Stephen Jackson : part one

Stephen Jackson is a working-class poet who lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. As the originator of the Seattle small press So Many Birds publishing (SMBp), he created poetry chapbooks for local writers, featured the work of national and international writers in Harness (a quarterly literary magazine), and showcased previously unpublished writers in Future+Present (a biannual chapbook). More recently, he began submitting his own work for consideration. His poems now appear in a variety of online and print publications, as well as on the 2019 International Human Rights Art Festival Publishes platform, and in the PoetRhy garden. You can find him on Twitter @fortyoddcrows

How did you first engage with poetry?

In my early teens, my older brother turned me on to quite a few poets. Of course, I’d pretend not to be interested and then go search them out on my own at the library. I specifically recall Rimbaud and Ginsberg, how transfixed I was by their words and the way they lived their lives. Awkward and queer in small-town Ohio, I began writing my own poems at the age of fifteen as way to wrap my head around what there was, quite literally, no other way to express. Ever since then, I’ve written fairly regularly throughout my life, with periods of varying lengths in which I was either immersed in the written word or completely caught up in the process of living a life. These days, in semi-retirement, I am pleased to give writing my utmost attention.