WEBVTT
00:00:02.585 -->
00:00:14.816Welcome to Emerge Unchained, the podcast of Emerge Literary Magazine, where Literature kicks off its shoes and wanders barefoot through the wild terrain of human imagination. This is Emerge Unchained.
00:00:17.500 -->
00:00:26.550..Hi, I'm Aubrey Greene. In this week, I sat down with poet Jessica Neno Cloud.
00:00:21.420 -->
00:00:31.059Jessica was a finalist for the Steven A. Tobias Poetry Prize in 2024 for her poem 'The Rosary'.
00:00:31.699 -->
00:01:42.709And in 2025, she was selected to represent the PD region of South Carolina by reading her work at the SOTA City Poetry Festival in Columbia. She earned her MA in English literature at the University of Southern Mississippi, and her poems have appeared online in 'Emerge' magazine, the TEJASCOVIDO project, and Former People. She can be found in print in Constellations and the Langdon review. When she's not working on literary projects, Jessica owns her own non-profit fundraising consulting firm, Real Deal Fundraising. She was born and raised Mobile, Alabama, and now resides in Hartsville, South Carolina with her husband, Daniel, her two children, Amy and Thomas, and two orange tabby cats. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy this conversation with Jessica Neno I want to say thank you for spending time with us and, uh, and agreeing to come on to the podcast today, I really appreciate it.
00:01:43.512 -->
00:01:53.822Thank you, thank you for having me, it's really fun to talk about poetry, for change, not fundraising, which is what I'm normally talking about, if I'm doing something like this, so.
00:01:54.549 -->
00:01:57.909Well, I was going to ask about that.
00:01:58.468 -->
00:02:05.418That's why I know nonprofits love to talk about fun, you know, everybody's interested in talking about fundraising and learning a little more,
00:02:05.367 -->
00:02:07.626it's, it's because we're all desperate.
00:02:08.260 -->
00:02:17.531What, uh, totally understand, hey, that's what keeps me in, in, um, in peanut butter around here. That's what allows us to buy those groceries,
00:02:17.530 -->
00:02:18.189yeah,
00:02:17.531 -->
00:02:18.049so,
00:02:18.189 -->
00:02:23.800oh, okay, so that brings up a very important question. What brand of peanut butter do you use?
00:02:24.913 -->
00:02:34.114Uh, we're fairly ecumenical, although, um, we, um, we don't do crunchy, the kids don't like crunchy. So
00:02:33.830 -->
00:02:34.175It's fair.
00:02:34.114 -->
00:02:39.165the only person that likes crunchy has a peanut allergy, and that's my husband, so yeah, and so
00:02:39.687 -->
00:02:40.347that's
00:02:39.700 -->
00:02:40.181I know
00:02:40.347 -->
00:02:40.387rough.
00:02:41.155 -->
00:02:41.405So, yeah, it's a rough thing.
00:02:41.502 -->
00:02:47.823My, my husband is diehard Jif all the way, yeah, he can't do anything else.
00:02:48.782 -->
00:02:48.822Yeah.
00:02:51.224 -->
00:02:57.764So, I'm curious, you've, you've submitted a lot of work to emerge over the years.
00:02:54.425 -->
00:03:01.294We've gotten to, to publish quite a bit of your stuff. How did you find us in the first place
00:03:02.367 -->
00:03:16.003Okay, so gonna have to look up his name and make sure I get it right, because like, I don't want to mess it up. Okay. Bill McCloud.
00:03:11.804 -->
00:03:50.211I should remember that, because his last name is so similar to mine. So, very randomly through one of those Facebook serendipity things, I knew someone who knew Bill McCloud and we became Facebook friends, and he offered to read some of my poetry, and he said, you should really submit to emerge, and I did, and they accepted one piece, and then I said, well, I'm just gonna submit every year,'cause they seem to like my stuff. And inevitably, I'd have at least one piece accepted, and I think there's like nine poems on there now, so,
00:03:50.015 -->
00:03:51.135Something like that, yeah.
00:03:51.085 -->
00:04:36.500Very cool. So it was Bill. He was such a generous reader and encouraging me to submit to different places, and an emerge was one of those, so, and I think I also heard about it during the pandemic because there were a lot of folks associated with the Dairy Hollow, the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow, which was in conjunction with Emerge for a long time, and they were doing Wednesday night poetry but they were doing it online during the pandemic, and so I would do, like, some video readings to participate in that, and so many folks were sort of just in the mix, and Emerge was part of that mix, so, yeah, it was you know, around the time of the pandemic that I got involved.
00:04:37.336 -->
00:04:43.406Oh, fun. Oh, we'll have to buy Bill a drink the next time we see him, and tell him, thank you.
00:04:44.425 -->
00:04:51.524Yeah, he's such a sweet guy. And he has really encouraged me with my poetry since I've gotten to know him, so it's really fun
00:04:52.774 -->
00:05:02.324Yeah. Yeah, he's a good guy. So, were you not writing very much poetry before the pandemic, or did you just, were you just not submitting it out for publication?
00:05:02.615 -->
00:05:38.002Well, I had always written poetry as just a personal cathartic thing throughout my life. I really never wanted to admit to myself that I was a poet, and I was in the final stages of my master's degree in English Lit. And at the same time I was doing that, I was reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. And I was like, oh, that's why I write so much about poetry is because I am a poet and I should embrace that.
00:05:38.752 -->
00:05:48.081And like, it seems so painfully obvious, but it was like a huge revelation to me at the time.
00:05:43.161 -->
00:06:03.242And so I guess it was 2017, 2018 that I was sort of having that journey. And I remember posting on Facebook in 2018 that I had submitted a few poems to a journal and that I was terrified.
00:05:57.521 -->
00:06:26.805Like, all caps terrified. And I worked a lot on that and like, now I'm like, I can submit poetry, and then I forget about it. I submit it and forget about it. Like, I don't worry about whether it's accepted or not. I only accept good news. That's all I'm here for. Rejection? I see them, I forget about them.
00:06:21.322 -->
00:06:52.523Like, I try to detach a lot. And that's allowed me to just submit a ton when I have it. I actually probably these days submit more than I'm writing because I'm also building my business at the same time. yeah, so that's how it started. It was a weird compluence of like graduate school rounding out and discovering that I actually did want to have a creative practice.
00:06:47.492 -->
00:07:10.358And I said, "Wel, if I'm gonna have a creative practice, I want people to read some of it." Like, at some point, so I've got to put myself out there. I've got a chase rejection, I guess, as the term. I have. And it's paid off with a lot of acceptances... At least a good amount I think in a short period of time.
00:07:11.461 -->
00:07:13.182Right. So where all have you been accepted?
00:07:13.738 -->
00:07:38.915Um, during the pandemic, I was part of a couple of projects, one called the Corona... It was like a play on, on Decameron. So it was like the Coronameron And then there was a Texas called a Tejasco Vito. I had a number of poems in that project during the pandemic.
00:07:34.221 -->
00:07:47.610online, I have a poem at former people, which is an on-link journal. Emerge a lot of poems there. And then a couple of print acceptances here and there.
00:07:48.000 -->
00:08:22.490So it's been, it's been fun. And then last year, I was accepted to be one of three poets to represent my region of South Carolina at the Soda City Poetry Festival in Columbia. So that was really cool. And I put together like a little collection of poems about my grandmother. And so it was sort of like a little tribute reading for her. Some stuff I haven't read publicly before. My kids came and that was really cool that they got to see me do that.
00:08:16.730 -->
00:08:51.929And yeah. So, you know, Poetry, it's... It's not my day job. And my day job is really nothing like this job, but like, you know, it's... It's something that I do. It's nourishing, right? It's nourishing to have like a very different side of things that keep you grounded and keeps you connected to, I don't know, experiences of awe or reflection. You know, what, you know, stuff that you just don't always have a pulse on in your daily life.
00:08:52.826 -->
00:09:11.020Yeah, I've found that to be true for a lot of people particularly when you've got a creative person, a creative spirit that is any job that is very not creative. It feels like the poetry or the writing is just so much more important.
00:09:11.714 -->
00:09:51.879Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, my job is I try to bring the creativity to my work when I can I have a tick-tock that promotes my business and I try to do fun, fun and funny stuff there that kind of like sheds light on nonprofit life, nonpr work. So, I try to incorporate creativity into all of my stuff, but there is... I have an analytical side to me. And so, like my work feeds that and, you know, I like to plan and be efficient and, you know, do all that stuff, but you know, t something else that poetry does that that doesn't for me. So, it's very complimentary, I would say.
00:09:52.716 -->
00:09:55.178Oh, that's a good way of putting it complimentary.
00:09:55.812 -->
00:09:56.043Yeah.
00:09:56.494 -->
00:10:07.551Do you that one side of the other tends to take over after a while or do you tend to stay in balance really well or do you have to work at that?
00:10:07.979 -->
00:10:10.458I don't know. I worked in higher ed for so long.
00:10:10.458 -->
00:10:47.437I was a higher education fundraiser that I sort of have this very, you know, perspective that things are seasonal. So like I sort of expect, like there's going to be times when I have to like put everything into my work in order to like move toward a goal and like that's okay if I go four months without writing any poetry. I haven't written any poetry in a little while. But then you know something will happen. I remember writing a lot after Renee Good was killed and Minneapolis. I'm sure a lot of poets were writing a lot after that.
00:10:47.774 -->
00:10:47.995Yeah,
00:10:48.096 -->
00:11:53.089So that sort of stimulated, like I don't know a lot of thinking and I needed to like get that thinking out of my brain and put it on paper, I write mostly my notes out, so paper and quotes, right and you know and then that's fine. It's sort of like a poetry is like a a piece of my toolkit that like I turned to, like just like I do yoga, you know, so sometimes I'm like, oh I don't, I don't feel really good or my mind's not very clear, so I'll go back to yoga and poetry serves sort of the same kind of function for me, I guess. So there's times when I know I'm going to be focusing on different things, and I tend to ride those waves and trust that I will come back into balance, I guess. Um just and that's what meditation and yoga have taught me. She can always start over, like you know, always go back always start over, you don't have to have a perfect practice, I don't write every day, I don't produce a poem every week, you know, I don't put um metrics on my writing,
00:11:53.748 -->
00:11:54.388oh
00:11:53.988 -->
00:11:54.407I just,
00:11:54.388 -->
00:11:55.980that's a good way of putting it.
00:11:56.422 -->
00:12:06.145Yeah, I just trust that I will come back to it because I need it and I know that I'm going to, that can always come back to it. no matter how long it's been, right?
00:12:06.145 -->
00:12:06.669I don't
00:12:06.993 -->
00:12:32.600know. No, that makes a lot of sense. That sounds like one of the healthier ways of looking at it that that I've heard because so many people it's so easy to get bogged down with with the advice of writing every day and making sure that you're blocking off some time and and all of that and and sometimes the prescriptive nature of of that kind of advice just starts to feel like a shackle.
00:12:33.219 -->
00:13:49.018I mean it reminds me of like for years I tried to make myself be a morning person and like get a burly and exercise and do stuff. I'm not a morning person, like I'm not going to hit my stride till afternoon and I'm still going to be, I'm going to be wide awake from 9 p. m. to midnight. Like why not use that time and stop fighting myself and start working with my rhythm, I guess, and I take the same approach with I actually started working on a novel for the first time in late May and like I was like cranking out. I was doing, I did 12,000 words over like two weeks and just had the whole thing mapped out and was producing and then I lost a client and I had to sort of refocus on work and I haven't returned to it. I've been thinking I've been noodling on it a lot but I'm not worried about it because I trust I will come back to it like that there there will be like the the lulls and peaks and stuff and so I know it's there. I know I'm going to work on it more and finish it and I love where it's going but like I'm not pressuring myself get back to it.
00:13:45.778 -->
00:13:50.025It will it will come back around. I'm trusting.
00:13:50.296 -->
00:13:54.861Nice. Do you want to share what it's about
00:13:56.639 -->
00:14:14.881Well it's um I've been doing a lot of genealogy work for about a year and learning a lot about my family background and they've been in the you know corridor between New Orleans and Mobile since the founding of those cities. So as you might expect it's a complicated history.
00:14:17.336 -->
00:15:22.552So essentially, I'm kind of filling in the blanks. I found one of the branches in my family was part of the founding of Gulf Court Mississippi, and the establishment of the railroads there between Gulf Court and Hattiesburg. I have a lot of, I've lived in Hattiesburg probably more than any other city in my adult life. so I have a lot of connections there. what I found is this family employed a black woman in her 50s to be a cook in their household. And all I had was her name and it was a really common name. And I wanted to trace her story. And I couldn't find much because her name was so common, her name was Sarah Morris. she did work for another family in Gulf Court before she came to work for my family. my brain starts to feel, I sort of automatically would start to fill in and I would ask questions, like, what was this person like, what were their motivations for working in this job? What was the relationship between them and these family members that I've discovered?
00:15:23.413 -->
00:15:34.427And the girls and the family were all stenographers for the railroads. So they were sort of the first generation of like office working girls, right?
00:15:29.744 -->
00:15:46.283that fascinated me. So I sort of started to build like these mental stories about what these people were like and how they interacted and how the dynamics of Jim Crow, Mississippi, would have played out in the household.
00:15:46.283 -->
00:16:00.563And so that's what the book is essentially about. yeah, so I won't say too much more about it, but it's inspired by genealogy, but with a lot of fictional stuff thrown in. So we will see where the story goes. I know where it goes, but we'll see
00:16:00.869 -->
00:16:01.455haha
00:16:02.152 -->
00:16:03.556it's the same as I think.
00:16:03.995 -->
00:16:10.035Oh, you think you know where it goes, but characters have a habit of getting away from you.
00:16:10.655 -->
00:16:12.875Right, right.
00:16:10.655 -->
00:16:32.413They jump the story and take it away from you. Yeah. So we'll see, it's fun. But I, you know, I trust that finish it and get there. And mostly because it does feel like not only a tribute to my family, but also to Sarah Moris, who doesn't have much of a story in the record.
00:16:32.413 -->
00:16:35.594And I wanted to give her a story.
00:16:32.413 -->
00:16:49.889And I'm not, she's not the central character. I'm not speaking for her largely, but I, I wanted to fill in the blanks a little bit. So yeah, that's part of the reason why I know I'll finish it is because I feel this obligation to do it for those people.
00:16:50.083 -->
00:17:01.298Very nice. So it sounds like the region like is informs your writing significantly, at least for the novel. Does it have you found that to be true for your poetry as well?
00:17:01.802 -->
00:18:32.395Yeah, there's a lot, a lot of poems come from family stories. I've heard or me being in dialogue with where I grew up And sort of family legacy... I think, I think eMerge published a poem of mine called exiting the airport in Mobile which was about I was coming home. I was going to my parents to pick my kids up because they had been babysitting. it was just sort of like the weird feeling of being of a place, but not being of it anymore, of knowing that like my husband and I joked that we're sort of pansouthern because he's from Tennessee and has lived in these different places. And then I'm from Mobile and Mississippi and we've lived in South Carolina. So we've sort of been all over the South, right. And, we have this deep connection and don't really want to live anywhere else, but also have issues with the South and how it is and how it's been, and have different values from what folks would typically consider to be the South. so yeah, I write about that a lot, and I guess poetry is one of the ways that I processed that, of the, the, the distance between sort of what I was raised with and where my heart is in the South, and what I wish the South would be, what it would live up to. Um, I don't know, that pretentious, but like it's true.
00:18:32.459 -->
00:18:45.634Yeah. So as, as a Virginian and, and fellow Southerner, um, yeah, I, I can, I can completely relate to that because the South is special.
00:18:42.058 -->
00:19:20.711and, and like you said, different parts of the South have, have different fields and different flavors to it. It's a big region. Um, but yeah, it's also really complicated and even though, even though that particular era of American history was quite a while ago now, it still casts a very long shadow. And yeah, there's a lot of processing that has to be done. I think, if you're, yeah, if you're not just completely happy with with the way things are.
00:19:21.451 -->
00:19:26.371Right, right, but you know, Ruby Bridges is still alive. You know, so it
00:19:26.070 -->
00:19:26.298Really?
00:19:26.371 -->
00:19:28.490really wasn't,it really wasn't that long ago.
00:19:28.490 -->
00:19:49.547Ruby Bridges is like in her 60s, 70s. She's got a TikTok account and everything, so like, you know, when we think about the civil rights movement and Jim Crow, it wasn't that long You know, it's still within our lifetime. You know, my parents were born in the 50s, mid 50s.
00:19:44.787 -->
00:20:06.304So they lived through it. They lived through segregation. So, you know, I always, I try to be keenly aware of that. Like, hey, it wasn't that long You know, we're talking one generation back. We're talking baby boomers still lived through this.
00:20:07.034 -->
00:20:14.042Yeah, yeah. Well, I was thinking specifically about the civil war, but you're right, the Jim Crow movement.
00:20:14.604 -->
00:20:24.223Like, I wonder, that makes me wonder, do, are we, are we going through waves of our, our nation processing this kind of stuff.
00:20:24.814 -->
00:20:29.923So we had, we had the revolution.
00:20:24.814 -->
00:20:41.084We have the civil war. We had the civil rights movement and now we've got everything that's going on now. I wonder if it's just, if it's just those waves of us trying to, to deal with our own, our own stuff.
00:20:41.993 -->
00:21:14.330Yeah, I mean, I've, there's some interesting books out there. I mean, I don't know how the historians listening to this podcast would feel, but I've found it interesting. There's books called the fourth turning talk about generational dynamics and how essentially parents and children interact over the generations is sort of propels the sort of societal change. And it happens in about the length of the generation. So that's why it's 80 years when you see these different crises I don't know, I think there's something to it.
00:21:15.871 -->
00:21:35.910Again, because like you see, you see the revolution four score and seven years pass civil war world war two. And now here we are... So it is very interesting to me. And it sort of that sort of overlaps was like my genealogical. I was an American studies undergrad major. So I tend to be like,
00:21:36.442 -->
00:21:36.723just
00:21:36.751 -->
00:21:47.692the interdisciplenary in my approach and like I don't know, I've been fascinated by these questions for a really long time. So yeah, well, I didn't think we were going to go there on this talk.
00:21:50.592 -->
00:21:56.567I warned you you never know where this where this will go. It just kind of flows where it goes.
00:21:56.832 -->
00:22:00.471Yeah, it's fun.
00:21:56.832 -->
00:22:13.192Yeah, the fourth turning. That's, that's what it's called. So the fourth turning is where you go into like a crisis and catharsis, like period and society. And I think, you know, most people today would be like, Oh, yeah, we're in the middle of one of those.
00:22:14.551 -->
00:22:24.771Yeah, I think no matter where you fall, it's pretty clear that we are, we are in a period of upheaval and we will need some catharsis.
00:22:25.231 -->
00:22:42.119Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, so we get to decide. I mean, that I think that's a lot of people sort of critique that view of history because they say it's deterministic, but you actually get to determine, like, like, it's not deterministic.
00:22:42.460 -->
00:23:38.637It's just the crisis is going to come and then the question is like individuals and groups make decisions that impact the direction that the crisis will go and what kind of catharsis you will have. And the historical analysis essentially shows we didn't experience a unifying catharsis out of the Civil War. We sort of skipped that period. And that may be some of our problem now. We didn't really resolve that crisis in American history. We didn't come to a conclusion, you know, where we decided fully what our values were going to be going forward. And we sort of said, well, like, we will let Jim Crow, like, continue to exist and extend the conflict in many ways instead of living up to our values. Anyways: rant over. And that's all.
00:23:39.817 -->
00:24:05.257No, I feel like it's really important though, because I mean, it is such a big part of life when you live in the South. It's, I mean, it's a huge part of life, whether it's spoken or unspoken. And so yeah, I think there's no way to get away from that, being at least a subtle part of your writing. If you are a writer living in the South, it's going to affect that.
00:24:05.346 -->
00:24:07.676There's just not really a good way around that.
00:24:09.186 -->
00:24:17.826Yeah, I mean, well, for me, it's also part of my religious values,so I'm a Unitarian
00:24:17.047 -->
00:24:17.196I mean,
00:24:17.826 -->
00:24:46.471Universalist, to live in the South and to love the South, and not to grapple with that is not spiritually honest, I guess, is the way I characterize it. Like, we have to look at that, because if we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people, we have an obligation to, like, again, try to live up to those values. So, anyway.
00:24:48.461 -->
00:24:56.480So, you mentioned that you had been invited to read some of your work at an event.
00:24:57.871 -->
00:25:50.739That was last summer It was the... so... They call Columbia one of its short names is Cola, and so they started calling it "Sodacity." So the, like, nicknames have evolved. So, the poet laureate of Columbia, she put together a festival called the "Sodacity Poetry Festival" and part of that, they accepted applications to showcase poets from the four regions of South Carolina. So, the Midlands, the Upstate, the low country and the PD is the region that I'm from. And so myself and two other wonderful poets did the reading for the PD region. It was really fun. Yeah, that was an incredible opportunity and I'm honored to have been picked, especially'cause I'm a relative newcomer.
00:25:45.439 -->
00:26:02.940I've been in South Carolina this time for four years. Yeah, so moved here in 2022. So, to be relatively new last summer to the region and getting to read for it was pretty cool.
00:26:03.759 -->
00:26:05.839That, that is really neat, congratulations.
00:26:06.940 -->
00:26:10.279Nice, it was fun.
00:26:06.940 -->
00:27:10.420And yeah, like I said, I got to read some collection that was about my grandmother. And I don't know why I picked that. I was just like, okay, I'm gonna read these poems and this is gonna be the unifying And I guess it was because I was slipping into that genealogy, like a special interest that I developed around this time last year. Yeah, it was very interesting. We took a family trip to Montreal and did a side trip to Quebec City. And as I was there, I realized that one of the people that they were featuring in some of the museums was also a figure that's well known on the Gulf Coast as one of the sort of founders which a Lemoyne (sp? ). And the Lemoyne brothers, who one of whom was named Bienville, founded basically every city on the Gulf Coast and every school child knows their name. But they always say they were French.
00:27:06.480 -->
00:27:16.240Never once did someone tell me that these people were Canadian.
00:27:10.420 -->
00:28:10.111So like, my brain is trying to figure this out. And as I got home, I started looking into my genealogy and yeah, they were from Quebec. So they were Quebecois settlers in French Canada in the 1600s and then they came down to Mobile and founded Mobile and then Pascagoula and that was where my family sort of originated from that. So yeah, I really slipped into genealogy after going to Canada and like discovering all these hidden connections. it But it was really, really interesting to see how all that history panned out because they wanted the French Canadians because they had a lot more experience negotiating and developing trade relationships with the Native Americans. And so that's why they sort of pulled from French Canada when they wanted to settle the Gulf Coast. Anyway.
00:28:12.611 -->
00:28:37.727That was an interesting sort of inspiration, and I started to write some poems based around the genealogical stories that I've pulled together. So the whole thing has been inspired a lot of writing, not just the novel that I'm working on, but poetry as But they're all too long to submit the eMerge, those get a little bit long.
00:28:37.887 -->
00:28:45.760Yeah, we've run into that a couple of times. Our line limit has limited some folks.
00:28:47.127 -->
00:29:24.688This is the first time I've really written most of my poems tend to be relatively short, because they're just sort of like emotional outbursts. I do so to speak, like that. I just, okay, I gotta type this and... But the ones that are a little bit longer and have more structure to them I guess, as I'm maturing as a poet and doing different things. They're tending to get longer and have more infrastructure, I guess, in them like more of a point that I'm trying to make instead of like, hey, here's a thing that happened and let me get this out of my head.
00:29:25.824 -->
00:29:33.394So you haven't consciously been like changing the way your poems are? It's just kind of just happening organically?
00:29:33.743 -->
00:29:59.070Yeah, I mean, basically, like, I'll find a story in the genealogy and I'm like, okay, I want to write a poem around this concept and it'll come out longer because there's just more detail there that I want to include or more spaces I want to fill in the color on, right? Like, okay, this is a gap in the record. I want to, I want to fill that in.
00:30:00.102 -->
00:30:07.753And so it's, yeah, it's sort of evolving itself. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about it one way or another.
00:30:08.784 -->
00:30:09.348Yeah
00:30:11.111 -->
00:30:22.867What is the writing community like down there? Because I know we have up in the Midwest and in this region where we're at it's a pretty vibrant writing community.
00:30:23.281 -->
00:30:29.642Is that something that you all also have? Is it something that's developing? What's what's going on down there?
00:30:29.587 -->
00:31:11.882That's interesting. Again, I'm kind of moving back here about four years ago. I did have a wonderful opportunity to get to know the poet laureate of my county and she's great and and JoAngela Edwins and I became Facebook friends with her and she was presenting at the Poetry Festival that I was at - she was on one of the panels and I know that Frances Mary in University which only about 30 minutes from where I am, where I live. It's - they have a huge poetry festival every November. I haven't gotten deeply involved with that. Bu there's, so there I think there is more of a vibrant community.
00:31:11.882 -->
00:31:59.089I guess for me being a parent to two kids 11 and 16 and then also like trying to get a business off the ground, I haven't engaged as much as I would want to, but I am meeting more folks like through doing things and just getting to know more people in the area. I've gotten to know so many English professors because my kids do community theater. So I helped them with their fundraising and then a lot of the people that help run that Hartsville Hart'sville Little Theater are English professors that do this on the side. So yeah, just slowly, I'm sort of tiptoeing my way into it. I do have the feeling that there is a more vibrant community out there than I've engaged with so far.
00:32:00.346 -->
00:32:12.905yeah, it's always it's great to meet more poetry people and you know, see what they're doing and and how they do it because everybody's process is so different: You know, I love that.
00:32:13.503 -->
00:32:33.044It is different, but I feel like when you get a room full of poets together, even if we we go about doing things differently, we we all kind of speak each other's language, it's like we can all kind of understand each other in a way that other people don't seem to
00:32:32.960 -->
00:32:33.255yeah,
00:32:33.044 -->
00:32:40.433get us. Does does that make sense? I feel like poets, poets are in community in a in a special way
00:32:40.684 -->
00:32:53.022mm-hmm, yeah. I do think that, and it's always great if you have, you know, a friend who does poetry and you're exchanging reading, like you're reading each other's work.
00:32:53.472 -->
00:32:58.773Like, I have met the best hype people of my life through, like,
00:32:59.535 -->
00:33:00.075Ha
00:32:59.553 -->
00:33:00.673Exchanging
00:33:00.075 -->
00:33:00.684ha. (laughs)
00:33:00.673 -->
00:33:49.363reading, there's, and really a lot of them have been random connections I've made through Facebook, or like, seemingly random, like, I would join a Facebook poetry group and make a few Facebook, new Facebook friends. And then these folks would read, like, anything I sent them and just would like, hype you up, and I'm like, what wonderful people and, you know, and then it folks like Bill McCloud who, has been such a generous reader and encouraging, um, yeah, I, I don't know, it's great. It's great to, like, have a community that, that is, they'll critique you when, when, when you need it, right, like, they'll push you to be better, but, also, it's just incredibly, like, you know, energizing for people. It's great.
00:33:50.260 -->
00:33:59.678Yeah, I know it really is. I, I don't know, I don't think that we could really keep doing what we do if we didn't have some of those, those people around
00:33:59.635 -->
00:34:00.566Mm-hmm.
00:33:59.678 -->
00:34:00.248supporting us
00:34:00.566 -->
00:34:01.236Yeah, absolutely.
00:34:02.494 -->
00:34:08.474Funny story. You, you talking about Poet Laureates made me think of this. I was at an event a couple of weeks ago.
00:34:09.054 -->
00:35:18.125The Woody Guthrie Festival, uh, here in, in Oklahoma, well, they, they do a big thing for all weekend, on, on his birthday every year. And the very last day was in Tulsa, where I'm located. So I, I was making a point of getting to go over there, and I walked into the, into the auditorium. And there's, I mean, there's a good amount of people, probably around 50 people, I would guess, in, in the auditorium. So it was full,'cause it was, it was a small room. but I went over and was talking to a friend of mine. And, and they just seemed a little, a little keyed up. It's like, so what's going on? And I found out later, 'cause I saw somebody's Facebook posts. Like, do you want to see a room full of poets get really excited, all at the same time? Have the former poet laureate, Joy Harjo, walk into the room, five minutes before things start And, and so that was, that was really, that was really exciting. And it was energizing. And I kind of felt bad for the poets who were reading, because, that would have been really nerve-wracking reading your work in front of Joy Harjo.
00:35:17.929 -->
00:35:19.610right, right. Oh my gosh.
00:35:19.545 -->
00:35:32.844But it, But it was so cool that she, she still attends things like this. She still, I mean, she still connected to the local local poetry stuff. And, and that's that's super encouraging. She's really nice.
00:35:32.409 -->
00:35:35.659Oh, that's so great. Man, that's great to hear.
00:35:35.659 -->
00:35:49.818Like, I love that like.. it is such a, such a, that's my first, like, tiptoe into the poetry community was, the Wednesday night poetry readings that popped up during the pandemic.
00:35:49.818 -->
00:37:02.489And, like, what a great, I don't know. To me, that was just a great story. It's like, okay, this is a little local poetry reading that's gone on for longer than, like, anything else, like any other poet consecutive weekly poetry reading. And like, here's Kai trying to keep it going, like, in the midst of this disconnection that we're all feeling, like, it was incredible. I met some incredible folks, um, digitally digitally through that and became Facebook friends with them. And they have been so encouraging of like, not just poetry, but like all my life endeavors, like, like, these folks that became friends because we were all filming videos of our self reading poetry during the pandemic, or like, I start, I started my business. And they're like, whoa, like, you know, they're, they're hyping me up for that. I'm like, what an incredible community. I mean, I guess it's just, you know, folks with a creative edge, who know how hard it is to put yourself out there. And then are, thereby, you know, willing to be a great audience and be generous with their praise and encouragement. So yeah, I think it's great.
00:37:03.570 -->
00:37:11.951Yeah, in my experience, you will never find a better audience than a group of poets, like, they will. Yeah, they are, they are always the best.
00:37:12.322 -->
00:37:12.362Totally.
00:37:14.179 -->
00:37:29.809Well, before we let you go, do you have any advice that you would offer to people, whether they're like just starting to submit or struggling to find places to submit or just struggling to write? Do you have anything?
00:37:30.052 -->
00:39:29.976I would say use your notes app on your phone because I can't tell you how many times I've just like been in the passenger seat or on a train and I'll just be like on my on my notes app you know getting a poem out into the world and then again just chase rejection like get yourself into like a mental state of detachment and say look I'm not going to have any success in getting folks to read my poetry in a public way if I don't submit so the best to get past that is to just say like okay rejection is the point like let's go for it how many how many places can I be rejected from in the next and and and collect it you know and and again I got into the point I did that for so long that I just said well now I'm just gonna let it go so basically like submit and forget and if something good comes back from it like then it's good and if something doesn't you never hear anything no big deal you already forgot it. and if you get a rejection it's like okay talk up to another one you know time to try the next one and I you know I'm not and I and I and I again I don't put a lot of pressure on myself like I know like you know like William Carlos Williams was out delivering babies and writing his poetry like it's not that serious like I can do it right yeah I can write I can tippy tap on my notes app and then when I get a spare hour on a Saturday night I can submit to a few places like I don't put a lot of pressure on myself and for me that works like that helps me fit poetry into my life in a way that's meaningful in a way that gets some of it out there and also take your vacation days like use your PTO and like use your PTO for your poetry like like if you don't if you can't afford to go somewhere
00:39:29.697 -->
00:39:30.213Ooo
00:39:30.577 -->
00:39:45.789stay home and write like form forms that like that I've done that like I just take a week off and staycation put the chapbook together or whatever you know and submit to a few places like you use your time take time off
00:39:46.818 -->
00:39:55.059no that's that's really good advice because I know the it can be really hard to take time off
00:39:54.989 -->
00:39:55.250yeah
00:39:55.059 -->
00:39:55.297sometimes
00:39:55.250 -->
00:40:36.103I mean it's well it it makes you better at your job to take time off like people don't realize that but like it makes you better to take time off and then like then you have time for your art like like even even it was just a long weekend like take a long weekend and say like yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna edit and put together some poems put together some collections and you know you you know you capture them on the notes app and then and then take a little time and like squirrel away you're editing and then submit and that's kind of how I try to roll with it is just you know I'll find time I'll find pockets of time to like figure this out so
00:40:37.981 -->
00:40:41.880yeah all right so that's that's your takeaway people take time
00:40:41.722 -->
00:40:43.461yes
00:40:41.880 -->
00:40:42.090for your art
00:40:43.461 -->
00:40:43.862absolutely
00:40:44.990 -->
00:40:59.900all right well Jessica thank you so much for for taking the time to be with us remember for taking time for this part of art oh and let me congratulate you on being on the long list for our Woody Barlow low poetry contest
00:41:00.211 -->
00:41:15.570thank you I just saw that like an hour or so before we got on to talk it was like oh yay and that's one of my newer poems that I wrote in the last few months so like I'm I'm excited to see that one called Boutica be on the list so hey
00:41:15.690 -->
00:41:21.278all right well we'll we'll see if you make it make it a little further we'll find out next week
00:41:22.228 -->
00:41:24.175fingers crossed for the next list
00:41:25.728 -->
00:41:27.097there you go
00:41:26.438 -->
00:41:26.920all
00:41:28.157 -->
00:41:29.217right well thanks so
00:41:29.509 -->
00:41:31.257thank you it's really
00:41:30.318 -->
00:41:30.737much
00:41:32.327 -->
00:41:46.159We hope you've enjoyed today's episode of Emerge Unchained with our hosts, the Emerge Literary magazine Aubrey Green. The Emerge Unchained podcast is brought to you by Emerge Literary magazine.
00:41:42.219 -->
00:41:53.300Our producers are Charles and Sandra Templeton. Our website designer is Cat Templeton. Thank you again for joining us for Emerge Unchained. And remember, we'll be here to celebrate the courage it takes to put words into the world. So keep writing until next time.
