I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the phenomenal Jillian M. Phillips about her latest publication success, her poetry collection Pretty the Ugly.
Michael William Prince: First off, congratulations on this wonderful accomplishment. The book is fantastic. You should be very proud of yourself.
Jillian M. Phillips: Thank you. And thank you for your continued support of my work through Cellar Door.
MWP: It is always our pleasure. Could you speak to us on how
you chose “Pretty the Ugly” as the title poem? Do you feel like it
properly encapsulates the entire collection or was there another idea
behind the choice?
JMP: Honestly, when I wrote
that poem, I was really frustrated with the process of accessing the ghosts and
trying to use them as fuel for my poetry. It was my attempt to suss out how it
works and why it was such an attractive ideal to utilize the dark places and
bring light into them. When I finished it, I realized that it described
everything I was trying to accomplish with the other poems in the collection.
Every poem was my way of trying to deal with what I find unattractive in
myself, the world, and (yes) other people. I was trying to take “ugly” or
“dark” things and make them into “art.” I was, quite literally, trying to
pretty them up.
MWP: Excellent. Could you clarify the part of the process called "accessing the ghosts"? It sounds fascinating and I believe all of us can be inspired by each other's processes.
JMP: It is basically the process of figuring out what/who haunts me and creating a dialogue with them in my head. What do I want to say to them? Why are they still there? How to address the void without falling into one.
MWP: Really an excellent way to go about it! What amount of time do these poems span in your body of work?
JMP: These poems took a
little over a year to write. I did an undergraduate project in the Fall of 2011
in which I interviewed women of my university and wrote poems based on their
experiences, creating a poetic narrative for them.(A few of those poems are in
the final section of the collection.) I became very inspired by their stories
and realized that I really wanted to explore more feminist topics in my poetry,
as well as address my own stories, the ones I had trouble making sense of.
While interviewing those women, I was taken with their willingness to be so
candid. I wanted to be like that in my poetry.
MWP: Well I feel like you've accomplished it beautifully.Your
poems speak volumes about the human experience. Do you see poetry as more a
tool for self discovery? As an expression of things you have discovered in
other ways? Both? What else?
JMP: I think it can be
both. I see poetry as a way to comment on your view of the world. There is a
lot of emphasis on the separation between “the poet” and “the speaker” but I
think that, at the heart of every poem, the poet is always speaking. That isn’t
to say the poet is always the character in the poem. I’ve written poems in
which I take on the persona of someone else, but I am always the one choosing
the words, the diction, the structure of the poem. No matter who the speaker
is, the poet still controls what they are saying.
That said, I think
poetry is a fantastic vehicle for self-discovery. For instance, many of the
poems in Pretty the Ugly were my way
of figuring out how I felt about certain things in my past. I knew there were
things that haunted me, but it was only in writing about them was I able to
figure out what it was about them that made them stay. Nevertheless, I sometimes
I had to pretend to be someone else, use a different speaker, in order to say
what I needed to. I was basically playing Cyrano de Bergerac with my poetry:
“Here’s what I need to say, but I need you to say it for me.”
MWP: I know
that you are also a mother, an academic, and an actress among other
things. What is your strategy for establishing and/or stealing time to
write?
JMP: I really want to be
one of those writers that wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and writes for two hours before
getting everyone off to school, or shuts off all communication after dinner to
cloister themselves in their office until they’ve written a certain amount of
pages. I’ve tried. It’s just not me. To be honest, there are months when I
can’t write anything beyond a grocery list. I write in fits and starts, I
always have. I have somehow developed the ability to become practically deaf
when I need to write something. I can be in my office, a crowded cafe, even the
McDonald’s Playland. If I have a poem in my head, I can write no matter what’s
going on. For me, it really isn’t a matter of finding time to write, just
finding something that needs to be written. Even if I was one those structured
writers, and believe me I have tried, those hours at the desk with nothing
coming out would be torture. This way, I can torture myself, but get other
things done in the meantime.
MWP: Who
are your influences? Are there both classic as well as contemporary poets
that you call upon? Inspirations from other mediums?
JMP: I’ve always been
inspired by music, movies, and art. To be honest, I started seriously writing
poetry when I was about 14 because of John Singleton’s film, Poetic
Justice. In the summers, I would watch it
every night and just write the whole time. Maya Angelou is the poet that taught
me that poetry doesn't have to rhyme, and she did it with that movie. I also
did a lot of writing to Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, etc. I still do sometimes. I
also love finding paintings that make me stare at them, like “Into the World
There Came a Soul Called Ida” by Ivan Albright. I saw it at the Art Institute
of Chicago and it haunted me for a year and a half before I finally sat down to
write about it. I love that.
Of course, I always to
turn most often to poets, sometimes for education, other times for inspiration,
even for courage. As cliche as it may sound, I have to give props to Sylvia
Plath. If it weren't for her and Anne Sexton, I wouldn't have known how to even
approach some the poems in this collections. I think their tragedy and
popularity cause them to be underrated sometimes, but I know I can always turn
to them when I just need some angry-girl-time. I also turn to Adrienne Rich,
Jan Beatty, and, most recently, Matthea Harvey. I love how all of them access
their past in order to create art that speaks to me as a person as well as a
poet. Matthea Harvey, especially, has this insane ability to use structure and
ekphrasis simultaneously to create amazing personal poems. I can’t even explain
it. Her poem, “Triptych”, is the perfect example of what I’m trying to say.
I also love
anthologies, especially Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics, edited by Arielle Greenberg and Lara Glenum, and A Face to Meet
the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, edited by Stacy Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz. Both are incredibly
diverse and inspiring. Of course I love other poets. I have almost two hundred
poetry collections. I’ve only listed the ones I can think of right now.
MWP: Your
poetry flows so beautifully and the imagery is so stunning. What is the
best advice you can give to those intimidated by the art of poetry? In
both writing it and appreciating it?
JMP: I truly believe that
anyone interested in literature, anyone who enjoys reading, can find a poet
they love. It just takes time, patience, and a great library. Some people want
structure, classic lines, a bit of history (see Shakespeare, Wordsworth, pretty
much anyone pre-1900 in my opinion); others want poetry that’s easy to see in
the mind and doesn't over-complicate what it’s trying to say (Billy Collins,
Philip Levine, Robert Frost). Honestly, there’s poetry I don’t get either. I
was once reading a very well-regarded lit journal that contained a poem that
included the line, “My brain is like a microwave burrito,” and that was most
comprehensive part of the poem. The rest was beyond me. You just have to keep
trying until you find an aesthetic that you enjoy.
As for writing poetry,
you just have to keep trying. Find poets you like and try to emulate what it is
you love about them until you develop a confidence in your own voice. Don’t get
discouraged if you write a crappy poem. Everyone writes crappy poems. The only
reason you don’t think they do is that they don’t try to publish them. Want
proof you need to keep trying? The first serious poem I wrote was in wood shop.
It was called, “My Wooden Heart”. It was about my crush, and how “my wooden
heart/ has yet to start” because he didn’t like me back. Every line rhymed. It
was bad. I kept writing. I still have it. It’s awesome its catastrophic
awfulness.
MWP: Saving it for one of our legendary Sigma Tau Delta Bad Poetry contests perhaps? What are you working on now?
JMP: Last
year, there was a documentary on PBS about the Big Apple Circus. I was
incredibly inspired by it, so I’m working on a novel-in-verse about a boy who
uses the circus to re-figure his reality into something he can deal with. He
recasts the people in life as circus performers in order to deal with the bad
things in his life. It’s slow-going. It may end up that pet project that I come
to year after year, work on for a bit, and then step away. Other than that, I’m
just trying to make sure I write stuff in general, be it a book review, an
essay, whatever. I really want to be one of those people that maintains an
interesting blog. I’ve tried three times. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
In the meantime, I try to write things for other people’s blogs.
MWP: Well on behalf of one of those blogs, I thank you mightily. Is there anything else you would like to address for our readership?
JMP: Write what scares you,
bothers you, pisses you off, makes you happy. Write about anything that sticks
in your craw, haunts you, crawls into bed with you. And please keep reading
whatever speaks to you, sings to you. Keep exploring what’s hidden in the dark
corners or kept on the high shelves. And take a nap from time to time. These
are the things that keep me going.
MWP: Excellent. Thank you so much Jillian!
Jillian M. Phillips' collection, Pretty the Ugly is available now on Amazon. Make sure to get yourself a copy! We will also be having a contest right here on the blog in the next week to win a free copy so be sure and stay tuned!
