seamlessly” blending into the books and shelves. I can have another endless conversation about bookends. Would you like to be hidden?

E: Georges Perec tried to hide me away for a whole novel [La Disparition, translated into English as A Void]. Oulipo poets and their lot love experimental constraints, but I don’t  bend easily to rules. Language is made strange without me in sight.

o: No one can easily put letters that trans- away. We are always morphing, passing, blending, breaking in, moving on, [defying] the poet’s intent. Perhaps “hide” is just simply not possible. To purposefully hide something away would just highlight the absence as your presence. I love constraints, because it makes me realise “hey I can do that instead by twisting this” and run far away with it, not from it.

E: You can’t voice words without the air we literally breathe into language. Speaking vowels requires the vocal tract, which is why it’s impossible to whisper a vowel.  And we vowels shapeshift in the mouth, stretching wider or lifting higher when needed.  Our audible difference leaks between and outside of the container of consonants, bending their bones towards new forms. We highlight how language is a delicate and physical choreography. 

o: oof. “Shapeshift” in the mouth. Yes, that is what I like to do to the speakers. If you need me, you need to put it in your mouth.

E: Ears, too, are an erogenous zone.

o: Would you like to be amongst others?

E: E’s a crowdpleaser. We dance together in pleasure and blur, become singular plural.

o: In E, the book, I was so lost before E, self voyaged. There were many times you mentioned the other self or even selves... kind of unseeable, but the I is so there. Does E feel the need to become other ....E...s? Other...? Were you not E before E? Who are you?!

E: Maybe I was always there latently, a spiritual intuition of my self as trans before I heard my name called, feint and nearly illegible. Somehow I misheard the expected scripts others tried to steer me by, and learned instead to listen deeply for that emergent self. A threshold needed to be crossed for me to be felt fully. Not only imagined, but brought out, made real.

o: Would you like to be read?

E: I’m available in print from Nightboat Books in January 2026. Please read me and pass me on to your nearest transsexual menace while you can, I’m sure to be banned eventually.

Note: Lines in italics are from Noa Micaela Fields’ book, E.

Noa Micaela Fields is an echodeviant enjambment queen (trans poet with hearing aids) in search of the hypervivid in her one and only captionless life. E, her debut poetry book, is now out from Nightboat Books. She is a public programs curator at the Poetry Foundation and poetry co-editor for Chrysalis, a trans youth literary magazine. Born in California, she now lives in Chicago. www.doyounoapoet.com

olivier is an artist and cataloguer. They find pleasure in copy-and-editing amongst site-responsive participatory installation with drawings, videos, sutures, artists’ publications, surveys, speculative writing, etc., and have a secret mail-art practice. They think of their medium as “re-reading”, unfolding in the creases of “para-” and “trans-” ness. Working as a processing archivist, olivier is also an adjunct assistant professor and artists’ assistant. They are the founder of an experimental UFO archive The UFO Lobby (2021–). olivier holds an MFA in Studio Arts and MA in Visual and Critical Studies. Born and raised in British Hong Kong, olivier and their time machine are temporarily stuck in this dimension. So it goes... . www.xoliiviierx.com