RETROSPECTIVES:

Jennifer Kronovet

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?

Poetry, when I first encountered it, seemed like the language of thinking and of the unsaid parts of conversations. Growing up, I felt like speech was always failing me, and that sentences didn’t hold what I meant. Then poetry made a certain kind of communication possible—of thoughts that are feelings that are ideas that are images that are trying to reach out. This still draws me close.

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? 

Yes, and I think it’s a matter of encountering new experiences I couldn’t imagine writing about a decade ago, like the surreal strangeness of perimenopause or moving to three different continents. For so long, I wrote like I didn’t have a body and yet as someone grounded in a place, and now I write as if my body is my ever-shifting home and home is a placelessness I’m still contending with.

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

I think my voice, or the instability of my voice, has grown through my devotion to reading and editing poetry in translation. Living in a lyrical world where every word is a choice that refracts possibilities of other words has layered onto my writing process. It’s like I’m working through an original to an original. Also, I’m embracing humor more and more, even though that feels aesthetically risky/ridiculous.

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?

I’ve lived abroad since my NPS book came out, and living in cultures different than my own is something I’m always responding to. It not only shapes me on a daily personal level—the languages I speak, the people I’m lucky enough to love, the practices I’m invited to participate in—it also gives me a tactile space around myself, a distance from myself I like to explore; plus a view of the world that isn’t U.S. centered.

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?

I have a dog now, and when he’s settled at my feet, I know I should settle, too, into something good.

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?

This money helped me found Circumference Books, a press for poetry in translation, which I run with joy and love for the work, so thanks NPS!

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

I just finished a manuscript I’m pretty happy about. (I’m a slow writer!) And it’s different in that its more embodied and traveling, but it’s also me banging my head against the same unbreakable ideas I love/hate trying to get inside of.

Who are the poets who have continued to engage you? 

Oh my gosh, it feels mean to just mention a few! So many! I’ll make this associative and say that one recent NPS book I’ve loved is Shade is a place by MaKshya Tolbert, which is about trees and takes place in Charlottesville, VA. Two other poets I’m a huge fan of who’ve lived in Charlottesville are Jennifer Chang and Brian Teare. I like to imagine that they’ve all thought about the same trees in radically exciting and different ways. And now I live in Virginia with some of the same kinds of trees, too.

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? 

It’s ok to think of yourself as a mom first. It doesn’t reduce you.

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

Has anything about you radically changed since that NPS book?

People who have known me well for a long time are shocked about these changes: I love dogs now. I love taking hikes now. I’m no longer horrified by typos because they mean a human being made a mistake.