Jessica Hiemstra [photo credit: Cory Lavender] is an award-winning artist, writer, and designer. Her writing has appeared in chapbooks, essay collections, journals, and in three full-length poetry collections that she also illustrated: The Holy Nothing, Self Portrait without a Bicycle, and Apologetic for Joy. In 2018, Hiemstra won Toronto’s My Entertainment World’s Outstanding Set and Costume Design award for her work on Shannon Bramer’s The Hungriest Woman in the World. In 2021, she received second place in Brush and Lyre’s Palette Poetry prize for her multimedia entry, “Cormorant”, an animation of cormorants in flight over Lake Ontario/ Niigaani-gichigami. Some of these drawings appear in Blood Root.
Jessica Hiemstra reads in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 25 as part of VERSeFest 2025.
Amanda Earl: Can you talk about your dedication “for roadkill” and how it relates to the book, which is full of animals, their behaviours and mistreatment by humans.
Jessica Hiemstra: I remember driving over a garter snake on my bike as a child, gutted that I could kill something by not noticing it. As an adult, to my shame, I drove over new frogs, spring peepers, on my way to get a bottle of wine. I noticed the frogs, hundreds of bright bellies in my headlights, and continued. I was able to kill all those frogs without stopping. I did it on the way to the store, and again on the way back. My desire for a glass of wine eclipsed my humanity.
What are we willing to sacrifice for desire? What words can we invent to say or not say who or what someone or something is? The fact that this concept, the word roadkill, exists at all, is an indictment. It extends beyond frogs, to all living beings. It’s central to capitalism, colonialism, my own personal cultural history.
AE: You mention in the acknowledgements that the drawings in the book are stills from your animations (cormorants, herons, cliff swallows). I don’t know if you see any ekphrastic role at all to the poetry. Ekphrastic poetry is typically a response to art, but these poems do feel like they are in conversation with the art. The inclusion of artwork here is powerful and acts as a way to condense emotion.
JH: I’m glad to hear that you find the inclusion of the artwork powerful. I feel very lucky to be able to both draw and write – it means that what I do is more dialogue than ekphrasis. I made the drawings for the animations and wrote the poems over many years alongside one another. I like that with a drawing you see the “end” first but with a poem you take in the parts, one line at a time; the whole is what you’re left with when you’re done reading. The acts of drawing and writing poems feel similar to me - like two ways of touching the same thing, almost like two senses, so I like that they can dialogue in the book, almost like translations of one another.
AE: You say on your site that you think of your drawings as poems and that your drawings are as close to your heart as you can get? In the book you write, “my drawings are hymns/for slow ghosts of turtles” (15). I adore this. It really resonates for me. What you’ve done here is connect art and poetry, but also the human body with nature. It makes protecting the environment such a visceral and essential thing. How do you feel your art and text are connected in Blood Root? What is their relationship? Echo? Repeat? Juxtaposition? Other?
JH: I’m glad this
resonates, Amanda. Drawing lets me look deeply at what I’m drawing – whether
that’s a plant, or something inside me I need to get out and put on paper. It
slows me down, makes me attentive to details. The physicality of drawing is
something I like, too – pencil in hand,
hand on paper. I touch the paper, but
also follow the lines of what I’m looking at with my pencil/pen – a kind
of touching without touching. The paper makes a sound under my hand, under my
drawing tool. In this way, drawing’s not only deep looking, but a kind of listening.
There’s also something special about the way drawing is finding language without words – this affords me a precision in the expression of a feeling, or an observation, without containing or naming it. This really appeals to me. I like how much room this gives another person when they’re looking at it, and also how much room it gives me, as the one making it. Drawing has this magical aspect to it – it’s like I’m the only one who speaks this language, like I’ve invented it to say something, yet you can understand it, without speaking it.
Drawing gives room to mourn the dead in new ways, too. For example, while I have reverence for all creatures, knowing housecats kill 100 million birds every year, in the place we call Canada, is sobering. I felt nervous about naming this in the book – so many people love the cats they live with. And the cats are here. I feel like the drawings in the book allow us to see cats, herons, songbirds, with tenderness and care. When I speak of cats, and we have the echo of the drawing of a bird in a cat’s mouth, I think we become tender, too. The cat, the songbird, are in front of us. Layered with the disappearing turtle on the highway, slipped in between poems.
AE: What struck me so much about this book was the way in which you will not let beauty be idealized, it comes from what is real and what is part of life: “something perfect and white/spills from a gull’s anus” (24). You don’t just juxtapose beauty and idealism with unvarnished truth, which is sometimes ugly and causes pain, you make them inseparable: “a swan appears/in the moment of painful light” (27). “Mom’s ex-husband George brings me papaya/its pink flesh smells like vomit//I don’t like papaya/the seeds look like rabbit shit” (60).
Can you talk about how you see beauty portrayed here and what its role may be for you?
JH: One question that has a hold on me is: how can I see who or what’s in front of me with as much dimension as possible? I want to be able to welcome who or what I’m looking at in their/its wholeness. If I see in fullness, then I feel like I honour what I’m looking at. Of course, I can only go so far – we can’t see within anyone – but the effort to see any other beings as best we can is rich witnessing, and I find it transformative. Another question for me is how can I observe without judgment? I feel like something special happens when I don’t leave things out -like a perfect white arc of shit, or the sweet and vomit-like smell of papaya. It’s a kind of censorship to remove death, remorse, vomit, pain, from life. I don’t want to be part of that.
AE: In the opening poem you write “I’ve taken my father apart/to understand myself” (9). I related to this, being a child of an apologist for colonialism and a bigot and having to learn to reprogram myself.
You address the shame of your heritage and its connection to colonialism, racism, white supremacy and violence. and connect it to your own feelings of failure as a white person: “I failed Breonna Taylor/because I am a coward” (15). “my notebook’s a grave/I’m glad it’s rotting (56).
This book has a sense of urgency, like it was something you had to get out, but at the same time to write about such complicated feelings of shame can be difficult. How did you come to terms with it as something you needed to write about and when did you decide it was time to share it? Do you have any advice to fellow writers dealing with complex issues, especially on race and heritage?
JH: I’m interested in habits of thinking that don’t dissect. In adulthood, in an effort to understand myself, I tried to dissect both my father and God, inseparable in my imagination. It took me a long time to find the line you refer to: “I’ve taken my father apart/to understand myself”. It holds a lot for me – first and foremost the violence of dissevering another person to understand who I am (a rather colonial thing to do).
As a child, I believed in the Christian god, and learned that I was responsible for saving the people I met from “eternal damnation”. I learned this while I was busy learning about hibiscus flowers, the moon, and monkeys. I was full of fear and wonder, and also the weight of responsibility that I needed to save people by making them believe what I did. The havoc this kind of thinking has caused is not something I need to explain here (!?).
Looking closely and taking apart aren’t the same – so I asked myself how I could look at my upbringing with curiosity, love, and anguish, at the same time (like looking at that gull in the sky, the papaya). I like what happens when clarity comes from adding – for me this means telling my truth about how I felt about things in my childhood, how I feel about the historical (and current) violence of Dutch people and their ancestors (my ancestors), how I feel about being a settler, growing up a missionary, how much I love the forest, how much I love other people, how much I miss praying, how I mourn for cracked turtles on the highway, how I’ve grown, am growing. We are, I think, ecosystems within ecosystems. What happens when we don’t leave out anything?
The first draft was written with urgency, and I’m glad you can still feel it. I think I began writing this book around 2018. It took time to feel like I had a draft worthy of a reader, and worth sending out. Goose Lane rejected it the first time I submitted it, and I was grateful to spend another two years digging deeper, going further. I wanted to make a book that was healing – not just for me, but for other people. I didn’t want this book to be published if it didn’t work. I was very close to putting it in a drawer.
It would have ended up in a drawer if I hadn’t got help along the way – my friend (poet and playwright) Shannon Bramer, read an early draft and told me the book felt like a whirlpool. She reminded me to stay gentle. I thought a lot about how to make a book in which the reader could surface.
Working with Sadiqa de Meijer as editor was also transformational. Without Sadiqa’s insights and encouragement, I don’t think this book would have found a shape that honours the people inside it – from Anton de Kom to Breonna Taylor to Billy Gauthier to my grandfathers, both ministers. My Opa and Grandaddy were people who spent their lives riddling how to be kind, how to help others, how to honour their Creator. I had to remember that I could respect and disagree with my ancestors at the same time – in fact, I could show them respect by growing. Sadiqa also encouraged me to speak of my life with the same candour I speak of the seagull. Not to hide what I felt shame about, but to name it plainly.
I hesitate to offer advice. I’d offer this to other white writers who want to speak with and about their ancestors: do your best to listen humbly – to hear your own shame, to feel your own love, to listen to the people you wish aren’t hurting and hadn’t been hurt by your kin or by you, and listen to your kin. Along with that I’d offer a caution that you can speak for yourself but not for others – not the people you’ve hurt, nor those your grandparents hurt. I don’t even think you can speak for your grandparents. I think it’s possible to honour other people and your ancestors through listening. I feel we can change the future by witnessing the past and present. I’d say, if you can, tell your truth and go all the way; it will be healing for you and, quite possibly, for others.
AE: Religion and the concept of holiness are weaved throughout the book, but the holiness comes from nature while Christianity is critiqued. I love all the contrasts throughout book: “when letting go’s too hard/we find ways to preserve the dead” (33). They show the complexities of life, of your life. “Badala’s where I learned to walk/but my feet don’t belong” (53). “I want to put flowers on graves/of people my ancestors brutalized” (32).
Can writing and sharing this book act in any way as atonement for you? What does atonement look like?
JH: My childhood ecosystem was full of hymns – trees clapping their hands at the arrival of God, hymns about butterflies and lilies of the field. Those hymns were full of wonder for the world I loved. I learned a lot about love and kindness from Christianity, but the dogma was a dress that never fit. The Christian god, to me, feels like an abusive parent. The effects of dogma are horrifying, but I’m glad I can still find the wonder I felt singing hymns as a child when I walk in the forest.
I grew up in two villages. The first was Badela, in the West African country called Sierra Leone, which means “lion mountain” in Portuguese, a name written on a map by Pedro de Sintra in 1492. Sierra Leone’s colonial history includes one of the busiest ports during the trans-Atlantic Slave trade, and waves of white people arriving over centuries to mine and proselytize – from de Beers, the diamond company who arrived in Sierra Leone by way of South Africa, to NGOs of every flavour. Badela spans the Seli River (also called the Rokel), where I spent my early years playing in puddles, eating roasted groundnuts, and running around with other kids. We were there because my family was missionaries for the Christian Reformed Church. Badela feels like home, despite all the reasons it isn’t.
When I was five we moved to Bobcaygeon, Ontario. The forest had remnants of shepherd’s stone fences and stumps from old trees. Chiminis Island (also called Big Boyd by settlers) in Bobcaygeon, has been a meeting and harvesting place for First Nations people for thousands of years. It’s a place of significant cultural value to the Curved Lake First Nation. We lived in the forest not far from the village; my parents built a cabin there and I grew up with garter snakes, black bears, wolves, coyotes and a shaggy crew of domesticated animals. I spent summers swimming in the creek, catching frogs and riding my bike as fast as I could up and down the dirt road that lead home. I was (and am) a child of the woods; a skier, a hiker. I know who I am in the woods and that forest is home to me, despite all the reasons it isn’t. It’s the holiest place I know.
I’ve sat and sat with this question about atonement. Is atonement possible? Should you put flowers on the grave of someone you’ve brutalized? Is that a further act of violence? Should you be there at all? I hope that anytime I see and love a stranger – across any distance and across time – I’m part of healing. This means imagining another girl in the forest in Bobcaygeon, 1000 years ago, coming across bloodroot in the forest I grew up in and being struck with wonder like I was. This means staying up at night sick thinking about Breonna Taylor’s sister’s grief. This means imagining a small boy in a coconut tree in Indonesia murdered by Dutch soldiers. I hope compassion, attentiveness, and respect are transformative – and can lead to action. I won’t ever drive over frogs again to get wine. And I’ve begun to overcome my discomfort in crowds to go to large gatherings, to protests. And I am learning a history of the Dutch that includes war crimes and brutal atrocities – facts the Dutch have, for a long time, tried to downplay.
AE: Throughout the book, there is much space given to the failure of language. When I tell people I write poetry, they often say, “you must be good at language.” I tell them I am not at all good at language, which is why I have to work things out through poetry. How do you write about language’s failure but still use language to try to articulate? What do you think language fails to do for you and why?
JH: I feel similarly, Amanda. Finding words is so hard. I feel like I mostly fail. But when we can name something, it’s astonishing, isn’t it? Language usually fails for me because of its linearity. Drawing feels easier for me because the linearity happens in process but you don’t have to read it word by word – line by line by line I can make a cat with a bird in her mouth appear. That said, a compelling thing about language is the way we can meet each other in it. Its imprecision (I don’t think there are two people who see the same thing when I say “father”) is also what’s dazzling about it. When language doesn’t fail it soars and connects us. The way poetry can do this surprises, and delights, me.
AE: Blood Root contains three long poems with nested visual art. I’m always interested in fellow long poem writers. Is this a departure for you, something that was specifically suited to the book’s content?
JH: The book feels like frames in an animation. And it feels like drawing. It was a departure but it feels like a form I’ve been reaching for since I first tried to write poems. I like that in this form there are layers, echoes, referential circles (like a whirlpool on its side?). As soon as I realized the book could have this movement in it, I was relieved.
AE: I love the space given before the two couplets on page 81, which is nestled between your art. I’d like to have heard the discussion with the editor and designer about this choice and the choice to include the artwork, how to ensure its intricacies could be properly rendered in book form. You also have several pages in the final poem that include the word “stain” in a lighter font at the bottom of the page (86-94). Did you have a specific vision or opinion on the design of this book? Can you talk about working with Sadiqa de Meijer?
JH: What a nice cascade of questions, Amanda. That couplet is all that’s left of 16 pages of couplets (speaking of stains!). In a draft that hung on for a long time there were 16 poems that were blessings for the reader. When we neared the end of the editorial process, Sadiqa asked what would happen if those pages were whittled down to just two lines – two lines that say “come out come through / this moment’s a door”. It’s as if language itself becomes a door on the page. Being a visual artist, I loved placing that couplet on the page as one would a smudge. And, when you look at the drawings its nested between, you see that a cliff swallow we haven’t seen yet pops out of a nest. This feels like poetry, too. What’s on the other side of shame, wonder, reckoning? I like sitting there, quietly, for a moment, holding that.
I’m grateful Goose Lane was open to including
so much artwork. Julie Scriver’s thoughtful
design helps the drawings converse with the poems. I’m glad Goose Lane was open
to sequences of drawings, too – I feel this helps the reader see the drawings
the way they read the poems, rather than as illustrations.
When I had the though that the word “stain”
could appear as a stain, in lighter text Julie did it. Julie was creative and
open to those kinds of suggestions from me – her touch on the book is elegant
and light.
Goose offers poets the opportunity to suggest someone they’d like to work with as an editor and I requested Sadiqa. I hoped to work with her for several reasons – first and foremost that I love and admire her work. I aspire to write like her. She also grew up in Holland, speaks Dutch, and is a person of colour. We had important overlaps, and differences. I knew she would challenge me. I knew that if I worked with Sadiqa I would have to push myself and push my writing; I would have to grow. Sadiqa as an editor was sharp, kind, generous and critical. She recently wrote this, on Bluesky: “Jessica Hiemstra’s Bloodroot is out in the world. A fierce and gorgeous book. As editor I admired how Jessica could take a breath and bravely answer to what a poem was asking for, even when that also meant a revision of the self. The result is so breathtaking – I hope it finds all the readers.” I make art as an act of generosity, and also to grow. Without Sadiqa, I would not have gone far enough in revision of the self.
AE: On your site, there is a fascinating section called “Happenings” with details of your animations, exhibitions, and readings. You also work with others to help them to make art by offering workshops. You’ve done so many beautiful, whimsical, community-engaging things. I’m in awe. Do you see Blood Root as having any follow on related projects, more art and animations or exhibitions, for example? Or does it have a finality for you now that it is published and you are having a chance to read it to an audience?
JH: I’m glad you enjoyed that part of my website! I love what art can be and do in and for community. I paint murals and do workshops and like what can happen with collaboration. Blood Root is part of a larger project – and I think it’s the groundwork I needed to do to start learning more about my ancestors, and also to clear the air to work on a longer animation in which I respond with pencils, ink, using stills of myself, to how I feel about the stuff on the pages of the book. I have something to make that has no words, apart from a title (!).
AE: How does the audience react to the book? It’s so raw and visceral and relatable in many ways. I can imagine people coming up to want to talk about their own feelings about their heritage and the guilt that they might be experiencing.
JH: You’re one of its first readers. And I feel so grateful for the depth of your reading and the depth of these questions. I hope other readers find something they are looking for in it, too.
Blood Root is a work that is staying with me both for its art and the vividness and emotion of the poetry. It’s an important book, Jessica. Thank you for writing it and sharing it with the world.
JH: Being read with such care is a gift. I thank you, Amanda.
Amanda Earl (she/her) is a writer, editor, mentor, reviewer, publisher, living on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Hire her as an editor or literary event organizer. Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a collection of near-death long poems. More info: AmandaEarl.com. Linktr.ee/AmandaEarl
