Jill Mceldowney : part five

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

Judy Jordan’s Carolina Ghost Woods.

It was the first book of poetry I read that made me stop and go ‘Poetry can do that?’

When I’m having a bad writing week, when I find myself questioning the importance, the prevalence of poetry—I return here to be gutted.

I suppose it is a older book now— being that it was published in 1999— so people are always surprised or don’t know what I’m talking about but every time, without fail, it devastates me.

Jill Mceldowney : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Sarah Elizabeth Johnson’s Bone Map

Claire Wahmanholm’s chapbook Night Vision

William Brewer’s I Know Your Kind

Henry Wei Leung’s Goddess of Democracy

I read a lot of online journals too along with work from very small presses. Small and indie presses like Cotten Xenomorph, Dream Pop, Muzzle, and Tinderbox are truly publishing some of the most daring, innovative, risk taking work out there right now.

I’m always reading my friends' work. We are all either working on a full length, a chapbook, a thesis and are always sending each other poems.

Jill Mceldowney : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

I’ve written both prose and poetry so I can say that poetry asks for a different level of vulnerability than prose ever will. Writing to that  vulnerability is something that’s always been really difficult for me and something I have to check every time I go to write.

I’ve been in workshops before where writers just go there—go right to the site of the wound—and it makes the work so much more visceral, captivating, necessary, urgent. I’m working on getting to that point—being less guarded and less emotionally reserved.

Jill Mceldowney : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I think there are varying degrees of ‘finished’ when it comes to poetry. A poem will ask to be finished, or ask you to leave it alone.

I hold the (probably unpopular) opinion that there comes a definitive point when a poem is finished or is as close to complete as it will ever be. I find the idea that ‘a poem is never finished’ too sentimental, too romantic. There is definitely such a thing as ‘overworking’ the poem and there is definitely a point where the only thing the poem needs from the poet is for the poet to step away.

Jill Mceldowney : part one

Jill Mceldowney is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Airs Above Ground (Finishing Line Press) as well as Kisses Over Babylon (dancing girl press 2016). She is a cofounder and editor for Madhouse Press. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Vinyl, Fugue, Half Mystic, Whiskey Island, and other notable publications.

What are you working on?

At the moment, I’m finishing what ended up being a very difficult, emotionally draining project. Part of the project is forthcoming this Fall from Finishing Line Press in a chapbook entitled “Airs Above Ground” which is very exciting.

In this chapbook, I occupy a space that directly encounters familial abuse, violence, and its direct implications on the female psyche, body, spirit, and relationships with the Divine. In truth, it is poetry I never saw myself writing, never really wanted to write, and I spent most of Fall 2017/Spring 2018 paralyzed with anxiety over it.

In finishing this manuscript, and seeing this chapbook through to publication, I’m just trying to have fun with writing again, enjoying the process, exiting ‘revision mode’, and trying to figure out what I want to write about next.