Author: Erin Peters

Poetry Blog: Jaclyn Youhana Garver

Erin Peters

Following is an interview conducted by Superstition Review‘s Poetry Editor, Erin Peters.

Jaclyn Youhana Garver is a freelance writer in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She writes fiction and poetry, and she has been featured in Narrow Road, Poets Reading the News, and Prometheus Dreaming (forthcoming). Her work has also been chosen by the Wick Poetry Center as a Traveling Stanza selection.  

Jaclyn’s Poem:

A COLLEGE GIRL MAKES WARDROBE DECISIONS BASED ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A RANDOM TSA SCREENING

    1964

White kid gloves / cinched waist / her perched hat the 
precise plum match to her two-piece suit / a corsage

    (seriously, a goddamned corsage)

/ a Cherries in the Snow pout / a blushing visage 
coral or rose / a fur, perhaps, in beaver or lamb.

    2004

Pajama pants, peppered in cartoons / flip flops 
with jewels that stud the thongs / pigtails 

    (seriously, goddamn pigtails)

/ a gray T-shirt that boasts, 
“Journalists do it daily.”

Don’t look at me, Terry, standing in line. I know 
you’ve a quota to meet, so many at random

searches to complete to assure you don’t permit on 
the plane any drugs, bombs or hydrogen dioxide. 

    (Water, Terry, I’m talking about water.)

It doesn’t matter, though. You’ll search me nonetheless, 
just like that agent last time and the agent who’ll be next.

And anyways, I’ll stick with PJs and pigtails, my sandwich 
board to shout I’m threatening like sidewalk chalk, an eagle 

scout, freckles, and winks, but apparently, the extra melanin 
in my skin, a gift from my father, means you must pull me

from the line, away from my friends—none of whom you
also select at random, I see, goddamn it, Terry—so you 

run the backs of your Caucasian hands along my Persian arms, 
my cartooned inseam, my Assyrian torso. Then you make me move 

my Iranian pigtails from my Middle Eastern shoulders. 
You look so bored, Terry, and I wonder if you notice: 

We’re quite the chatty portrait of our country tis of thee.

Interview With Jaclyn:

The setting of your poem is very specific and relatable for people who have travelled in American airports. What inspired you to write about the experience of a TSA screening?

This summer, I found a photo of myself at an airport in 2004, with two college friends, on the way to a Society of Professional Journalists conference in NYC. For the three or so years after 9/11, I began to be “randomly” searched on every flight I boarded. Seriously. Every flight. I thought it would help if I dressed in an unintimidating way. I remember I did this each time I flew, but it was wild to see photographic proof, especially compared to two other young adults who were dressed in, you know, normal airplane-appropriate clothing. Finding the photo, seeing how 21-year-old me felt like she had to dress, seriously pissed me off.

You’ve spent an impressive amount of time working for daily newspapers during your professional career. How do you feel this writing experience impacted you creatively? 

I can’t even imagine writing creatively without my journalism experience. Writing for a daily newspaper made me completely deadline-focused. If a journalist doesn’t finish her story on time, there could an actual hole in the newspaper. Plus, the piece needs to be done well and accurately, often in hours or less—journalists don’t have days and days to perfect a piece of writing. 

I adore the saying Done is better than perfect. Writers, especially creative writers, can get stuck in this I can’t show this to anyone because it’s not perfect hole. Then nothing ever gets finished. Writing for a daily newspaper was a wonderful way to keep from being too precious about my words. What I write matters, and it’s important to me, but once I turn in a story, it’s on to the next thing.

Writing for daily publication also gave me tough skin. I adore editor feedback and love seeing how subsequent drafts improve. Similarly, I also trust my gut. Writing is a wonderful mixture of both subjectivity and objectivity, even in poetry. My newspaper experience gave me an almost scientific approach to being creative.

What audience do you hope to reach through your poetry? Why is this audience meaningful to you?

As a reader, the best feeling is “Oh my goodness, you too? I thought I was the only one.” As a writer, then, that’s who I want to reach—anyone who has felt like me, to help them feel less alone. Strangely, the opposite is true, too: It’s such a rush to be told “I never thought of it in that way before.” 

Those audiences are meaningful to me because it means we have a shared experience. Especially in 2020, feeling a connection—to anyone, even some writer you’ve never met—is vital. 

How has the global pandemic impacted your creative process?

The pandemic hasn’t impacted my creative process so much as it’s impacted my creative output. I’ve written poetry since I was about 12 and I had a writing minor in college, so writing creatively has always been a part of my life. However, the pandemic made me itch to do more. I answered that by enrolling in a poetry class. The instructor helped me figure out what was missing from my poetry unlike any writing teacher I’ve had before. After the class, I asked where she was teaching next, and I signed up for that class, too. She helped me see where and how my work could be improved, which simultaneously showed me how to edit my own work.

This year has been hard, and there are a few things I can point to and say “That, specifically, made things a little easier.” Writing poetry is one of those things.

What is the most important piece of advice you have received as a writer?

In college, a journalism professor taught us to let the other person have the last say. When someone reaches out to a reporter to complain about something they wrote, the caller or emailer doesn’t actually care what the writer has to say about it. They just want to be heard (and maybe to be nasty). That knowledge, that someone who has something mean to say isn’t looking for a response, is incredibly freeing.

What are your upcoming projects?

I have a number of manuscripts in the works, but two are currently taking up the most of my time—a poetry book and a women’s fiction novel, which I will be pitching to agents early next year. I also write horror short stories. I love bouncing between genres and working on projects of varying lengths.

Poetry Blog: Paul Chuks

Erin Peters

Following is an interview conducted by Superstition Review‘s Poetry Editor, Erin Peters.

Paul Chuks is an emerging Nigerian poet, writer and song writer, studying philosophy at the University of Benin, Edo state, Nigeria. He has appeared or is forthcoming in StreetCake Magazine, Kalahari Review, Neurological Magazine, Afritondo, The Remnant Archive and was recently shortlisted for The 49th Street‘s top ten poets in Nigeria. When Paul is not reading or writing songs, he’s critiquing the hiphop game or mimicking Michael Jackson.

Paul’s Poem:

To the Man Standing at the corner lifting the placard that said “All Lives Matter” as a protest against Black Lives Matter.

Your ancestors have apparelled in seem like bruteness in the past

But in this one, you are standing in a corner watching black lives evanesce like lights beholding a murky sky. 

                 You think about justice, but your soul is

                 a leaky faucet, expelling your empathy 

                 into an abysmal pit.

My ancestors’ tears are the ghosts of this poem/appearing as metaphors/telling you to drop that placard, go home & shut your mouth like Trump’s border[s]/because you are slow-dancing with the injustice of their history. 

                  You are sipping our pain into a black-

                  hole/& our cries go out like a bird’s 

                  tweet against a horrendous wind-

                  storm. 

This poem is a scar tissue/like the body of a slave/telling the world/that blacks wouldn’t clamour for their lives to matter if there was fairness/as the world wouldn’t know dryness if there were no tongues.

Interview with Paul:

What motivated you to write your poem as a direct address? What impact do you hope this form will have on your audience?

I wrote the poem as a direct address, because many have allowed themselves to elude the important message of the movement, that is: take black lives seriously as you take others. When George Floyd’s sad situation happened, & the BLM movement kicked off to an almost untamable situation, many on the internet, sewed threads that ran counter to the BLM movement, with the prevalent theme: ALL LIVES MATTER. It irked me because they have not recognized that ALL LIVES MATTER remains a superstition, if a black boy can be shot at, because he reached into his car for his hair-brush, but the officer mistook it for a gun. And the jury acquits the officer on account that he tried to clamp down a druggie. ALL LIVES MATTER is a remark of the ignorant, or the devil, who enjoys the maltreatment of black people.

What has inspired you to write about the Black Lives Matter movement?

I think my biggest inspiration to write about the BLM movement, is the fact that I’m black. I have an ambition of taking a Masters course in America. The moment I get there, I’ll wear the profile of a black boy. I also write about them, because I can feel & perceive their pain. The Injustice makes all of us bleed from sealed places. 

What audience do you hope to reach through your poetry? Why is this audience meaningful to you?

My poetry is intended to be variegated with everything possible to make a subject of, so i want the whole world to listen to me, while i play the game of painting pictures with words & inkling of my feeling(s). B: the audience is meaningful because without them, my tag as a poet is a facade. My pets can’t read, neither can the birds that perch on the trees behind my house.

How has the global pandemic impacted your creative process?

The pandemic has not affected my creative process, so far. Rather, my academic life. It has cancelled an academic year, pushing my future farther..all in this transient life. 

What is the most important piece of advice you have received as a writer?

My best advice as a writer was gotten from another awesome writer I admire: Nome Patrick. He said: Paul, read more than you write. It was an interesting discussion on the essence of reading and the miracle it does to one’s repertoire. It has worked so far.

What are your upcoming projects?

More & more poetry. In fact, a chapbook is in sight. But for now, more poetry.

Poetry Blog: Usha Kishore

Erin Peters

Following is an interview conducted by Superstition Review‘s Poetry Editor, Erin Peters.

Usha Kishore is an Indian born British poet, and translator, resident on the Isle of Man, UK. Usha is currently a Research Scholar in Postcolonial Poetry at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland. She has been anthologised by Macmillan, Hodder Wayland, Oxford University Press and Harper Collins among others. Her work has appeared in international journals like Asia Literary Review, Index on Censorship, Indian Literature, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry Salzburg Review, South Asian Ensemble, South Asian Review, The Stinging Fly and The Warwick Review.

Usha’s poetry has won prizes in UK competitions, is part of international projects and features in the British Primary and Secondary syllabi and Indian Middle School and Undergraduate syllabi. Winner of an Isle of Man Arts Council Award and two Culture Vannin Awards, she is the author of three poetry collections and a book of translation from the Sanskrit. Her latest collection, ‘Immigrant’ was published in 2018 by Eyewear Publishing London.

“Drug Mule” by Usha Kishore:

She embroiders time under an alien sky:

chikankari on handkerchiefs, kutchi work

on cushion covers, kashmiri couching

on bedspreads.  Draping a pristine white sari

over her wasted life, she clicks crochet needles

in the hollowed air of betrayal.  Her seventy-five

years, spanning the length and breadth of India,

now cocooned in an English prison. 

Here, she is everybody’s Ma – mother,

the word means the same in any culture. 

She does not want to learn the sahib’s tongue;

she is content to live in the silence

of another language that mutters apologies   

for her predicament.  She has no visitors. 

she is a drug mule, carrying a toxic crime;

a contraband for an air-ticket to see

her beloved grandchild.  She shows me

smudged photographs of her great grandchildren

she has never seen, chanting their names

as if in a litany.  Her frail voice wraps me

in dialect Hindi, as she searches my face

with faded kajal eyes.  It is all His will,

she points to some sovereign of the skies,

summoned in reluctant cloud that peers

through the watery eye of the ceiling.

She does not dream of redemption, she does

not envisage freedom.  She has nowhere to go. 

Every morning, she mumbles a wounded prayer

to the miniature Ganesh, poised on a makeshift altar

in the corner of her cell.  She measures her days

with skeins of crewel threads, snipping them

at pre-destined length, with tiny sewing scissors. 

She sieves afternoon light in grams of flour,

translating it into her recipe of onion bhajis. 

Counting the stars trapped in a weathered rosary

of tulsi beads, she falls back into her reverie:

cross stitch, chain stitch, smyrna, herringbone;                              

each stitch knotting an unheaved sigh. 

Interview With Usha:

In a previous exchange, you had mentioned that this piece is particularly close to your heart. Could you speak more to that statement? 

‘Drug Mule’ is based on drug trafficking and the use of women as drug carriers.  The poem is close to my heart as I am committed to gender equality and I feel that the vulnerability of women is being exploited.  According to BBC statistics (2005), 18% of the UK’s female prison population are foreigners and are imprisoned for drug related offences. It is also a painful fact that older South Asian women are being used as drug mules. It makes you wonder if these women are criminals or victims.  

How do you incorporate social justice in your poetry?

Many of my poems are themed on social justice, especially on race and gender equality.  As a member of an ethnic minority community in the UK, I am very much aware of differences and my poems highlight the need for more integration.    My third collection, Immigrant (Eyewear Publishing, London, 2018) highlights the politics of being an immigrant professional interacting with discrimination and reflects on the binary perspectives of assimilation and marginalisation. 

My second collection, Night Sky Between the Stars (Cyberwit India, 2015) reflects my pre-occupation with Indian womanhood and articulates concerns of a marginalised gendered identity.  The poems in this collection draw heavily from Indian myth, rendering voices to female mythical characters and projects Indian womanhood in a different light.  

You have written three books of poetry as well as a book of translation from Sanskrit. How has your work in translation influenced your more personal writing projects?

My translations from the Sanskrit certainly influence my poetry in the form of thematic concerns and uniquely Sanskrit literary devices such as vyatireka (comparative excellence), dṛṣṭānta (a figurative device that can be described as ‘simile-like’ or parallel) and vakrokti (creative twist). 

How has the global pandemic affected your writing process?  

I am an English teacher in a secondary school on the Isle of Man, where thankfully, the effect of the pandemic has not been that severe.  So, the schools are open and functioning (we were only briefly shut in Spring. We re-opened in Summer).  I usually have to find time to write, amidst a busy schedule.  I am currently a PhD scholar in Postcolonial Poetry with Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland.  So, in the last two years, my writing has been put on the back burner. 

The global pandemic has brought a creative surge, especially in poetry, signifying that the human spirit rises above global challenges.  At this difficult time, a considerable number of poetry anthologies, themed issues of journals and discussions on poetry have all come to the forefront.   Poetry is a healer!  

Some editor friends have been keeping my work alive by soliciting submissions and giving me opportunities to participate in poetry webinars.  Coincidentally, a friend of mine alerted me to your call for submissions on Social Justice.  My writing has certainly picked up again.  

What is the most important piece of advice you have received as a writer?

 It’s not over yet!

It was a real struggle to get my first collection into print, despite being published internationally.  I was about to quit.   The above advice, ‘it’s not over yet,’ was given to me by the founder-member of the Isle of Man Poetry Society, the late Jeff Garland.  Soon after this conversation with Jeff, I received Arts Council and Culture Vannin grants and my first collection, On Manannan’s Isle was published on island in 2014.  I have not looked back hence.  

What are your upcoming projects?

As mentioned earlier, currently my research takes priority.   

However – Translation wise, I have completed the translation of the Sanskrit epyllion, Ṛtusaṃhāram by the legendary Kalidasa.  I am seeking a publisher for this project.  

I am also translating Jaisankar Prasad’s Hindi epic, Kamayani (1936) that falls under the Chhayavaadi school of Hindi Poetry.  Chhayavaad has been interpreted as Neo-Romanticism, I would call it Romantic mysticism.  Kamayani addresses human emotions in pathetic fallacy, personification, and mythological metaphors.  This has been a slow process as I would like to do justice to this epic, amidst time constraints.   I have found this translation extremely challenging, but highly inspiring and enlightening. 

The poetry goes on! I don’t think I am ready for another collection yet. But recently, I have started submitting to journals like Superstition Review!  Thank you very much for accepting my work for your blog on social justice.