A Conversation with Julie Weiss

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A short introduction to Julie’s life and work in her own words:

I started writing poetry when I was around nine years old. My first poems were these microscopic four-line rhyming affairs, and even though I knew nothing of the world, or of literature, I dreamed of seeing my words in print. My “colorful beads strung on a thread” would become all the rage in writing circles, my single-digit self prophesied.

In 2001, however, I wandered off my chosen life path. After earning my BA in English and Creative Writing from San Jose State University and yet unpublished, I had planned to enroll in an MFA program, where, I thought, I would meet and learn from acclaimed authors, enhance my writing skills, and learn the tricks of the publishing trade. Instead, after traipsing around Europe for a month with a friend, I decided to put higher education on hold for a few years, because what better experience for a writer than living and working abroad?

I had intended to write my way through Spain, through its meandering, cobblestoned streets, its tapas bars, its inexhaustible nightlife, its shimmering beaches and snowcapped mountain tops, its sidewalk cafés, its jamón ibérico and tortilla española and paella valenciana, and then return to the states to continue my studies. But once I started teaching English, reveling in the fun and excitement of the European lifestyle, I remained in Spain indefinitely, creating a brand new existence for myself, which, unfortunately, didn´t include writing. I ended up in a creative rut for 17 years. That is, until 2018, when, inspired by my friend, fellow poet, and childhood next door neighbor, Karen Poppy, I returned to the passion that had, as long as I can remember, ignited my soul. I started writing poems again, submitting for the first time, and, to my shock and delight, receiving acceptance letters. Now that my words are out in the world, I feel I can truly call myself a poet.

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Mark Danowsky: In the Submission Guidelines for ONE ART, if you scroll down, you’ll see a list of Representative Poets and then another list of “Poets who exemplify the range of work ONE ART is seeking”—which is, essentially, a list of many of my favorite poets whose work I return to often. There are certain poets (Ada Limón, Mary Ann Samyn, and Adam Zagajewski) who have been especially helpful to me during periods of grief and I hold their work extra close. Some of my “taste” reflects that I listened to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac religiously for a number of impressionable years in my early 20s. This seems evident in the veins of work that flow through ONE ART. I’d like to add, because I simply cannot say it enough, that it was a dream of mine to have Ada become Poet Laureate in my lifetime, and I was sure this would happen, and I’m overjoyed that this has come to pass so soon. I count this as a checked off item on my own personal bucket list.

Who have you been reading recently? Who do you return to?

Julie Weiss: I have two young children and a full-time job teaching business English, so as you can imagine, I have very little time to read much more than children´s books in the evening. Lately, I´ve been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss over and over again, and my mouth aches a bit from all the tongue twisters. But, intermittently, I´ve been reading Victoria Chang, Ada Limón, Diane Seuss, and Patricia Smith, in addition to all the amazing poems online by virtual poet friends and acquaintances, whenever I get a chance between classes or activities or meals. I´m constantly discovering new poets, whose work I fall in love with. In poetry, I´ve found a bottomless well of beauty and power and voice and urgency. Of genius. There are some poets I return to again and again, first and foremost my idol, Adrienne Rich, as well as Kaveh Akbar, Ellen Bass, Megan Merchant, Maggie Smith, and Ocean Vuong, to name just a handful. What about you? Whose work do you fall in love with time and time again?

Thank you for adding two more names to my must-read list. I look forward to exploring the work of Mary Ann Samyn and Adam Zagajewski. This is one of the reasons I love talking poetry with other poets—discovering new poets, and almanacs! To be honest, I feel embarrassingly underread. I lost a grasp on poetry in 2001 when I moved to Spain, and I only came back to it, both the reading and the writing, in 2018, so I´m striving to play catch-up in multiple ways. Why is Adrienne Rich´s work the heart that pumps my poetic blood? Sorry, that sounds corny, but it´s difficult to describe the feelings her work evokes in me. I love the intensity of her poetry, her eroticism (her Twenty-One Love Poems are breathtaking, and the very sexual The Floating Poem is my favorite of the bunch), her bravery—through her writing, she was always fighting, not only for lesbians, but for justice of all kinds, at a time when that kind of boldness was perhaps treated with much more disdain, especially by the white male patriarchy, and was far more dangerous than today, at least in some countries. I´m recalling a poem she wrote about the horrific 80s murder/attempted murder, respectively, of a lesbian couple who´d been hiking the Appalachian Trail, which has always stayed with me. Of course, the lives of people who speak out against the status quo will always be at risk. I love how she intertwines, so masterfully, the personal and the political in her poems. In addition, I´m a sucker for a jaw-dropping image, and her work is chock full of exquisite lines. Don´t get me wrong, I´m not a Rich scholar or anything like that. I don´t know much about her beyond her poetry. She´s just the one that "does it" for me, time and time again.

MD: I'm inclined to ask about the LGBTQAI+ community in Spain. Is there a sense of increasingly safe spaces for the queer community? 

Do you feel like your poetry is aligned with contemporary queer poetics? Or, does it feel like you're going in your own personal direction?

JW: Regarding the LGBTQAI+ community in Spain, I´m very lucky to live in such a progressive country. In 2005, Spain became the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage (after Netherlands and Belgium). The law also allowed same-sex couples to adopt children. When my wife and I had children, since we were already married, they were legally mine from birth and took my surname, in addition to my wife´s. Some other rights granted under the 2005 law: the right to serve openly in the military, equal access to IVF and surrogacy for all couples, commercial surrogacy for gay male couples. “Husband” and “Wife” were changed to “spouse” in the Spanish civil code. In 2007, Spain passed a law allowing people to change their name and gender. Hate crimes against LGBTQAI+ people carry a higher sentence. More recently, a new series of laws have been passed protecting, in particular, transgender people. This article detailing the new laws might be of interest to you.    

Although there is still work to be done (in 2021, a proposal to recognize non-binary gender identities was, unfortunately, rejected), I feel incredibly proud of my adopted country. If you haven´t seen this Spanish Christmas ad that came out last year, about a grandfather and his trans granddaughter, you HAVE to watch. It´s a tearjerker! 

So yes, although life for the LGBTQAI+ community isn´t perfect, and there will always be isolated incidents of phobia, discrimination, and aggressions, in most ways, I feel very comfortable and safe living openly as a lesbian in this country. 

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*Update*

I´d like to note that, sadly, there´s been a shift to the right in Spain since we began our conversation. The biggest right-wing party, PP, won the recent election, but not by enough of a majority to govern, which means they´ll have to make deals with Vox, a frightening far-right party, as well as with other smaller regional parties. Or maybe voters will be called back to another election in some months—this seems to happen a lot in Spain. In any case, I´m worried about the prospects of a right-wing government, especially if Vox is involved. For example, in Cantabria, in a town called Santa Cruz de Bezana, the new joint PP/Vox government decided to censure the film Lightyear, which had been on the list for their summer outdoor film program, because of the lesbian couple´s kiss.

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Is my poetry aligned with contemporary queer poetics? I think generally speaking, much of it probably is, but I wouldn´t say my sexual identity defines my body of work as a whole. Yes, I write a lot of lesbian-themed poems, but I´m certain I´ve written more poems about my children, for example; in fact, I have a parenting manuscript out in circulation, searching for a home as we speak. I write about so many things: current events and news stories that affect me emotionally, childhood and adolescent memories, ice skating, friendship, winter, Prince (as you know very well!), sexual harassment, death, natural disasters, illness, menopause. It goes on and on, and queer poetics is only a part of what I do, just as my sexual identity is only a part of who I am. 

MD: Ok, WOW, that [Spanish Christmas] ad was stunningly beautiful. Very touching. People forget the power advertising can do for good. This is certainly an exception that proves the rule. It brings a number of commercial failures to mind including Johnnie Walker’s “Jane Walker” campaign. I recall an early response being that women did not need to feel represented on the bottle in order to enjoy the product. I remember a lot of blowback against Gillette when they addressed toxic masculinity. Maybe the lesson is that it’s difficult to know how something is going to be received by the masses until you put it out there in real time?

Talk to me about your parenting manuscript. What are your intentions with the book and what territory do you cover?

Menopause is a topic that I have only heard discussed and written about in recent years. My knowledge about women writing on the subject is, probably exclusively, from listening to Rachel Zucker’s exceptional podcast Commonplace. A few episodes that address menopause include, Episode 94 with Jennifer Block, Episode 98 with Torrey Peters, and Episode 83 with Darcey Steinke. A whole lot of Commonplace episodes address the subject of motherhood and how this was a subject that historically was not considered “the stuff of poetry”. Rachel is terrific at unpacking challenging subjects and addressing them with caution and sensitivity. I can’t recommend Rachel’s podcast enough.

JW: Thank you for recommending Rachel Zucker´s podcast. It sounds fascinating, and I hope I get a chance to listen to some episodes one day. Regarding menopause, I´ve seen a couple of calls for these types of poems from anthologies, and I recall reading some here and there, so I think it´s quite a common topic among perimenopausal and menopausal writers. Personally, I´ve only written one so far. 

Parenthood is a topic I´ve thought a lot about since I came back to poetry. For a while, I believed no one wanted parenthood poems. Poems about other topics were getting accepted, and my parenting poems weren´t. I think writing about your children is similar to writing about romantic love, in that you have to work extra hard to keep the language fresh, to make sure the poem doesn´t pull you into a whirlpool of sentimentality, and maybe that´s the mistake I was making at first. Once I got better at writing these poems, they started getting accepted. 

My parenting manuscript is about the elephant in the room, all those feelings, questions, issues, doubts, and especially guilt that loom between my children and me, but that I might not address properly, or even broach, for whatever reason. Maybe I try to explain something to my children, or comfort them, or discipline them, or apologize to them, but my words seem inadequate until I put them into the most visceral and vivid form I know, which is poetry. And that´s not to say I read the poems to them, but I hope they´ll read them when they´re older, so they can understand how I really felt at certain moments. The topics of the poems vary, from the pandemic to my fear of kidnapping to school mornings, but they all have one thing in common, the love I poured into each word as I was writing them.  

I´m so glad you liked the commercial! I can´t say I remember the Jane Walker or Gillette ads, but from your description, I can certainly imagine the problems that came along with them, and how they would have offended people. I tend to think, though, that if the creators had done a bit of mental work, they could have predicted the negative reaction to the ads before ever allowing them to see the light. Maybe the companies just didn´t care, who knows? It´s refreshing to live in a country whose (current) government supports people and their right to be who they are, to live the way they want to.

MD: Reflecting on what you said about the "parenting manuscript", and having been thinking about the Confessional Mode even more than usual recently, I'm wondering your thoughts on "the domestic" in poetry? 

Do you believe poems need to be "high stakes", that is, that you are risking something on a personal level in what you share in your poems?

What do you hope to successfully address in your poems going forward?

Are there topics that you do not address in your poems because you believe it would be unethical to do so? A caveat being that it would be understandable for your opinions on this matter to fluctuate over time.

What would you like people to know about you, your work in poetry, and topics that might not have been addressed or fully addressed in our conversation?

JW: It´s interesting you mention confessional poetry, because it´s something I´ve struggled with defining since I returned to poetry. I think there may be different degrees of confession, in that the "I" in the poem could be 100% the author, or 70% the author, or even 20%. Maybe the moment or event you describe in your poem really happened, or maybe it didn´t or only half did, and you´re only confessing a feeling (love, fear, sorrow) that haunts you, but you´ve wrapped it up in a fictional experience, in order to better make those emotions tangible for the reader. I can´t think of one poem I´ve ever written that was 100% "true," and it frustrates me that most readers automatically equate the "I" with the author of the poem. I always tell people that for me, poetry isn´t a diary entry. How boring would that be! It´s an art, a medium for expression, a molding of reality, a game of language, and through it all, yes, we´re confessing, but not in a "dear diary" sort of way.

Regarding "the domestic," I think it´s as fascinating and rewarding a topic as anything you could write about. Maybe other, more disquieting topics get more attention in the poetry world, but all of us are domestic in our own way, so it´s actually quite universal and something any reader can identify with. It´s been a while, so I´m afraid I can´t give you a name or title, but there´s an extraordinary poem I remember reading about a woman ironing, and how that domestic task was a ritual for her, essential to her spiritual well-being. I wish I could remember the title. I´d love to revisit it. 

Again, there are so many types of poems and poets, so what one person would consider high stakes in a poem might seem banal and unimportant to someone else, due to the subjective nature of poetry. Maybe one of the definitions of a "good" poem is one that succeeds in making the reader care about something they´d normally ignore or scorn, whatever that something may be. As a less-than-eloquent speaker, I feel like I take a risk every time I write. In my daily life, I´m pretty shy, not very outspoken, at least verbally, and if I want to, say, defend an argument, I get totally tongue-tied, so instead, I pour all my opinions, feelings, stances, beliefs into my poetry and hope it will speak up for me when I feel powerless to do so.

I think "successfully" is the key word here, as opposed to "what." My greatest desire is to connect with readers through my poems, no matter the topic. Sometimes, when I read a poem, I think "I´m not alone," and that´s what I hope readers say to themselves when they read one of mine. But in terms of topics, I think my parenting poems are the most important to me. When I´m gone one day, I want my children to have this part of me, to feel my love, my spirit, radiating from my poems, as if I were communicating with them from beyond.     

My personal opinion, and I know that not everyone agrees, is that you can write about anything as long as it comes from a place of love, compassion, understanding, empathy, and a genuine desire to make the world a better, more humane place through your words. Even then, you still have to think twice about what you´ve written, research, talk to people, edit, because language is a tricky business, and you could inadvertently end up offending a reader with a word or a phrase, for example, even though it wasn´t your intention. I´m learning that it´s essential to keep your readers in mind throughout the entire writing process. I´m curious what you think about this question of ethics. 

MD: I agree with you that poetry is not a diary entry. In fact, for me, I stopped keeping a diary (or journaling) when I wanted to write more poetry. My sense was that I’d be more prolific if I forced myself to condense and articulate experience in poetic form. This seemed to work out. This very much depends on the type of writer a person is. I often talk about the “pot boiling over” type of poet, which is the type of person who bottles up experience, has lines and images repeating in their head, and does this for some time before taking to the page, as compared to the type of poet (which is usually my type) who seemingly spontaneously starts writing and a bunch of stuff pours out on the page. There are other types as well, for sure. The two I just described both struggle, in my experience, with blocked time writing and do better with “stolen time” writing, that is, writing when you’re supposed to be doing something else. Additionally, these types of poets tend to struggle with prompts. When I was younger, I was better at “writing off the news” or “writing off the experience”—but the poems weren’t terrific. Writers operate in cycles, it seems. I see writers in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s who turn in a new direction. These are usually the better writers regardless because they have a wealth of knowledge in the rearview to draw from.

Confession as diary and the fraughtness of The Confessional Mode remains a hot button issue.

I completely agree that one person’s “high stakes” might be another person’s “low stakes” in poetry and this is, in part, why it’s so important that we have all the niche areas for publication that we do have in contemporary times.

I love what you said about communicating from beyond. This is, of course, what all great language does. In poetry, we do so often commune with the dead. And we want our poems to live on. After all, as they say, “Life is short and Art is long.” Although, I hear the inverse get tossed around increasingly. My guess at that is because we live in these strange times of constant content creation with the ever-nagging underlying question of “What have you done for us lately?” This encourages poets/writers (and other artists, especially musicians) to come out with new material at an alarming rate. I don’t know that there is a historical precedent for feeling such a great need to rush material into the world. Maybe it’s partly related to all the talk about the Anthropocene? I have heard from some parents, and I read it in Gen Z poetry, this underlying sense that these may be the last generations. Every generation falls into the trap of believing they are living in the end times. I’m not used to younger generations sounding so certain. Maybe it’s not that they think the world will really end so much as climate anxiety and the real likelihood that future generations will live in a world that lacks what past generations have expected as given.

The ethics question is complicated, no question. I believe, too, that there is no way of fully dodging pitfalls. Over time, the norms and mores of society shift and it’s all too likely that a person will have a slight misstep in language—or rather, that the language that is acceptable and status quo at the time of the writing will become problematized at some point in the future. I believe that we should do our best to avoid this. That being said, we would end up being poor artists if we held ourselves back from creating anything at all, paralyzed by anxiety, for fear of offending future people.

When considering ethics in writing/art and poetry specifically, I think there are a great deal of personal questions you have to ask yourself. These relate to what is “fair game” and what is “your story to tell” and, trickier still, if you are the best person to share this particular story. As mentioned before, I think it’s ok for a person’s stance on this to shape over the course of their artistic career. Right now, I’m not comfortable writing certain things and that is likely, and in some cases almost certain, to change down the road.

One thing I think about and say to others fairly often is that I believe we, creative types, have the ability to write without doing harm. We can avoid subjects. We are not required to write about anyone or anything. That being said, it’s possible that what a person really does need to speak their mind about involves revealing truths about family and loved ones, grief, loss, trauma, and other touchy subjects. Much like comedians, I think it’s important that we, as writers, do not take anything off the table when it comes to our personal writing. This material may not want to be in a digital vault but instead living in old-fashioned hand-written notebooks. Or, if it is in a digital file, included in a folder that says something along the lines of “To Be Destroyed In The Event Of My Death”. I’m being a bit dramatic… though I think many writers probably have such digital folders and notebooks. All this is to say that I think we should write about whatever we wish but that doesn’t mean we can and should publish that material. What are your thoughts?

JW: I very much like your examples of the two types of writers you describe, and honestly, I wish I fit into one of those classifications, because I´d probably be a lot more productive in terms of output. Unfortunately, I´m your stare-at-the-screen, write-a-line-or-a-couple-of-words, consult-Thesaurus.com, spend-an-hour-researching-some-obscure-fact-to-shape-the-perfect-image type. What you say about blocked time writing versus stolen time writing is very interesting, and I´m contemplating both of these in terms of my own writing habits. Hmmm, I´m honestly not sure which one of these I identify with more. I guess blocked time, since I only write when everyone else goes to sleep at night, and I can´t really "steal" time to write when I´m working or with my children. Unless stolen time includes thinking about a poem-in-progress and coming up with lines in my mind while I´m doing other things. I´m definitely guilty of that!

I also get the sense that we´re all trying to "rush material into the world," whether poetry, music, videos (in the hopes that they go viral), blogs, or whatever. It´s almost as if most of us feel the need to get our names, faces, achievements out there, for posterity´s sake. But I don´t know if it´s necessarily related to a widespread feeling that we´re approaching the end of something. Personally, I don´t believe we are. Maybe it´s just because we have all this technology now, all these social networks, that it´s so much easier to shine a spotlight on yourself, so everyone, especially people who create things, myself included, wants their minute of recognition, of fame. Maybe I´ve gone off on a tangent—you were talking about climate anxiety. I´m no expert on climate change, but I hope we´re somehow able to reverse or repair at least some of the damage we´ve done for future generations. 

I agree with you that ethics in writing is a tough question. Should we write about anything we want, and try to publish everything that we write? I feel like if the poem, whatever the subject, was written from a place of love and a desire to create awareness, or heal, or bring people together in peace, or highlight an injustice, or somehow make the world a better place through the gathering of words, maybe it would do more good for humanity to share it with readers rather than to file it away in a folder. I also feel like there are so many different types of people in the world that whatever you do in life, you´re going to make some people happy and other people angry, so the best option, in my opinion, is to be true to yourself and the "why" of your art. I know it´s a cliché, but I write what my heart tells me to write, and I submit what my heart wants me to publish, and I think this is the way most writers, most artists, go about grappling with the ethics question. 

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Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and a chapbook, The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, published by Bottlecap Press. Her "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was selected as a finalist for Sundress´s 2023 Best of the Net anthology. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for her poem "Cumbre Vieja," was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in ONE ART, Rust + Moth, Orange Blossom Review, Sky Island Journal, and Wild Roof Journal, among others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children. You can find her at 

https://www.julieweisspoet.com/

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Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of several short poetry collections including, most recently, Meatless (Plan B Press).    

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