by Suz Spearman
For our Spring issue, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julie Hensley.
Julie is the author of three books: Five Oaks (Lake Union Publishing), Landfall: A Ring of Stories (Ohio State University Press), and Viable (Five Oaks Press). She has also published two chapbooks: Real World (Artists Thrive) and The Language of Horses (Finishing Line Press).
A Professor at Eastern Kentucky University and core faculty member in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA Program, she lives in Richmond, Kentucky, with her husband, writer R. Dean Johnson, and their two children.
Visit her website at juliehensleywriter.com to learn more about her work.
Suz: How do you find your way into a poem (or other pieces)?
Julie: For a poem (or something like a poem, such as the intercalary chapters in Five Oaks), it always starts with an image, usually a highly sensory image. This is definitely true of the narrative poems that make up Bent Cedar Mountain, a novel-in-poems I’ve just begun submitting to contests. For instance, the poem “Fire and Water” which was recently published in Good River Review began with the memory of how the living room used to smell when my father cleaned his guns. Even though the poem depicts a very tense moment when a romantic relationship is ready to slide into violence, it really began with a memory of my dad cleaning his guns. I was grappling with the scent of the degreaser, as well as the tiny sounds of metal against a cloth covered table. The poem “Hard Mast” began with my marveling over photographs of wild turkeys. Their wattles go blue when the blood recedes suddenly when the birds are startled or afraid. As a result, the trophy birds featured in game photographs usually have brilliant blue wattles. The resulting poem depicts a woman preparing a cleaned turkey for her husband to smoke. Really, she is worrying over her marriage, feeling isolated. But it all started with me thinking about those blue wattles. Even if my poems are ultimately going to tell a story, the creative ignition is usually an image. In all honesty, this—the way it starts—is usually how I tell the difference between what I approach as poetry and what I approach as fiction.
Suz: I love the idea “highly sensory images” as your way into a work. What distinguishes, for you, the makings of a poem versus a work of fiction?
Julie: That’s a great question for a truly narrative poet like me! In a poem, I move from the image into the character. I don’t embed in the scene as fully in terms of action. The moment of “scene work” is often fleeting and atmospheric. In my fiction, I move from the character into the image. The action births the images.
I’m more aware of sonics in a poem, more likely to read lines aloud as I am crafting them. I worry more about the titles of my poems than I do the titles of my poems or stories. That first window into meaning feels even more important for a poem.
Yet, I will confess, I stress less over my poems. I have less formal education in reading and crafting poetry—both my graduate degrees focused on fiction. Poetry is a place where I feel more permission to play. I often start poems just for myself, thinking, “No one has to see this.” The dance between delineation and syntax gives me great joy in a poem, trying to find opportunities to create doublings.
Suz: Honestly, I think that poetry being a place to play should be more common — even within the context of training and craft. I find poetry to have an inherent anarchy to it. Who are some poets who you think take exquisite risks and make poetry their playground?
Julie: Well, the first poets who come to mind are folks like Torrin A. Greathouse with their burning haibuns and Jerico Brown with his duplexes. They are inventing forms to better support how they want to convey truth. That’s powerful. I love Eduardo C. Corral’s imagery—the surprise of how it suddenly swims toward surrealism. In Slow Lightning, he commits so fully to the long line in one poem that you have to turn the book sideways. That’s fun!
Because I have been working on a novel-in-poems over the last few years, I have been noticing and trying to learn from poets who are able to achieve what feels like a novel’s narrative arc. I think Kathryn Stripling Byer does this beautifully in Wildwood Flower. Frank X. Walker does it too in all of his historical persona poem collections. My favorite is probably Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers.
Suz: You managed to list several poets that are some of my favorites of all time, as well! I suppose that might speak to your influence on me over the years as a friend and one of my MFA professors, but I will attribute it to us both having marvelous taste!
For my final question, what advice would you give to burgeoning poets (of any age)? It can be regarding craft, creative practice, life, anything!
Julie: I think the most important thing is to make time for it. Writing is a practice. You know, I teach yoga, too, and I think writing should be a similar kind of practice. I try to schedule it and commit to it. During the academic semester, that may only mean an hour early in the morning twice a week and one full morning on a writing date (my spouse and I do that!) at Purdy’s, our local coffee house. I do believe that creating the habit deepens the craft. The writing will come more easily and richly when you do it regularly. Make time for it. Make a comfortable space for it. Light a candle. Sip a warm drink. Make it feel like a kind of self-care.
If you can, seasonally commit a larger chunk of time to it. I try to attend a writing residency at least once a year. There are so many residency and retreat programs across the country that offer full fellowships, especially to first time attendants and marginalized writers. Artist Communities is a great database to search for opportunities.
Organizations like Kentucky Foundation for Women offer grants to help off-set the cost of travel, missed work, and childcare. Such grants have been essential to my craft. I do more writing in a week-long residency than I do the entire rest of the year.
You can make your own residency too. Two of my current students are a writing couple, and they sometimes rent a house for a long weekend with a few friends from their writing group. They give each other prompts, write all day, and do critique sessions at night. I think that’s a great idea!
That being said, I also tell my students not to be too precious about their writing either. So, to keep the yoga analogy going, once you commit to your practice, you have to keep it going even when someone is running a chain saw on the property next door and your cat keeps wanting to flop on your mat during your downward dog. And writing is that way. You have to train yourself to drop into it and stay in the chair, even when the light doesn’t feel right and you’re out of tea bags.
My other piece of advice is to be vulnerable. Don’t be afraid to risk real emotion. Ted Kooser talks about how good poets are willing to skate the thin surface that separates a poem from sentimentality. Sometimes, especially in the wake of workshop criticism, we can become so worried about melodrama or oversentimentality leaking into our lines that we avoid sentiment altogether. I think that is always a mistake.
Suz: Thank you so much for doing this! It has been a pleasure to conduct this interview, and I am so thrilled to have you featured in the spring edition of Pegasus!
Pegasus 