Interview with Jessica Pierce (Part II)

Welcome to Part II of Bellingham Review’s interview with Jessica Pierce. You can read Part I here.

Jessica E. Pierce is a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominee as well as the author of Consider the Body, Winged by First Matters Press. Her poems are in many magazines including CALYX Journal, Tar River Poetry, Euphony, and Painted Bride Quarterly. Nimrod International Journal selected her as a finalist for the 2020 and 2021 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She was a finalist in the 2020 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize from CALYX Journal, a finalist in New Ohio Review’s 2019 NORward Prize for Poetry, a finalist in the 2019 MVICW Poetry Contest, and the recipient of a 2019 MVICW Poet Fellowship. Her work can also be found in Issue 82 of Bellingham Review.

CAITY SCOTT: Something happens regardless of what I’m working on when I feel like I suddenly have this knowing; where I feel absolutely compelled to write and words just come out. Those are like the best moments ever, but then there’s the other ninety percent of the time!

Tell me a little bit about your writer voice. You mentioned when other people have read your stuff, they’ve said there’s this confidence coming through that can be surprising for you to hear about. Talk a little bit more about that, both in process, then in terms of the finished product.

JESSICA PIERCE: When I think about the experience of growing up in a really small town of about 3,500 people, I never quite felt at home there. I felt at home in the woods. I felt at home disappearing into the trees and going down by the creek, but I think all of us are uncomfortable. It’s a question of what kind of conversation do you have with yourself about your discomfort, if you’re willing to sit with it or if you’re trying to ignore it, and the ways in which we try to numb that discomfort. For me, and I think many women and femmes who end up becoming mothers, there is an incredible emphasis on busyness and demonstrating your work through doing, making, and producing. Then, of course with capitalism, your worth is what you produce, but you don’t actually get to determine your worth. From this nebulous capitalistic perspective, we’re going to determine your worth for you. The last year-and-a-half, two years, I’ve just come across some really powerful community organizers and radical spiritual thinkers, like the Nap Ministry, which is run by the Nap Bishop. She is a radical Black woman who has been consistent: reject the grind.

There’s this badge of honor we insist on giving to ourselves, or to others, oh, you’re the busiest. No, screw that! It sucks you dry. When I think about confidence, my work is not what other people think of me as a mother, or as a sister, or as a wife, as a daughter, or as a woman. We are all worthy because we are, because we exist. You are worthy from the moment you come into this world in whatever form that is. Sit with that and really feel it. All of my parts are just coming together and being integrated. I don’t have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. No. Rest now. Don’t wait. Capitalism isn’t going to give you rest once you’ve made enough money or gotten enough promotions.

So, coming back, my poet voice and the voice that comes through the poems: they really do feel like homes finding us as writers. Stories find us, characters find us, and images find us. How can I be the truest conduit for each poem coming to me and knocking on the door saying, Hey, can I come in and have some tea with you? Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s have some tea. Screw the grind. I’m over it.

SCOTT: Yes, in fact, that is one of the bigger tensions I feel with my own work. I’m on the newer side of getting my work published. Part of the tension could be because I’m more confident now that I’ve gotten into grad school, but I’m not desperate for that validation like I used to be. I also just feel better about my writing and the way that it fulfills me. You naturally like your work, and to put it out there and have other people also be enriched by it is its own level of fulfillment. But then there’s that other side of feeling like you have to get work out there. What further complicates it is that some people are privileged enough to put their work out there without having to worry about getting paid. But for other people, that extra money could cover a grocery bill. How do you cope when you feel that pressure of putting work out there? Feel that pressure of production? And how do you differentiate that voice from naturally wanting to produce work because it fulfills you?

PIERCE: I think that’s a continual touchstone for many creatives I know. I had a conversation with one of my editors about how to take good care of this book. What are my values as a poet, as a person, and how am I living those values out in the way I usher this book through its journey? For me, it came down to community. This book is a way to be in community with more humans around big questions and little questions, and just being human together. I said to an editor that I’m not feeling any energy to submit new work right now. She said that makes sense. That’s okay. You’re in a different phase of your writing life right now, and one you haven’t been in before. I’ve never written a book, so I’ve never been on the other side of having made the book and wanting to take care of it. For me, taking care of the book means reaching out and trying to be in conversation about it. 

I think anybody who’s a poet knows we get paid, if we’re lucky, forty bucks a page. I have friends who are essayists and they’re more likely to make money, and maybe reach a point where they’re getting stuff into The New Yorker. Most folks are not making a living off of poetry. They’re professors. They’re real estate agents. Everything! For me, it was actually a real shift to stop trying to be self-effacing about my work and to claim that I’m proud of it—to reject some of that stuff particularly put on women and femmes about not taking credit. I’ve worked hard on this book. I crafted this book. I put years of lived experience, learning, heart, sweat, and tears into this book, and I want this book to be able to do some of what I experienced when I read other people’s work, like reading Ross Gay and thinking, oh my gosh, I’m moving to Indianapolis. Ross, I’m coming for you. If you ever read this interview and find me knocking on your door, you know why. I will bring a pie!

SCOTT: I wanted to bring up Ross Gay because I thought he was one of your influences. I’m in an eco-poetics class right now and we just read the Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude. I love his work. Book of Delights is also one of my favorites.

PIERCE: But truly, he did some great collaboration with musicians to create recordings of his poems with music, and they’re beautiful. When I think about someone who is always looking at both the celebration of what is beautiful and wrestling with what is deeply painful, full of grief and loss, wow! Does he cover ground and does he go deep!

One of the practices I started many years ago inspired by Dorianne Laux was to read a collection from the beginning to the end. Really take your time with seeing how a poet puts a collection together. I worked through Rita Dove’s collected poems. I think I read all of Mary Oliver’s collected poems; Ross Gay, Jane Hirshfield, and Yusef Komunyakaa. I have been doing this for almost a decade now, so I have stacks and stacks of books, but again, I think that is part of what brought me to a place of being able to write my own book: giving a poet’s intention to not just read a poem in a journal, or on a website, but to really see its home in this larger body of work. By the time I got to my collection, I had so many amazing poets to draw from and they were really good company.

SCOTT: I want to talk about people that you’re reading. I’m going to plug this book as another one we read in class. It’s called Trophic Cascade by Camille Dungy. I keep coming back to it because it’s about her children, being a mother, the experience of her pregnancy, and mourning climate change. It’s a really beautiful book and there’s one poem that basically goes like this: Does she sleep through the night? / I hate to wake you so early, / but I had to tell you / this dream. / There were only seven trees left in the world / and the largest grew in your backyard. That’s the whole poem. I think her work is right up your alley.

PIERCE: Oh, that’s a great recommendation. Thank you! I’m looking at her right now. Rogue sonnets, yes!

SCOTT: What else are you reading right now? What are you totally obsessed with?

PIERCE: Honestly right now, I am mostly working on divorce papers! Jane Hirshfield is keeping me company as a collection. I read a poem or two a night and I pace myself. Sometimes, I read the same poem three or four nights in a row. I spent a lot of time during the pandemic reading Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and N.K. Jemisin, so really digging into fantasy and sci-fi in a way I hadn’t ever explicitly done. I’m super grateful for the opportunity to have had time at that point (it’s a little less time now because of life), but I’ve always been drawn to trying to understand the natural world and the universe, which comes through in my book. There’s that scientific perspective that, as a humanities major, I did not spend a lot of time on. (I explicitly chose my undergraduate program because it did not have a math and science requirement. This is back at Boston University back in 1998 when through the university’s professor program, you got to make your own major.) Anyway, there’s something about reading women and femmes who have stepped into this realm [of fantasy and sci-fi.] It’s so often portrayed as male, like it’s owned by men. Fuck that. I also love to swear in my poems. One of the greatest compliments I got the other day was from a woman in my writing group. She said, you just you swear really well in poems. My second collection is going to pop, let me tell you.

SCOTT: Love that. Poetry—people think of it as being really light and fluffy. That’s actually a big conversation we’re having now with eco-poetics. What exactly is a nature poem? A lot of what we recognize as eco-poetics was started from white men who believed nature is a thing you must go away to get into; a thing that needs to be conquered; that is valuable, but from an unpolished diamond perspective because it can be converted into resources. So, that’s been a huge conversation about a lot of the writing we’re looking at now, and that applies to your writing as well. In the Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, one of the poems was about the fig tree right in the middle of the city. It begs the question of who has the privilege to access nature.

PIERCE: In parenting through a pandemic (which again, it was an incredible privilege and I’m super cognizant of that), there’s the reality of watching your kids, no matter how privileged, struggle. No child should be with adults as much as they were during the pandemic. It’s not good for them. They need to be with kids—adults screw things up. We fuck up our kids. Get them away from us! There’s a reason why they go places with other children. They need them.

I think about what you’re saying in terms of eco-poetics. How do you move away from this pastoral bullshit, which was done with a white male gaze and definitely about conquering, resources, and extraction?

I just finished reading Braiding Sweet Grass, which is a glorious collection of essays holding together very beautifully in a book, and I listen to a lot of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s podcast, Poetry Unbound. I don’t know if you listen to poetry podcasts, but it’s one of the most beautiful poetry podcasts out there. Then there’s The Slowdown with Ada Limón. Oh, Joy Harjo! I got to see Joy Harjo speak and read in Eugene a few years ago. Her autobiography is astounding when you think about true human courage and the determination to create in the midst of incredible challenge—to find your voice. In her situation, and for Indigenous native peoples in general, there’s been such a concerted effort to rob them of their voices. Think of the way in which they’ve persevered, been resilient, and held on.

Anyway, so Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama: he has gorgeous conversations about poems. They’re eleven minutes. He reads the poem, chats about it, reads again, done. And then Ada Limón just does a little bit of an intro to the poem and reads it, so her’s is about five-to-six minutes.

With my life where it is right now, that’s how I experience poetry these days: my poem before I go to bed, a couple of poetry podcasts during the course of the day, then trying to keep up with my daily writing practice the best I can while still telling myself at the end of the day, I did enough.

The poet who really rocked my world from a very young age was Nikki Giovanni. I discovered Nikki Giovanni when I was in middle school, and she opened the world up for me in ways that I never could have imagined. She’s still incredibly good company; she’s a rockstar.

SCOTT: Two more questions. I want to ask about the dedication because you dedicated this to your nine-year-old self, which I absolutely adore. That added I love you made me emotional. The last poem in the book is for your daughter growing up. Audience is always something that comes up, especially when you’re putting together work that you anticipate going out into the world. You think, who do you want to read this? Who do you hope reads this? And when they’re reading this, what do you want to be planted in the reader that will continue growing even after they’ve finished the book and walked away?

PIERCE: Well, earlier we talked about changing through the writing process. My own family has changed through this process and my oldest child now identifies as non-binary. They have a new name, which is the name in the dedication: Shane. Originally, it had their first name, or their dead name, and I was able to change it before going to printing. I think about how long it took me to reject some of the roles forced upon me by society and family. My oldest and youngest are really powerful humans and have the confidence to step outside of those roles sooner than I even knew was possible. I think back on when I was ten, or when I was nine, writing poems and wanting to publish a book. I was not asking the kinds of questions my kids are. Their courage to be their most authentic selves is deeply inspiring for me and really guides me in thinking about who I would like to read my work. I hope that courageous people like my kids read this book and find something in it that speaks to them. 

But in particular with this book, it really is for women and femmes who have become mothers in some way, shape, or form; those who haven’t for so many reasons, chosen and unchosen; and thinking about how it is a loaded role. It’s really, really weighted, and so if there’s anything that this book can offer, I hope it’s about letting go of some of that and what you can put down. Let’s put some of this fucking shit down and not carry it, you know? Let’s not. We can keep company with each other, and if this book offers any avenue for that, I would be deeply satisfied.

SCOTT: I love you talking about not only how you’ve changed, but how your family has changed throughout all of this. That’s such a beautiful reflection of that process. Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers before we run the interview?

PIERCE: Write to poets and tell them what you think of their work! I think any way in which we can continue to keep poetry alive and in public spheres is so critical and essential. Continuing to find ways to be in actual conversation with people around poetry is super life giving. Of course, the pandemics shifted that, but the last three readings I gave were in person in rooms with other humans who came to listen to poetry on purpose! So beautiful! I’m also just a big believer, like Pablo Neruda, that poetry is bread: it is for everyone, and if you haven’t found a poem yet that you love, write to me! I’ll help you find it. That’s my life’s work as an English, sorry, Language Arts teacher (we’re going to take the word “English” out of it because it’s dumb). I was a Language Arts teacher for a long time, and one of my favorite things was to work with young people who said, fuck poetry. I said, fair enough, and let’s see. Actually, to be an educator and have former students come to my poetry readings, buy my book, and reach out to me has been so amazing! There have been students at every single one of my readings. Kiddos (I shouldn’t say kiddos, I mean, they’re in their mid-twenties now)— they’re writing to me and saying thank you. I thank them in my book! I couldn’t have written this book without knowing them. Circles of gratitude are beautiful. The more of those we can build the better off we are.

SCOTT: I love that. Yes, definitely circles of gratitude! Well, that wraps up all my questions. I just want to say congratulations again. It’s such a huge accomplishment and I’m so glad to hear it’s already had an impact on so many people. That’s such a worthwhile experience!

PIERCE: This book has been such good company and continues to be. Thank you for reading it with care, attention, and heart, and coming with questions that really made me ponder more. It’s really great to be in conversation with you. I appreciate this opportunity.

You can find Jessica Pierce’s book, Consider The Body, Winged at your local bookstore including Bellingham’s own Village Books.