Hannah Kezema : part five

Why is poetry important?

Because the world is very hard.

Hannah Kezema : part four

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

It’s probably cliché, but Bernadette Mayer’s “The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica” is on my fridge for whenever I need it – “Be strong Bernadette” has become an endurance mantra. 

Hannah Kezema : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Describing the indescribable. Working with language as a vehicle. Honestly: sitting at a computer for many hours. Being vulnerable. Trying not to take oneself too seriously while also taking one’s work seriously. Maybe the hardest thing is trusting that the poem knows what it wants to do despite your plans. 

Hannah Kezema : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Only when it stops bothering you. It no longer wakes you in the middle of the night or bursts through your dreams. It doesn’t disrupt your workday or your leisure. When you read it, it feels fully, satisfyingly contained, like its own universe. Like it could never be, and never was, any other way. 

Hannah Kezema : part one

Hannah Kezema is an artist who works across mediums. She is the author of This Conversation is Being Recorded (Game Over Books, 2023) and the chapbook, three (Tea and Tattered Pages, 2017), and her work appears in Black Sun Lit, Grimoire, New Life Quarterly, Full Stop, Spiral Orb, and other places. 

What are you working on?

I’m working on the finishing touches of my full-length debut, This Conversation is Being Recorded, forthcoming from Game Over Books in March of 2023 (available for pre-order here). It’s a collection of poems and erasures of my experiences working as a PI and editor in the insurance fraud industry over the years amidst a global pandemic and healthcare/climate change crisis. I’m also returning as co-editor to a collaboration that was on a brief hiatus, the LATINX/CHICANX/POETX broadside series, with poet Angel Dominguez and book artist/publisher Felicia Rice of Moving Parts Press. And always working on the garden, now, it seems.