Stephen Jackson : coda

In regard to writing poetry, I have little formal education. Yet I constantly feel as if I’m on the verge of getting it, though this never actually happens. The better part of what I’ve learned comes from reading countless books both of and on poetry. Many of them multiple times, as I have a terrible memory for the written word. So it’s as if I’m having to learn and unlearn everything over and over. Of course, I’d be lying if I said I have no idea what I’m doing. Still, I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s one of the few things of which I’m not afraid to say I am proud. Nor do I have any real desire to tear it apart and see what makes it tick. I write because of this thing that’s inside of me. And I will continue to do so. I’ve tried to stop. At one point I declared, “All I have to do is quit calling myself a writer and it will be over.” Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Stephen Jackson : part five

What are you working on?

In January of 2020 I began work on a new project, writing a series of constrained poems late in the evening while listening to music: mostly jazz, ambient, avant-garde. This is unusual for me, as I normally write in the morning, in complete silence. With nearly 150 of these pieces, I’m currently in the process of selecting 20-25 for a chapbook. While the form is constrained, the subject matter is not, as I tend to let the music guide my thoughts. I may end up writing a handful of pieces to give it more connective tissue. Other than that, I’m writing every day, working on revisions of recent poems (three months out) while constantly tweaking older ones, putting together submissions, categorizing poems for other chapbooks, and always, always reading. There’s no end to the work that needs to be done. And I’m grateful for the time to do it.

Stephen Jackson : part four

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

For me, as I’m sure it must be for many, it’s been a rather lonely process. I’d written poetry for decades before my first attempt at publication, which was in 2017. I had no one to take a look at my work or offer me feedback. I just read through a lot of magazines until I found one I liked, searched through my work to find something the magazine might like, and then sent off four poems. To my surprise they accepted one, and then to my astonishment, later nominated it for a Pushcart Prize. I had a handful of other poems published that first year and then took a little break, as submitting can be time consuming. I began a regular submission schedule in 2019 and currently send out about two or three per week. I have a slightly better idea of what I’m doing now, as I search for magazines that might be a fit for the poems I myself would like to see published.

Stephen Jackson : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I think over time I’ve come to trust my own judgement about when a poem is ready to stand on its own. It requires a little faith and trust in what has been given to me. A poem, through revision, is vulnerable to losing that mysterious something that imbued it with a life of its own in the first place, though a trace of it may still have flickered there after the third or twenty-third draft. One can’t always be like the parent who says, “You will not leave this house dressed like that!” Sometimes you just have to let them go, allow them to be themselves. As a general rule, I do consider a poem that has been published finished. An acceptance is a sigh of relief, like the kid finally got their own apartment, now I can focus on the ones (I believe) still need me.

Stephen Jackson : part two

How does a poem begin?

Most of what I write is written in that weird state between sleep and waking. This is where my raw material comes from. Later in the day I will type it into a document that won’t get opened again for three months (I used to wait six). Part of my daily schedule is to open the document created three month prior to that day and give it a first revision and a title, if it doesn’t already have one. This keeps things interesting, because I have no idea what I’m about to open up and work on. And I usually have only a vague remembrance of writing it. It’s a little like revising someone else’s poems. Occasionally, the writing is promising, oftentimes it is less so. One way or the other, I require myself to work with what I have before me until I’ve turned it into as good a piece as I possibly can. If it’s still promising, this can go on for days, weeks, months, or years. 

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.