Poet Interview: Stephanie Johnson
Stephanie Johnson’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Witty Partition, Sink Hollow, Forum Literary Magazine, and others. She is an Associate Editor at Novel Slices, a new literary magazine based solely on novel excerpts, and has spent most of her adult life teaching English literature, ESL and Spanish in several countries around the world. Her writing often focuses on the slightly uncomfortable space of the expatriation/ repatriation experience. She is currently based in Sydney, Australia.
When did you become a poet? How did you know it was the right medium for your stories?
I stumbled into a poetry writing class at City College of San Francisco, and it turned out that I enjoyed the creative process. I never in a million years thought that I would become an actual published poet, or even a reader of poetry. It was a form of storytelling that had eluded my understanding all my life. My accidental registration for that first class was like waking up and being able to see colours that I hadn’t known existed. I enjoy the compactness of poetry, it’s like a pocket-sized story that doesn’t require internet or even electricity (during daylight hours!). It is, instead, something that you can go back and visit again and again, and you can have a different experience upon each reading, which adds to the excitement. Sometimes when people respond to my poems they understand exactly what I was trying to express, and sometimes people have had reactions that I haven’t considered, which is just as amazing to me.
What inspires you to write, and why?
I feel like poems are little puzzles of meaning, and I enjoy creating and “solving” them. Sometimes I have an actual story to tell, and sometimes I observe something incredible or frustrating or funny in the world around me, and trying to package up an observation into words that not only convey a message but that also have some amount of artistic merit is a challenge that I enjoy.
Who are some of your literary or artistic crushes or influences, and why?
With both my music and my poetry, I am pretty eclectic; I tend to like lots of individual poems by different people. However, I must call out Warsan Shire, who speaks of the immigrant experience from the heart, and Brian Bilston, who makes me laugh and who makes great social commentary at the same time.
What are some common themes you see in your own work, and can you tell us why these themes keep reappearing?
Immigration/ Expatriation/ Repatriation: I have been living outside the US as long as I have lived inside it. Living outside your native culture changes you, and I feel impelled to write about these changes. Australian author Chris Raja emphasizes in his interviews how important it is to live abroad, and I agree with him. By being outside your native culture, you quickly observe how arbitrary your “norms” are, and you also notice how many other ways of living there are out there. This sets a person up for a unique observational experience that I have tried to apply both to myself and to the people and the world around me.
Do you feel that sharing your poetry is a vulnerable process, and why do you feel that way?
Nah, if people pick up a poetry book, they are already halfway invested in what I have to say, I just have to meet them the extra distance. I feel like fiction is probably a little different.
Do you take poetry classes or read books on poetry, and why (not)?
I think poetry classes are great, I really needed to know what the “rules” were before I got started. Yes, I know, so many people say there are no rules, or that rules were made to be broken, but I found it really helpful to learn what they were, so I could decide if I wanted to break them or not. So yes, I take classes whenever I can. I am currently taking a class here in Sydney about how to write haiku while doing nature walks, which are called Ginko. I was taught (as so many of us probably were) that you could write about anything as long as you observed the rule of three lines, with 5 syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line. I was quite surprised to learn that many haiku written in English don’t observe this rule at all, and that there are so many other things that are more important. I look forward to adding to my learning as the years go on.
Do family and "real life" friends read your work, and how does that make you feel?
I don’t think my family read my poems, I am always flattered to get a bit of feedback from friends if they have read something of mine. I seem to get the biggest response from other friends who are immigrants/ expats/ repats because there’s not too many people exploring this theme, and it really seems to resonate with those of us who are living this way.
What does "good poetry" mean to you, and why?
Anything that gives you goosebumps, an “aha moment” or provokes any kind of emotional reaction. Personally, I like stuff that makes me laugh. I find when I write that I am not very funny (at least not intentionally) but I attempt to reach that moment of recognition with my reader that I refer to.
What is your revision process like?
My poems tend to come into the world fairly fully formed, the bulk of my revision tends to be grammar, punctuation, lineation etc. If I don’t like the content of the poem, I don’t tend to send it out into the world. I have notebooks full of material that I sometimes go back to in order to scavenge a line or two, and they spring forth like Athena, fully formed from my old, abandoned poem.
What is your writing process like?
Sometimes I rely on prompts or exercises from classes I have taken, and sometimes I hear a word or phrase that hangs around in my brain until I start writing around it. The poem seems to write itself at that point, but I usually let it sit for a period of time, which could be a few weeks to a year. Then when I come back, a few things jump out at me that cry out for refurbishing, and then the poem feels ready to be sent off. The poems that I like best often are inspired by something I have overheard or something that I suddenly remember out of the blue one day. Once it pops into my head, I need to write it down, or I forget it. I have lost more poems than I have written due to being in the dentist’s chair or in that last second before sleep, and I’d love to hear if anyone has a solution for this!