Small Press Intravues:
Occasional Interviews with writers working and publishing
in the small press ecosystem
Interview #4: Jessie Janeshek's
full-length collections are 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). Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.
How did you get started in writing?
I
wrote a short story called “Sara the Horse” in second grade that won for my
county in the West Virginia Young Writers Contest. I recall that Sara had two
horse-sisters, Susan and Shelly. Even then, I didn’t think it was my best work.
I continued to write fiction and essays throughout my childhood but got into
poetry by taking a couple of summer workshops in high school. Everyone seemed
to think I was really good at it, and at that point in my life it was about
pleasing people. I read Plath and started using poetry as therapy throughout
college. I got over that and began to use poetry as a vehicle to make art.
Why poetry instead of some other form?
Limited
talent? Limited patience? Partly those but also because poetry is, at least to
me, the most flexible and permissive genre. I always refer to these lines from
Dickinson’s #466 when asked this question:
I dwell in Possibility –A fairer House than Prose –More numerous of Windows –Superior – for Doors –
In
Emily Dickinson’s Gothic: Goblin with a Gauge, Daneen Wardrop compares
Dickinson’s poems to haunted houses on the page with secret passages and hidden
gambrels. I like to think of the form this way.
At
the same time, I think I should try to write something else. Still figuring out
what that might be.
What other form do you see your work influenced by or
continuous with? Music? Magic? Science? Journalism? Gardening?
Movies
are the no-brainer if you’ve read my stuff. Music. Walking/hiking in the woods.
Walking outside at night. Sleeping or not sleeping, depending. Semi-trance
states.
What infinitives best sum up your writing practice? To
explore, to investigate, to express, to interrogate, to perform, to reveal, to
layer, to obfuscate, to connect? Please choose as many as you wish and explain.
To
enter the past(s), to process the past(s), to repeat and reappropriate the
past(s). To futurize the past(s). To shake up the past(s) like a glittery snow
globe. By pasts I mean both my personal past and the broader cultural past and
how those pasts have affected my female speakers. “Can’t repeat the past? Why,
of course you can!” Jay Gatsby’s got nothing on me, but he probably won’t ever
make it into any of my poems unless he’s a vampire.
What ecosystems do you see your work fitting into? That
is, who are the other artists and makers and writers that your work is in
relationship with?
I
did an interview with Allison Pitinii Davis for Grist recently and went
pretty in-depth about this stuff, so I’ll leave the link for that here, if
that’s ok? It’s the first question, so you don’t have to scroll too much:
https://gristjournal.com/interview-with-jessie-janeshek-interviewed-by-allison-pitinii-davis/
What are your current projects? What are you working on?
If you’re not writing, are you busy with something else?
So,
I teach literature, composition, and creative writing at the college level, and
we went completely online on March 23. Right now I’m busy finishing up the
semester, teaching three different kinds of classes for the first time online
as well as teaching online for the first time ever in general. I think I’ve
done a decent job with it considering and have come up with some creative
assignments, but it’s been quite tiring in several ways.
I
have been writing a bit during the pandemic, but I don’t think I’m the type
who’s going to flourish creatively under these circumstances. Maybe it will get
better in the summer, I don’t know. I guess I’m working on a manuscript; I’ve
written 100+ poems since my most recent full length MADCAP came out in
October. (I haven’t written all those poems since October; I mean since I
finished MADCAP in spring 2019.) I guess the manuscript is “about”
French movies, David Bowie, Christmas lights, my many sad neuroses, Louise
Brooks, violent crime. The woods. Dead deer. Blah, blah, blah. You know.
Otherwise,
I like to do creative stuff I’m not good at to take a break from poetry. I’ve
been doing some sewing and knitting and punch needle here and there, but my
wrist hurts from all the “teaching online” so not so much. I used a bit of the
stimulus money to order a fancy keyboard. I took piano lessons for nine years
as a kid and have been wanting to get my piano down here, but I don’t have
room. So maybe I’ll mess around with that when it arrives. Or maybe it’ll end
up on eBay.
What stuff do you have out in the world, and how can
people get their hands on it? Books, chapbooks, individual poems, essays, other
interviews, songs, anything else?
My
website (http://www.jessiejaneshek.net/)
links to where to order my books, my poems published online, and reviews and
interviews. Please visit it so all of the traffic doesn’t come from my devices
in rural WV.
I’ve
had a good year with work coming out, although this work has been written over
the past four to five years or so. My third full-length MADCAP was
published by Stalking Horse Press in October. My chapbook Channel U was
published by Grey Book Press in February, and my chapbook Hardscape just
came out from Reality Beach this month.
What would you tell people who are just starting to get
involved with writing and publishing?
Don’t.
Just kidding. No, I don’t know. I certainly don’t think writing programs
make one a writer. It pains me when I see great writers who feel self-conscious
that they don’t have a graduate degree in the field when plenty of boring
writers have MFAs.
I’m
39. It’s a different world now than when I started this game. I feel like
writers are professionalized much younger and are really able to self-promote
better than I’ll ever be able to do. These days, if you do want to go the
academic route, it almost seems like your have to have had publishing success
before you can even get into a graduate program. Like when I did my MFA
(2003-2005), I know of one person in the program who got a book during that
time. When I did my PhD (2005-2010), I wrote my first full-length during that
time as did most of those in my cohort. Now I know of people who are in
graduate programs who are already well-published. I sort of went to graduate
school to establish a writing practice and a community so I’m unsure why people
are going if they already have those things. I supposed it’s to teach. Getting
a teaching job is really hard these days. I’m grateful I have one. If I had
known what all this would be like I don’t know if I would have gone this route,
but I was relatively naive in the mid-aughts. I mean it worked out. And
hindsight is 2020 and all that.
So,
yeah, advice. Read. Read. Like, really. Read. Actually learn about the history
of poetry. Follow your own path at your own pace. Don’t be overwhelmed by what
you see others doing all over the internet. Don’t feel rushed. Use social media
to form connections. Some of my favorite people are writers I’ve only met
online. Maybe that’s because we’ve never met in real life but for now I’ll keep
the faith. For poets, you’re not going to make a living off of this ever. 90%
of America (or more) couldn’t care less what you’re doing. Try to see that as a
freedom. Write what you want how you want it because why not?
What media are you enjoying lately? Music, tv, movies,
art?
Always
music. The new Waxahatchee album St. Cloud has been a constant since it
came out last month. Other than that, my pandemic playlist has been Magnolia
Electric Co.; Bowie; always Bob Dylan, Jenny Lewis, and Rilo Kiley; Vampire
Weekend; Old 97s; a bit of Bright Eyes; and also my Britney playlist that lifts
me up in these trying times....
Movies:
I’m an obsessive movie watcher, like I watch between 250-300 a year, but I
haven’t had a ton of time with the online teaching. Trying to watch at least a
couple a week. I subscribed to Criterion in January, so I’ve really been
enjoying that.
TV:
I watch some really shitty reality shows; the real global question is how is
Covid-19 going to affect the next season of 90-Day Fiancé? I’ve also
been watching way more CNN than I should be during the pandemic, but Chris
Cuomo and Dr. Sanjay Gupta are bae, so.
Books:
I’d been reading a bunch of thrillers for the last few months, but I felt like
I needed something meatier, so I’m reading A. S. Byatt’s Possession. There
was a copy left on our “free books” shelf at work, and I grabbed it on a whim.
It’s really good. There is another dimension where I wrote a dissertation on
the Pre-Raphaelites at Oxford instead of doing this poetry thing (seriously...I
did a semester abroad there in college and I was planning it with one of the
tutors and everything), so the weirdo Victorians will always fascinate me.
Michael Sikkema is a solar powered
monster truck and the author of Caw Caw Phony, forthcoming from
Trembling Pillow Press in 2021.