Jessica Morey-Collins : part thirteen

How does a poem begin? Most of mine begin with a fragment of language that snags on something in my brain and bothers me until I fasten it to other words. Some begin as a rhetorical scaffold, and I have to find the images and phrases to complete the structure. 

Jessica Morey-Collins : part twelve

Why is poetry important? Accessing others’ perspectives is fundamental to being a helpful member of any collective. Poetry allows a window into others’ experiences, associations, and imaginations. For me, it excellent company.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part eleven

How important is music to your poetry? This varies quite a bit. I have a minor auditory processing disorder, and sometimes struggle to enjoy sonic experiences without being overwhelmed. I tend to write with a lot of assonance, but rarely consciously use meter or rhyme lately. I probably should give meter another shot soon.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part ten

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author? Mary Ruefle, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath. The complete (or selected) works of each. Ruefle’s lectures in Madness, Rack, and Honey are a balm.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part nine

What other poetry books have you been reading lately? I’m currently reading Tarfia Faizullah’s Registers of Illuminated Villages, Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and Trances of the Blast by Mary Ruefle. Year two of Glass Poetry’s chapbook series also came in the mail recently, and I’m looking forward to digging in.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part eight

What poets changed the way you thought about writing? Rae Armantrout made me acutely aware of how powerful and wily abstraction can be, and Emily Dickinson cracked open abstraction like a geode and revealed the worlds inside.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part seven

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry? Sometimes everything feels like a poem, and sometimes nothing does. I am insecure in the relevance of my lived experiences and interests. To an extent, I believe this insecurity is healthy—listening and paying attention are critically important! Perspective-taking makes for better poems. The flipside is an incessant metacognitive drone that my angle on the human experience isn’t important. I’ve learned to write through it.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part six

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t? Line endings and visual caesuras allow poems to use white space and shape to amplify or complicate content and tone. Lyric writing permits absurdity and imagination—this is totally possible in prose, though I think makes strict genre delineation a little less pertinent.       

Jessica Morey-Collins : part five

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 try to stay connected to one workshop or another—whether through an academic program or an informal gathering. I’ve been fairly transitory over the last decade, so finding and sustaining these communities can be difficult. In the last year (living in a new state) I’ve been so grateful to my distant poet friends for their willingness to exchange drafts online.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part four

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began? Yes. Initially, poetry was a means of self-expression. Over the past decade or so, poetry has shifted into a mechanism for organizing my understanding of the world around me.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished? Once a year or so I feel a “click” when ideas and images sync up and whirr... but otherwise I’m not sure. I fiddle until I feel impatient and either workshop it or send it out. For the most part, I’m ok with my language being in flux.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part two

How did you first engage with poetry? I have a mood disorder, so a lot of my adolescent work was trying to make sense of overwhelming emotional experiences that I couldn’t effectively verbalize yet.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part one

Jessica Morey-Collins received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she won an Academy of American Poets award, and worked as associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere. She studies hazard mitigation in the University of Oregon's Masters of Community and Regional Planning program. Find her at www.jessicamoreycollins.com

What are you working on? I’m currently working on a second masters degree, studying hazard mitigation planning... so lately my poems address risk and safety. What risks do people and communities face? What are the risks of playing it safe?