Interviews
10 Questions for Jamaica Baldwin
- By Edward Clifford
Begin with a plant
then an animal. Move
your way up the chain of need
till you’ve learned enough
about sacrifice and scooping poop
to join the ranks of mother.
—from "Naturally," Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Let’s see. There is one that has always stuck with me. It was about a woman driving to Canada. It was about the threat of violence that women endure and about the weight of beauty ideals, I think. It was a delightfully strange poem. One line went something like, “If my ear was closer to the ground, perhaps I could hear the conversations between the ants. . . But I have killed many of them in my lifetime and nothing is scarier than...