I had the honor of reading with January Gill O’Neil at Brookline Booksmith’s in Brookline, Mass. back in March 2010 when her first book had just been published. What a thrill it was! Afterwards we sat at a table with friends, signing books and chatting. Like me, the audience was profoundly moved by January’s poems and performance, and everyone was singing her praises. Now, just in time for Christmas shopping, her third book, Rewilding is available from CavanKerry Press. All three books of her books are profoundly autobiographical and manage to pull me into her world with such grace and ease, I want to keep reading and rereading her work. Needless to say, I was delighted when she agreed to do an interview.
NA: Do you ever feel self-conscious, or exposed, when writing your deeply personal poems?
JGO: No. As I tell my students, you can write about anything—but you don’t have to publish everything you write. I’m a pretty up-front person. I don’t have anything to hide. That being said, I wouldn’t publish anything that might embarrass my family. But then again, I have a potty-training poem that gets eye rolls from the kids so there’s that.
NA: I had a poetry professor once who hated what he called “dishonesty in poetry.” He hated it when poets use the first person, and then describe a life they have not lived--he said they were lying to their readers. But it seems to me that poets are more interested in writing a beautiful poem than telling the truth. In other words, given the choice between truth and beauty, most choose beauty. Yet you seem to be able to do both. Do you ever feel that you have to make that choice? What do you think about “lying” in poetry?
JGO: No, I don’t think I have to make a choice; however, little lies are fine. I mean, at some point the poet is working in service to the poem. In order to do that, a writer has to let go of the origin story in favor of art. So, if the setting of a poem takes place during the day but works better for the narrative if it takes place at dusk, I’m OK with that.
NA: I love the poem, “On Being Told I Look Like FLOTUS, New Years Party 2014.” I’d love you to post it below and say a few words about it?
JGO: People say I bear a resemblance to our first lady. (I’m flattered but I don’t see it.) But on this occasion, it struck a nerve and I needed to respond poetically. In a strange twist of fate, I went to the White House in 2016 for a celebration of National Youth Poetry and while I did not meet Michelle Obama, I came awfully close. Rumor has it that my poem made the rounds that summer at the White House.
On Being Told I Look Like FLOTUS, New Year’s Eve Party 2014
Deep in my biceps I know it’s a complement, just as
I know this is an all-black-people-look-alike moment.
So I use the minimal amount of muscles to crack a smile.
All night he catches sight of me, or someone like me, standing
next to deconstructed cannoli and empty bottles of Prosecco.
And in that moment, I understand how little right any of us have
to be whoever we are—the constant tension
of making our way in this world on hope and change.
You’re working your muscles to the point of failure,
Michelle Obama once said about her workout regimen,
but she knows we wear our history in our darkness, in our patience.
A compliment is a complement—this I know, just as the clock
will always strike midnight and history repeats. This is how
I can wake up the next morning and love the world again.
NA: I admire the arc of this book, how it moves from a broken place to one of union, from divorce to “rewilding.” At what point did you see this arc forming?
JGO: Honestly, I can’t remember. Writing is so fluid that I just think of poems as poems, rather that arcs or themes. But yes, at some point the poems were living together in sin and I needed to make an honest manuscript out of them.
NA: When did you know the title of the book?
JGO: I saw a TED Talk by George Monbiot, who talked about the idea of rewilding the world as a way of saving the planet. I guess I liked the idea of saving myself.
NA: I also enjoyed the poem, “On Seeing Gwendolyn Brooks after Her Reading at LIU Brooklyn, February 1996.” Is Brooks a major influence? If you had to pick one poet, just one, and say he or she has influenced you the most, would it be Gwendolyn Brooks?
JGO: Ms. Brooks is one of my influences. Meeting her was an experience I’ll never forget. But if I had to pick just one—which is hard because I’ve had many teachers and mentors—it would be Sharon Olds. I’ve also been influenced by Toi Derricotte, Lucille Clifton, Phil Levine, Galway Kinnell, and Marie Howe.
NA: And what if you had pick one poem that has influenced you the most?
JGO: Tough. I would say “The Victims” by Sharon Olds—not sure why. There’s a fierceness in her work that I admire, and that poem encapsulates it for me.
But I also come back to “Gratitude” by Cornelius Eady, “Won’t You Celebrate with Me” by Lucille Clifton, “Keeping Things Whole” by Mark Strand. Those poems are more like mantras for me.
NA: Your children play a prominent role in your poetry. Do they read your poems? Offer opinions? Do you worry about what they will think?
JGO: They are teens—they don’t want to read anything I give them, much less my work! I take them to readings that I think they will enjoy, a few times a year. At my last reading I read a poem about their father that I felt might be sensitive to them. So we talked about it before the reading, and they were fine with it.
As I mentioned earlier, I would never publish anything that would embarrass my family, but I feel I have lots of room to write the truths that need to be told.
NA: You are Conference Chair at the Portland AWP in March? You know how I shudder at the mere mention of the conference. Tell me one reason I should go this year.
JGO: Me!
And, our lineup this year us fabulous! The AWP conference staff—the entire AWP staff—has put together an amazing lineup including Colson Whitehead, Nikky Finney, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tayari Jones, Kaveh Akbar, and Cheryl Strayed. Yes, the conference is big, but I’ve learned over the years how to manage the experience, so I don’t get overwhelmed. I meet so many writers at the conference doing innovative, creative work. But I also meet MFA students who are just getting a glimpse of the literary world and how vast it can be, as well as professors who are opening doors for the next generation. AWP has been with me my whole literary career, so I’m happy serve the organization in any capacity I can.
NA: You teach, write, blog, run workshops, run the Mass. Festival and AWP, and you are a single and rewilding mom. Do you sleep?
JGO: No.
But soon I’ll be stepping down from running the Mass Poetry Festival. It’s time. And I need to plan for our big move from Massachusetts to Mississippi! I was awarded the John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford for 2018-2019. The kids and I are moving to Ole Miss!
NA: I’d love to close with a poem, “Tinder,” another favorite of mine.
Admittedly, I wrote the poem “Tinder” before the dating site Tinder was a thing. Still, it works.
TINDER
Admit it: you miss the sex.
That part of you closed up shop,
hung a Gone Fishing sign
on the marriage after it ended.
It is an unattended campfire
burning itself to the embers
on a cold January night, bits of ash
floating into the air and disappearing.
How can you not think of the campers
around the fire ring, leaning in to warm
their hands over hot tinder? Small kindling
laid over tops of logs. Like a survivalist
you have learned to live on less.
It burns from the inside out
from a place you had forgotten,
where the hot coals reveal what you really are:
awake, ablaze, afraid, alone. A good camper
never leaves a campfire unattended.
You know you are more like the alders
bordering the encampment,
more like a twig among the thin,
brittle branches of leafless trees,
more like the pleasure of the tongue,
the lift and compression of breasts held
closer to the glowing red heart,
closer and closer to earth and below
to the in-door turned out-door
after baby after baby. Oh, baby—
anything can be ignited by a match.
January Gill O’Neil is the author ofRewilding (fall 2018), Misery Islands (2014),and Underlife (2009), published by CavanKerry Press. She is an assistant professor of English at Salem State University, and a board of trustees member with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and Montserrat College of Art. From 2012-2018, she served as executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. A Cave Canem fellow, January’s poems and articles have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares, among others. In 2018, January was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and was named the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence for 2019-2020 at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She lives with her two children in Beverly, Massachusetts.
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