RETROSPECTIVES:

GennaRose Nethercott

In the Retrospectives interview series, readers have a chance to catch up with previous winners of the Open Competition and see the winding paths they’ve taken since receiving the award and having their books in print. How has their writing grown with time? How have their artistic persuasions and worldly perceptions shifted? Retrospectives considers the changing writerly self and the opportunities that found these poets after their big win.

What first drew you to poetry? What draws you now?

When I was a young poet, I was initially drawn to poetry’s preservative quality. Its ability to extract and protect an emotion or memory that previously existed only within the mind, the body—and provide it with a secondary body (the page), not prone to the same decay and fallibility as my human one. So in a way, I approached writing from a place of desperation—an attempt to cheat time and entropy by mummifying certain moments. Even though you can’t, of course—not fully. Something is always lost in translation. But still, I tried.

As I grew older though, that reverence for my own memories faded. Maybe because the older you get, the more memories you have, so each individual one feels less vital. Or maybe, just a lifting of the narcissism of youth. And so my draw toward poetry shifted, too.

Now, I see it as a medium of notice. A good poem makes the familiar unfamiliar. Through combining language and ideas not typically found in relationship with one another, poems allow us to see the world we know (and so easily glaze over) as fresh and novel. It wakes us up, not to something brand new, but to what has existed all along.

In our current world, this feels particularly vital. Desensitization is a spreading disease, causing us to barely blink at horrors that would once have been unthinkable. A poet’s mindset is the opposite of that—a commitment to seeing everything around you as if for the first time.

In the years since you wrote your winning manuscript, have you tackled new themes or subjects you didn’t expect? Was it a matter of confidence, or finding new skills and techniques? 

My themes have remained remarkably consistent since I was a child. Magic, monstrosity, and longing are my forever-wheelhouse, it seems.

What has changed massively since 2017, though, is the mode in which I’m writing. I’ll admit it: I went to the dark side, I’m primarily in fiction now. I’ve written novels, which is something I truly never thought I’d do, nor had interest in doing—but here I am.

And while it’s true that my NPS book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, is a hybrid poetry-fiction work . . . there’s a hell of a difference between writing a 7,000 word, intricately-honed narrative poem and a 130,000 word novel. There’s a level of control you lose at that scale. It’s unwieldy. Moving from poetry into novel writing is an exercise in letting go of perfectionism—because to tinker with a novel word-by-word in the way I would with a poem would take decades. But I try to think of it as simply a differently-shaped container for the same contents; my work is still tinged with its signature folkloric inspiration. Still magical-realist in its logic. Still dancing with the same questions.

How has your poetic voice grown over time? How do you support this growth: reading poetry, trying new poetic forms, embracing discomfort, etc.?

In many ways, I feel I have less control over my voice every year. But I know that’s a sign that I’m learning. Growing. The more skilled you become at a craft, the more discerning you become—making you able to see shortcomings you couldn’t before. It may seem backwards, but if you think you’re getting worse at something, it probably means you’re getting a lot better. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

I know myself to be a chameleon writer, so I have to be extremely careful what I’m reading while working on a project, or that voice will leak into mine. But I can wield that deliberately. I can carefully curate a reading list that blends into the voice I’m trying to create. It’s like the fragrance notes of a perfume: a little du Maurier. A little Calvino. A little Pegeen Kelly. All synthesized into something new.

And oh, I am a glutton for new forms. I wrote a horror story told entirely in fold-up paper cootie catchers a few years back, called Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog. That was a unique form! I’m currently working on a musical. I’ve got a middle grade mystery series on the back burner. I love experimentation, and trying things I’ve never done before.

Has your work responded to changes in culture or social conditions? What has that looked and felt like as a writer, in big or small ways?

It’s definitely become less personal and more political. Or rather, more deliberately uses the microcosm of the personal to speak about the political. As Nina Simone famously said, an artist’s duty is to reflect the times. The times I was reflecting in 2017 are very different than those nine years later, in 2026.

As for how that feels—when art takes on a broader, social purpose, it introduces a pressure to be of service. And that comes with a new kind of fear—not just fear of failing creatively, but morally. Of letting down the world which, through your work, you’re trying to heal. At the same time, there’s a futility so many of us are wrestling with—the knowledge that art can’t really save anyone. And wondering then, what the point is. So in a way, it’s both a fear of making too much of an impact and too little of one. When in reality, the only actually damaging thing there is the fear, itself. So yeah—I’m learning to manage my relationship with fear.

How have your writerly habits (e.g., a daily practice, a preferred beverage at your side, music, writing analog) transformed since starting out? Is there a habit you want to develop or continue?

At the time that I wrote The Lumberjack’s Dove, I was twenty-three years old, sleeping on the floor of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris by night and chipping away a few stanzas at a time during the day. Every evening, we Tumbleweeds (as the shop’s vagabonds were called) scraped coins out of a wishing well and used it to buy pasta and cheap wine. That’s how we lived.

My second book, I wrote in the trunk of my car while driving around the country. My third, in Covid lockdown in New Orleans, interrupted by brief archery breaks of target-shooting practice in the backyard. Each period of writing in my life has been shaped greatly by my surroundings and circumstances—making habits hard to come by. For a while, I could only write after 10pm. For another stretch, only by hand, in a hammock. There was a moment there where three shots of vodka preceded a drafting session, but that quickly proved unsustainable.

The only consistencies are: I need to be physically comfortable, and I need quiet. I want to feel like I’m in a sensory deprivation tank. Just a brain in a jar. That said, I’d love to develop a practice of writing by hand. I’m tired of screens.

In winning the competition, you received $10,000 and publication. How did these things shape your life and path as a writer? Did this lead to other opportunities or a shift in your self-perception?

It’s hard to express how massively this prize changed the course of my life. For one, that was more money than I’d ever seen. I was only twenty-six when I won, hawking typewritten poems-to-order on the street to make a living. The day I learned I won NPS, I remember yelling, “holy shit,” into the phone. Then I called my dad and was so frantic he thought someone had died. Then I called all my exes in a row. Why? I don’t know. I was delirious.

I knew the opportunity for what it was: my break. My shot. And so, I decided I wanted to do it up right. To take this chance and run as far as I could. I hired a friend of mine to create a 60-foot long scrolling shadow puppetry show that animated my book, and learned to use it. Then, I converted my Honda Fit into a (very) tiny camper, and I hit the road, solo. I booked over 100 readings across the country, and for eight months, drove in a massive loop around the entire continental US performing from the book, while operating the puppet show along with it. I met people all over America. I read in bookstores and universities, punk houses and VFWs. I worked on my second book along the way—and halfway through the journey, had garnered enough attention to land an agent.

Today, I write full time. I fully credit the National Poetry Series with jumpstarting my career—and affirming my confidence enough to keep on pushing. Because the amazing, generous Louise Glück took a chance on me, plucking my manuscript out from a pile of hundreds of great manuscripts, I was able to build a life I’d once thought impossible. So hey—thanks for that.

Have you written another book since the one published with The National Poetry Series? How is The National Poetry Series book similar or different?

Not another poetry book, but my magical realism novel Thistlefoot came out in 2022—which blends Slavic folklore, Jewish history, and American road trip narratives to tell a story about the dangers of nationalism. Also: there’s puppets! What’s not to love about violent, militaristic nationalism and puppets?

The Lumberjack’s Dove is a narrative poem dressed up in the trappings of an old folktale. Thistlefoot uses the same folkloric approach. Both feature an unreliable storyteller as narrator. Both play with the idea that the same story can be told many ways, and still be true. Both question the difference between fact and fiction—and suggest that sometimes, one can get closer to the truth of a matter through the latter than the former. And come to think of it, both feature an object transforming into a bird-like creature.

Then in 2024, I published a short story collection called Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart—which contains fourteen stories in the tradition of Kelly Link, Angela Carter, Karen Russell, Ray Bradbury, etc, all about (once again…) the monstrosity of human longing. I’m also the head writer for the folklore/history podcast Lore, with host Aaron Mahnke. And I’m currently polishing up a second stand-alone novel, that will probably see the light of day around summer 2027.

Who are the poets who have continued to engage you? 

I’m going to take this chance to sing the praises of a book I think is criminally under-discussed: Dear Sal, by Jeremy Radin. A number of years back, I was having a poetic crisis of faith—questioning why engage with poetry, at all—when I came upon Radin’s work. And immediately, that book re-awoke my excitement. It reminded me of what poetry can do. Dear Sal is an epistolary book. It’s mythic and it’s theatrical. It’s written in multiple voices, characters who deliver these effervescent, tender, funny, brilliant monologues filled with sorrow and longing and cleverness and light. I don’t know. Just read it.

If you could talk to your younger self, the version of you before you won, what would you say to yourself? What advice would you give? 

Honestly? I don’t know if I’d say anything at all. She was messy and driven and hopeful, and whatever she did, it worked—because here I am now. I’d hate to get in her way.

Answer an unasked question. What’s the question, and what’s the answer? 

If The Lumberjack’s Dove were a perfume, what perfume would it be?

Bowmakers by D.S. & Durga (“Old growth mahogany, burled maple shavings, amber pine rosin, aged walnut and unique secret varnishes.”)