10 Questions for Joshua Michael Stewart
- By Abby MacGregor
Today a man pressed a pillow
over his 7-month-old son’s face,
then strangled the baby’s mother
(who was also his 16-year-old daughter),
called his mother, confessed,
then drove out into the woods and shot
himself in the cab of his pickup.
—from “Quills”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of my first poems was called “When the Surrealist No Longer Remembers His Dreams.” It’s one of those what-would-you-tell-your-younger-self kind of poems, except the younger self that was being addressed wasn’t me as a kid, but my younger self as a zombie, because I felt that kid I once was died a long time ago. I was trying to be mysterious and, in my ill attempt at doing so, the title has nothing to do with the poem. It’s still one of the poems that means the most to me, but I think because the emotion in it is so raw and personal, it’s not a poem other can connect with, thus, it lives somewhere in the desk drawer.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I came to poetry via jazz. My best friend was going to UMass Lowell, and of course he caught the Kerouac bug which he then passed on to me. Then I started reading Ginsburg and other Beat poets which allowed me to discover Langston Hughes, then William Matthews, and then stumbled across Charles Simic. That lead naturally to James Tate and Russell Edson. My first poems were very surrealistic and I have a sweet spot for the prose poem though I seldom write them. Lately, I’ve been re-reading Whitman, and I’m at a stage in my life where I really enjoy the work of Mary Oliver. I couldn’t get into her poems when I was younger, but now I can’t get enough. I’ve always had a deep admiration for the work of Gary Young and Jane Kenyon.
What other professions have you worked in?
I’ve been a counselor working with individuals with mental disabilities for the past twenty years. You might guess that my professional life would have influenced my creative life, and it has in a poem or two, but for the most part I’ve kept the two aspects of my life separate. There are people I’ve worked with for most of those twenty years who don’t know I’m a writer. If there is any influence from Wallace Stevens in my work, there it is.
What did you want to be when you were young?
I’ve wanted to be a writer in one form or another since the age of six. I think I originally wanted to write for TV, but that seemed too impossible, so I thought I’d write plays and force all my friends to act in them. I quickly realized my friends couldn’t act and didn’t want to be bossed around by me, so I decided to become a puppeteer, that way I could write and perform my plays without depending on others. When I was a teenager, I became interested in music, particularly jazz, and wanted to become a jazz musician, but even then, what really drew me to music was composing, not running around on stage.
What inspired you to write this piece?
Spotting my first porcupine and a news report I heard about earlier that morning, the world at its most beautiful and at its ugliest coming together. I think we all want to be able to see all the good in the world, but the horrible stuff, especially lately, keeps getting in the way. When I wrote my first draft, I had these two images floating around each other, but nothing really connecting them, and then someone who a respect greatly as a person and as a fellow poet told me that I needed to bring them together, and do so through me, I needed to dig deeper, I need to say why I wanted to speak about these two things. But what the hell did I know about killing somebody, or anything? How would I connect these two things through myself? Then I thought about the summer I came out to Massachusetts from Ohio to live with my father, and the worms. I won’t go as far as to say I’m a Buddhist, but I have been studying it for the last few years and I think that has seeped into my writing, especially the last stanza of the poem.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
My hometown of Sandusky, Ohio, the Appalachian hills of Kentucky and southern Ohio, but mostly The Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts where I’ve called home since 1996. The Quabbin Reservoir played a major role in my poem “Quills”—it’s where I saw the porcupine.
Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
I love jazz, as I mentioned, but also the blues, especially country blues. I’ve often said that poetry is my wife and music is my mistress. Both are with me at all times no matter what I’m doing. As far as I’m concerned, there is no separation between the two and life itself. With that said, I can’t listen to music and write at the same time. Silence also has its place. After all, it’s the spaces between the notes that gives music its shape.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
Not really, at least nothing exciting. I consider myself pretty disciplined. I try to write at least three hours a day every day. It can be at home, or out in the woods, in a library, or café. The one thing is that the poem always has to start in a notebook with a specific pen, never on the computer. I need to feel it in my fingers and all the way up my arm. I do edit and revise on the computer.
If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I play a variety of musical instruments, banjo, bass, and ukulele. I do so mostly for my own enjoyment. For years I played in a jazz quintet and had plans to be a professional jazz musician. When I first entered UMass Amherst, I wanted to be a jazz composer/big band arranger. I still love arranging and composing and will now and then make recordings in my home studio, and share those recordings with friends on Facebook, but that’s about it. I never liked playing live. I always found it to be more of a headache than fun. The last gig I played was back in 1995.
What are you working on currently?
Just poems. My first collection, Break Every String, was published in 2016 by Hedgerow Books. So since then I’ve just been writing as many poems as I can to gather material for the next book, but it hasn’t taken shape yet. However, it seems that there will be many homages and odes.
JOSHUA MICHAEL STEWART has had poems published in the Massachusetts Review, Rattle, The Good Men Project, Salamander, Brilliant Corners, and many others. His first full-length collection of poems, Break Every String, was published by Hedgerow Books in 2016.
