Interview with Joel Peckham 

By: Mica Hopper

A Little About Joel

Joel Peckham has published seven books of poetry and nonfiction, most recently Bone Music (SFAU) and Body Memory (New Rivers). Individual poems and essays have appeared recently in or are forthcoming Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, The Sugar House Review, Cave Wall, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Sun, and many others. Along with Robert Vivian, he is co-editor of the just-released anthology of ecstatic poetry for New Rivers Press, titled Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in American Poetry and Prose. Currently, he is an associate professor of American Literature and Creative Writing at Marshall University.

Interview 

Q: How did you come into poetry? Was there ever a crystallizing moment that made you follow this path? How did your life experience shape your future as an accomplished author, poet, and teacher? 

Like many students, I had an important mentor as an undergraduate named Robert Pack.  I was taking a course in Romanticism from him and had been writing a few poems.  After class one day, I very tentatively gave him a couple to look at.  Two days later, on a Saturday, he called me in my dorm room at 6 in the morning to tell me they were great.  I was hooked from there on out.

Everyone's life experience impacts who they become in some way or another.  I grew up in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb and was part of a highly educated, well-read, solidly middle-class family.  We lived in the most blue-collar part of town--by the Kmart, near the highway and the train tracks, but being part of that community gave us access to one of the best public school systems in the nation.  My father was an English teacher and baseball coach at Sharon High School who later became a guidance counselor.  My mother ran a ballet and gymnastics studio.  As children, my sisters and I were surrounded by books and music throughout our lives.  

 I don't know if that really answers the question--or if anything really could.  I've been through quite a bit and all of it finds its way into my work.  I like to tell people that "my life is an open book. You can buy it."  In 2004 I was in an accident that took the lives of my oldest son, Cyrus, and my first wife, Susan.  I was severely injured in the accident and recovery--both emotional and physical--has been long and slow.  Quite a bit of my work, especially my last three or four collections, has been formed directly from that experience. Though I'd say, that part of healing has meant that it is less the subject these days than it is the context.  I write about my life.  But even if I didn't, the work would be influenced by it. 

Q: Are you currently reading anything right now? Do you read to inspire yourself or to relax, maybe a mixture of both? What currently is your favorite genre of writing/poetry. 

In poetry, I've just started Donika Kelley's Bestiary and Renunciations.  I'm also reading Joseph Bethani's This Metal. For non-fiction, I'm reading everything Melissa Febos has written (she's amazing).  I read a ton of fantasy novels for pleasure.   I generally read to calm my anxieties, but good poetry will tend to inspire me to write (or try to write) better poetry.  When I'm stuck I like to watch the poetry videos over at Button poetry or reread my Faulkner and Toni Morrison novels.  I don't have a favorite poetry genre.  There is just so much good poetry being produced right now.  It's pretty exciting.

Q: What is your writing process like? Do you have tips or tricks for up-and-coming writers to get over writer’s block? In your early career, what was the publication process like? And do you have any advice for future writers to get their work out there? 

I just start typing, trying to get myself into a place where the language, the music of language takes over.  When I'm writing well, I keep a pretty good schedule, writing every morning at about 5:30-6 am for an hour.  It's really improvisatory at first.  Often, when nothing seems to be happening I return to earlier work that I never quite finished to my satisfaction.  I do have this spooky relationship with language.  Words are magic to me and I'm always typing away, trying to find the combinations that sound right, that have that incantatory quality of prayer or spell-casting (which are really the same things).  I generally write "out loud." Testing words on the air, paying attention to them, attending to them.  When my hour is up I get on with my day and see what sticks, what keeps playing in my head.  This is similar to my songwriting approach.  Again, when I'm writing well, I'm kind of always writing, working out the phrases in my head, exploring where they might go.  So when I get back to the keys, I'm ready to make something.

As for getting the work "out there,"  I would suggest reading around in journals to get a sense of the scene, going to readings, join a writing group.  It's like any other art, the creation tends to start individually, but you need a community to nurture what you do--especially in lean times when no one seems to care what you are up to. And there will be lean times.  I've published a ton, but I've had year-long droughts where no one wants anything I'm doing. This isn't for you if you expect constant praise and participation awards.  If that's what you need, find something else to do with your time.  But really, if you want to be a writer, you need to read voraciously.  I'm astonished by how many aspiring poets I know who don't bother to read contemporary poetry. It's ridiculous.  That's how you study the craft.  IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT.  

Q: These past two years are unlike anything most people have experienced. For myself personally, I feel as though I’m living one tragic global event every other month. How has globalization affected you, your writing, and your teaching? We are so involved with social media, and global news more than any other generation before us, do you think this has impacted overall writing styles or genres today? 

Well, the greatest literary flourishings in American (and World History) happened during cataclysmic global events--the American Civil War, World War I, The Spanish Flu Epidemic, The Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, the dropping of two atomic bombs, Korea, and Vietnam.  That period from 1861 to 1975 formed an astonishing and sustained artistic Renaissance.  Crisis can breed great artistic achievement.  Of course, it comes into my writing, but everything does.  Being a poet is about paying attention to your life.  It's about listening.  It's about continually pointing out how everything matters.  The hard thing is that it can all seem so big that we forget that art derives most from small things. And we need to start with what is near at hand--the people, the roads, the trees, and the buildings.  If we look closely and listen hard the universe can be found in a single spear of summer grass.  It's been a lonely time and a scary time and students and teachers are challenged by it. I try to remember that William Carlos Williams practiced medicine during the Spanish Flu and wrote great poems.  Ralph Ellison lived through Jim Crowe and wrote Invisible Man. Then I get back to work.  Again, I try to listen to my students and encourage them to listen to each other.  To pay attention to their world and attend to what's happening around them. In their own homes, communities, and lives. I think young artists are responding in powerful ways, though, and doing amazing things. I think, especially in poetry, you can see a new renaissance happening now, spearheaded by  BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers. So much of what is happening is terrifying.  But the poems have been good.  Incredibly good.

Q: I recently read your latest publication “Resisting Elegy” and I was struck with the raw and intense honesty of your words and experiences with grief and loss. The day I finished reading I hugged my husband a little harder, thinking that every moment is precious as the next. Tell me, writing this collection, was it something of catharsis, a confessional perhaps? This is such a personal story, did you have a hard time getting the words on the page, and with being so incredibly honest? 

Resisting Elegy actually came out back in 2012. Since then I've published Body Memory, Why Not Take All of Me, God's Bicycle, MUCH, and Bone Music. But it's probably the most important book I've done in that I feel as if it was the most honest thing I'd ever written to that point. And I'm really touched that it moved you.  As an artist, it is the groundwork for everything that follows.  I'd written some good things before that, but nothing that risky, that true. I will say that I don't believe that writing as catharsis works. And I don't know that the point of confession is really catharsis either.  Better people than I have written and talked about this (Foucault, in particular, has some interesting things to say about confession). I didn't write the book as therapy.  I wrote that book because I'm a writer and it was the only thing I could think about at the time.  I knew that if I didn't write about it, I would never be able to write anything else.  It would have formed itself into a barrier that I would never be able to climb over or crash through.  I'd been given a bunch of self-help books at the time by people who genuinely wanted to help me. But I hated them.  They seemed dishonest, promising false hope and step by step recovery journeys which have nothing to do with the actual experience of grief (there may be stages of grief for example, but they sure as hell don't proceed in a set order--they just hit you randomly without warning or even provocation.  Grief is not a journey. It's a state of being. And if left untreated an identity). I wanted to write a book that might make people who were going through this feel less alone, less ashamed.  I was hoping to start a conversation--even if that conversation were uncomfortable.  As for the process--it was like a fever dream.  I wrote through tears while on high levels of pain medication while trying to parent a 5-year-old, while trying to teach and work and love. I don't know if the words were hard to write.  The words were right there waiting for me.  Somehow I wrote them down. I'm glad that book exists.  I wonder sometimes what would have happened to me if I didn't write it. The thought scares me, I know that.  The chief therapeutic value of writing is not catharsis.  In fact, writing trauma can be re-traumatizing. And it probably shouldn't be done outside of therapeutic psychiatric care.  When I wrote that book, I was going through two counseling sessions a week.  The therapeutic benefit of writing is in mastery and control--which happens mostly in the revision stage.  What's empowering and often freeing about the writing process is in taking something from your life that has control of you and turning it into art--shaping it, turning it into something you have agency over. I wrote Resisting Elegy to save my life and to take control of it. 

Q: You’ve inspired many, and I know many of your past colleagues and students hold in you in high respects. I want to ask how your own work inspires your teachings? Do you have trouble balancing being a teacher and a poet? 

I'd say my teaching and writing go hand in hand.  They are not separate things. My students continually delight and challenge me.  I try to meet them where they are, figure out what they do well, and capitalize on it--helping them to do more of that, to develop that.  Along the way, I try to add a few skills to their toolbox while encouraging them to risk, experiment, play, and discover.  That process reminds me to do the same things. Generally when my teaching is going well, so is my writing. There are times when I have to grade or prep a lesson when I'd rather be writing.  But that's simply the price of what I do.  I can't imagine not being a teacher.  I hope to do it as long as I'm able. 

​

​