Contributor Interview with Jenna Goldsmith
Bio: Jenna Goldsmith earned her PhD from the University of Kentucky in 2016 and is an Instructor of Writing and English at Oregon State University Cascades in Bend, Oregon. In 2014, she received the inaugural Kentucky Writers Fellowship for innovative poetry from The Baltic Writing Residency. Her scholarship and poetry have been featured in disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory and Rabbit Catastrophe Review, and “Fieldwork: An Interview with Juliana Spahr” was published in the most recent issue of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.
When did you start considering yourself a writer?
I was lucky to attend and elementary school that took writing seriously. They set up a little press called Lincoln School Press so that we could see our books bound and our words in print. This is when I first felt like a writer. In first grade, I wrote a short story called “My Fish.” A few years ago, I rewrote the story as a poem. The last line of the poem was “My mom said we could get another fish. / We never got another fish.” It’s the best line of poetry I’ve ever written.
What’s one of your favorite things about your chosen genre? (or, your work’s blur of genre)
My brain works in lines. Poetry allows me to write exactly (or as close to exactly) what I’m thinking.
Who/what are main influences for your current writing?
I wrote my MA thesis and doctoral dissertation on Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian, and Juliana Spahr. Their poetry has been a major influence on my writing, but also on my life. When I read these poets, my life and thinking makes a kind of sense to me that it otherwise wouldn’t.
If you could pick one song/album as the soundtrack to your piece (the one we’re publishing) what would it be?
I would pair this poem with Nina Simone’s “Don’t Explain,” although I don’t know if I could listen to the song and read the poem at the same time. It’s a lot.
What are you looking forward to reading this coming year? Are there any emerging artists you’re particularly jazzed about?
I’m interested in anything that speaks to ardor, intuition, limerence, cathectedness, autotelia, the Hellabore plant, and different concepts related to chocolate cake.
In the Fall, I was on a “good literature” kick right (I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Room with a View and attempted to take up Infinite Jest but abandoned it [for now]) so maybe more of that in 2017. Poet Elizabeth Hatmaker’s book Infrastructures is slated to come out soon with Downstate Legacies, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Elizabeth, who passed away earlier this month, was a beloved creative writing professor of mine at Illinois State University. She was the faculty advisor of Euphemism, ISU’s top notch, student-run literary magazine. Check it out. Submit the wildest poem you’ve got. Elizabeth’s poetry mind was all-embracing. This is her legacy.
If you could collaborate with any other artist (past included) on a new project, who would it be and why?
I would want to collaborate more with my friend Robin Rahija. She and her partner Greg Lamer run a small press in Lexington, KY called Rabbit Catastrophe Press, and they produce a journal called Rabbit Catastrophe Review, which is beautiful. We’ve written Exquisite Corpse poems in the car on the way back from AWP, and we’ve written poems from the perspective of a famous Modernist’s dog, and we’ve written poems about other things, but I want more.
