Jessica Purdy : part five

How does a poem begin?

Images are the source of most poems for me. A heron catching a fish, a kettle of turkey vultures circling, a snapping turtle’s snout emerging from the river. Sometimes phrases or scraps of thoughts occur to me while walking through my town, driving, or taking a shower. Night-long ideas occur too while trying to fall asleep/while sleeping/waking with insomnia. In the morning I have to let those spill. 

With a background as an artist–I majored in both Studio Art and English–I have a combination of interests. Often I write ekphrastic poems, which is poetry in conversation with artwork. I also consider dreams a source of imagery and frequently incorporate them into poems. Nature photography is another hobby of mine and I find those images to be an inspiration. It is easy for me to connect emotions and my family relationships with imagery. Exploration of why the image stands out makes the process of poem-making such a joy.

Jessica Purdy : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I know I’ll forget some, but this is a recent list: 

Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon 

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

The House of Your Dream: An International Collection of Prose Poetry, edited by Robert Alexander & Dennis Maloney 

Tender the River by Matt Miller

Liminal by Bill Burtis 

Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar 

The Damage Done by Susana Case

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

And I’m always reading Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop!

Jessica Purdy : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Revision! I love when poems come fully formed and need very little revision. This doesn’t always happen and of course some poems take years to come to their final form. I have many abandoned poems because of this, but also have had recent success publishing a poem that just needed to let go of its original form/pretense. 

Also, I find it hard to focus on writing and submitting while also keeping up with family responsibilities and working as an instructor of Creative Writing/Poetry workshops myself.

Jessica Purdy : 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?

Yes, writers groups are essential to my process. I belong to a local one called City Hall Poets because we used to meet at City Hall in Portsmouth, NH. Now we are meeting on zoom. Once a month we workshop poems. It is so important to share what I am working on with others. I respect these poets and highly value their feedback. Their poems inspire and influence me as well.

The other is The Poetry Salon facilitated by the fabulous Tresha Faye Haefner over zoom. I attend her generative workshops at least twice a week and often more frequently than that. I also attend her Structure & Surprise workshop once a week which uses the book of the same name edited by Michael Thune. I am overjoyed to have found her workshops and sometimes I lead them as well. Her students are incredible poets! I am a perpetual student of poetry and hope to always be learning and growing as a poet.

Jessica Purdy : part one

Jessica Purdy is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House, both released by Nixes Mate in 2017 and 2018. Sleep in a Strange House was a finalist for the NH Literary Award for poetry. She is the author of the chapbook Learning the Names (Finishing Line Press 2015). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals including The Night Heron Barks, Radar, Menacing Hedge, SoFloPoJo, Harpy Hybrid, Lily Poetry Review, One Art, Poemeleon, and Museum of Americana. She is poetry editor for the anthology, Ten Piscataqua Writers: https://www.tenpiscataqua.com/writers/. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaPurdy123 and her website: jessicapurdy.com

What are you working on?

I have multiple manuscripts looking for homes. One I’m particularly excited about is a chapbook entitled “The Adorable Knife: Poems on Frances Glessner Lee’s The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.” I am obsessed with the Nutshells enough to have seen them when they were exhibited at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC.

The poems are named after each “Nutshell,” which are meticulously crafted miniature crime scene dioramas meant to help police officers hone their observation skills. It is my intention to honor Frances Glessner Lee’s own attention to detail in crafting these, as well as to imagine possible “solutions” by giving voice to the stories told in the crime scenes. In some of the poems, the speaker is the victim, and in some, the speaker could be the perpetrator. In still others, it is the poet’s voice speaking.

Another manuscript entitled “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?” explores the anxiety of motherhood.

“Annual” is a chapbook of poems written in response to Sylvia Plath’s poems.

“You’re Never the Same” is my ekphrastic manuscript. 

I am generating more poems than I know what to do with these days!