How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
High school. I had a great creative writing teacher who used Kenneth Koch’s Sleeping on the Wing; basically we’d study a couple poems by a famous poet and then model. I especially remember liking my version of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” I also did a three-week long summer creative writing program–I believe it was the summer between sophomore and junior year–during which we wrote fiction and poetry, and, for whatever reason, my poetry writing really took off then, and I ended up winning the little award they gave for poetry. I kept focusing on poetry in part because I was good at it and I wanted to please people then, and in part because I could tell it did something satisfying to my brain. Eventually it became completely about doing something to satisfy my brain.
The form has always resonated with me because it’s more flexible and permissible than any other genre; I’ve cited Emily Dickinson’s poem #466 in multiple contexts regarding this, but I’ll do it again because it best explains what I like about poetry more than other genres: in this poem and others Dickinson characterizes poetry as a haunted house of sorts with trick doors and windows and secret passages…lots of places for the mind to explore.
That said, in the past couple of years, I’ve also been writing in some other genres–songwriting (I play guitar) and creative nonfiction. I’ve especially been enjoying the challenges of songwriting, figuring out how it is and isn’t like poetry and how my songs are both similar and dissimilar to my poems.
How does a poem begin?
Always with language, an image/concept written down or a phrase or several phrases. I collect images and phrases all the time, always have. I have about 600 notes on my phone, stuff written down everywhere, and if I wake up in the middle of night with something I yell it out to my alexa as a note. (Hope Bezos or whoever is enjoying all of those). Obviously I don’t return to all of them, but I like options, and sometimes writing one thing down triggers something else that ends up being what I actually want to use. I like to take walks in the woods and along the creek by my house, and I come up with a lot of stuff when I’m walking, which goes in the phone notes. Funeral directing also allows me to come up with more ideas than being in academia did–I’m not saying I’m pulling stuff directly from families I serve; if I do get an idea from a family, I twist it a lot, because I’m not going to violate their privacy. It’s more that the work of funeral directing varies from day to day much more than academia does. Some days I’m with a family; some days I’m transferring a body; some days I’m out on the road; some days I’m at some weird old cemetery…being in motion and seeing different things helps me generate ideas, so it’s better for me to be out and about rather than stuck in a classroom.
How did publishing your first book change your writing? What have the differences been since?
My first book of poetry Invisible Mink was
published by Iris Press in 2010 so there have been a lot of differences since
then. Generally, I would say my poetry has become less interested with trying
to impress academically and/or experimentally and more just what I want to say.
Whether that makes it “better” or “worse” or “more interesting” or “less” I’m
not sure, but it’s definitely more my own.
Invisible Mink was a revision of my PhD dissertation. I did an English PhD with a Creative Writing concentration so the dissertation was a book of poems accompanied by a critical preface that contextualized my work in various poetic traditions. Although I loved the reading and research I did in grad school and the support I received from my mentor/diss advisor and diss committee was phenomenal, I really disliked writing the critical preface because it often felt like I was making stuff up to suit the poetry and/or sometimes compromising the poetry so it jived with the preface. The poems were unnecessarily difficult but, looking back, it was just me trying to figure out how to write poetry and make the preface work by using the tools I had been taught. It was a hard time for me in general; academia was never right for me (more about that below), and it took me a ridiculously long time to sort that out because I had been told for years by many people that it was right for me. I’m not sorry I did any of it, because it got me where I am, but sometimes I wonder how my work would have been different otherwise. But maybe there wouldn’t have been any work at all.
My second book of poems The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press) was written between 2014 and 2016 and published in 2017; by that time I had started to develop themes and aesthetics more organically that have held true throughout subsequent publications.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
In 2022, I decided to leave academia and become a
funeral director and embalmer. I had been strategizing ways to exit academia
for about five years at that point, and it all clicked; deathcare was something
I’d always been interested in; it was something that did not require outrageous
amounts of schooling (and I loved mortuary school–honestly wished it was
longer); and it’s a field where one can decide where to live and find a job
rather than be forced to live somewhere due to the scarcity of English teaching
jobs. I attended and graduated from mortuary school and became licensed in
2024.
That said, I work an eight-hour day, occasionally longer, with four on-call nights a month, and, although we have decent PTO, it’s nothing close to the “summer off” one gets in academia. (I put “summer off” in quotations because it never really was completely, although some nice free time was provided.)
The only thing I truly miss about academia is the schedule; squeezing in writing on my current schedule is definitely more difficult, although I make it work, and I’m happier with my life overall. Usually writing comes on my days off, although sometimes dead time in the office does allow me to work a little bit.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
Cul-de-sac of Blood, Pioneertown, and Buffalo 8 are all super cool. I also really enjoy the work and spirit of OyeDrum.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I’ve been rereading Lyn Hejinian lately; she was one
of the best writers I was introduced to in grad school, and I actually got to
meet her then. My Life is a favorite and something about it collides
with the openness of spring in my brain.
Jessie Janeshek's four full-length poetry collections are No Place for Dames (Grey Book Press, 2022), MADCAP (Stalking Horse Press, 2019), The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press, 2017), and Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). Her chapbooks include Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia (dancing girl press, 2016), Supernoir (Grey Book Press, 2017), Auto-Harlow (Shirt Pocket Press, 2018), Channel U (Grey Book Press, 2020) and Hardscape (Reality Beach 2020). In 2022, she transitioned careers from a college professor and administrator to a licensed Funeral Director and Embalmer, currently working in her home state of West Virginia. Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.