Benjamin Niespodziany : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

Where do I begin? I currently work for a music label and have been helping with music in one way or another (blogging, curating, interviewing, marketing) for about ten years. 

If I'm writing, I'm listening to music. If I'm not writing, I'm listening to music. Music has always been there. Before poetry and certainly after. Music is a large part of my life, arguably larger than my writing, and I don't know where I'd be without it. It calms me, it inspires me, it gives me energy, it makes me feel like I can take on the world. Rather than cover the expansiveness of my love for music, I'll break it down into two categories.

Some favorite artists to listen to while writing poetry:

Jon Hopkins, Ludovico Einaudi, Toumani Diabete, Olafur Arnalds, Molly Drake, Black Taffy, Blockhead, Duendita, Al Bowlly, El Michels Affair. 

Some favorite poetic artists (whether that be the lyrics or the world-building)

CocoRosie, R.A.P. Ferreira, King Creosote, billy woods, John Frusciante, Cake, Blind Pilot, Boldy James, Zelooperz, Pink Siifu, Celeste.

Benjamin Niespodziany : part four

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

There is a poem by John Maradik called “They Found the Python” that bewilders and flabbergasts and impresses me every single time. It's my favorite poem and I'm going to read it out loud right now and it's one you should read out loud every time you get a chance. It makes me teary-eyed sometimes and always it makes me smile. The ending! John Maradik is my favorite living poet without a debut collection. 

It's also the title poem for Maradik's mini-mini chapbook (three poems): http://www.factoryhollowpress.com/scram-press-books/they-found-the-python-john-maradik 

Benjamin Niespodziany : part three

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

To make this list would be a massive undertaking. If a writer is on their A game - if a book is really captivating me - then the lines and paragraphs are steadily changing the way I think about writing. This happens to me every week. Every week I learn a new way to approach a poem or a new technique or a new trick just by reading more than I write. That being said, the one's who made me throw my hands in the air, burn my manuscript, and realize anything was possible on the page?

Eric Baus. He has a poetry collection called The Tranquilized Tongue where every line starts with 'The'. 

C. Dylan Bassett. He has a book of one-act plays called The Invention of Monsters where each piece is titled [scene] yet it'd be nearly impossible to adapt a single one of them onto the stage.

Joanna Ruocco. Some may say she only writes prose but oh no, she is a poet. Her lines. Her lines. Every damn line. 

CAConrad. Have you read CAConrad? My god.

Fiston Mwanza Mujila. Perhaps the most musical poet I've encountered, where jazz bleeds on the page. Psychedelia and surrealism frequent the page and jazz, jazz, jazz runs rampant. His poetry collection The River in the Belly is the wildest poetry collection you haven't read, and his novella Tram 83 is still rattling in my brain. The late night jazz, the grass, the mines. He has another novel out called The Villain's Dance (2020), I'm just waiting (impatiently) on the English translation to be released. 

Zachary Schomburg and Mathias Svalina. I'm going to clump these two together like I would James Tate and Charles Simic, not only because I started reading them at the same time but because it was my first time finding story inside of poetry. A paragraph with captured tale. A prose poem tiptoeing in dreamland. Richard Brautigan introduced this sideways world to me, but Schomburg and Svalina crystallized it, pumped it full of more heart and more darkness and more sorrow and more loneliness and more joy and more beauty. I consider these two my poetry father and mother. You can decide which is which. 

Benjamin Niespodziany : part two

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you       work ideas and poems with?

I freewrite like a madman, edit with a chainsaw, and then when I have something I'm excited about or think is worth sharing, I'll share it with some writer friends. Poets (and overall great humans) Evan Nicholls and Evan Williams see a lot of my work in its early stages, and they're always sending me great and inspiring stuff. Same goes for C.T. Salazar (although I'm more selective because with C.T., you have to bring the HEAT) and a handful of other writers in the Twittersphere. I'm grateful to be part of a tiny community of like-minded and kind-hearted absurdists. 

Benjamin Niespodziany : part one

Benjamin Niespodziany's writing has appeared in FENCE, Sporklet, Fairy Tale Review, Puerto del Sol, and others. Along with being featured in the Wigleaf Top 50, his writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. His debut chapbook, The Northerners, was released at the end of 2021 through above/ground press. More can be found at neonpajamas.com.

Photo credit: Michael Salisbury

What are you working on?

I'm fine-tuning a few manuscripts that were written over the last few years. One is a collection of domestic poems, one is a collection of one-act plays, and one is a woodland novella told through linked prose poems. While those are 99% done, I have a few other ideas in the middle/early stages, including an ekphrastic manuscript, a manuscript on film, and a tiny collection of nursery rhymes.