In this interview series for "A Collection of Quaint Intensities", I talk to poets to discuss life, writing, and everything in between. Our first poet of this new year is Jessica Nirvana Ram, who describes herself as "an Indo-Guyanese poet." Her poetry collection, Earthly Gods, came out in 2024.
Phoenix Tesni: Let’s start off with Earthly Gods! What’s this collection about? Where’d you find the inspiration?
Jessica Nirvana Ram: This collection spans a multitude of topics. I feel at its heart it is a coming of age narrative about expectations, about familial and platonic love, about choosing oneself in spite of being taught otherwise. There are three sections in the collection that move through family, lineage, relationships, spirituality, and self-love. I initially started this project thinking I’d write about my family objectively but I quickly realized that wasn’t possible. If I was going to write about my family it had to be through my lens, my opinions, my experiences. At the same time I was going through a period of renewed spirituality. I was raised Hindu but we were more culturally religious than anything else growing up. It wasn’t until later in my life that I started really thinking through spirituality and god and how it played into my life. Throughout the book there are also poems about the end of a relationship. I went through a breakup while I was writing this book and it became a pivotal hinge for the rest of the collection. At my center, love is what I write about the most. Romantic love, platonic love, familial love, self-love. I always circle back to love in all its forms and I tried to not write about the break up but it was inevitable. It was a part of my story. Everything came together rather organically if I’m being honest. It surprised me to see that all the poems I’d written over a two year span were writing towards similar themes and narrative arcs. Like my brain had been mapping the constellations the entire time and I just had to arrive at it.
PT: You say that “Earthly Gods is about expectations and inheritance, lineage and family, love and loss.” I’m particularly intrigued by the “lineage and family” aspect of it. How do you think your past envelops/ molds/ influences your future? How often does your present get to hold your attention?
JNR: I am who I am because of my experiences. I think time is kind of cohesive meaning, there isn’t really a past or a present or a future because in some ways it is all happening at the same time. If I think of a memory right now, I’m transported back to that moment and I can know how it shaped me. I’m always writing about the present because the present holds the past and the future. My current experiences are the results of my past, of my future dreams. My books are very much a result of my current moment. Earthly Gods maps my mid twenties. The second manuscript that I’ve written maps my late twenties. Eras of my life encapsulated through poems, memories, experiences. The past is a map for how I navigate the present, how I plan for the future.
PT: Tell us more about the National Poetry Month Project you undertook at the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts. How was it like working with students?
JNR: During the 2024 Spring semester I proposed a project called the National Poetry Month Project. I organized, planned, and directed the entire thing. Basically during the month of April (National Poetry Month), myself, the Stadler Center Director, and a dozen Bucknell undergraduate students visited every classroom where English was taught in grades first through twelfth in the Lewisburg Area School District and taught a generative poetry workshop. We visited seventy-nine classes over the course of four weeks. I myself taught ten classes across various age ranges. Before this I had only ever taught at the college level, but I’m very well versed in the practice of teaching poetry to people who are new to poetry so it felt manageable. I drafted lesson plans and created poetry banks for my teachers to choose from. It was honestly so much fun. I’d have to say fourth grade was my favorite class to teach. They were so excited. They hadn’t been sullied by the stereotypes that sometimes plague poetry, they had no preconceived notions, they were simply fascinated by words and wanted to share their creations. And they’re so creative! Young poets are some of the best poets I think because their brains make associations that adults fight to come up with. Young kids have automatic poet brain and don’t even know it. This project culminated in a community reading where one student from each grade, chosen by me after they submitted their poems written in their sessions, was chosen to read in front of an audience at Bucknell. It was a beautiful event. Going from a first grader reading a poem about turtles to a high school senior reading an introspective self portrait poem? The best reward. I believe poetry should be accessible to everyone, that everyone and anyone can be a poet if they want to, if given the opportunity. The project was such a success that we’re making it an annual thing! Come Spring 2025, it will be a class Bucknell undergraduates can take for credit where I’ll teach pedagogy and lead up to the in the classroom teaching in April. I’m stoked about it.
PT: Your own academic records and credits are off the charts. You’ve received two fellowships, multiple awards, and you’ve undertaken many leadership roles. Tell us more about these! What drives you to achieve everything you set your eyes on?
JNR: I always have an inner drive to prove myself I think. There were a span of years in my young adulthood where I struggled a lot due to untreated mental health problems and since getting medicated and learning to cope with everything I’ve spent a lot of time just focused on the work of writing. When I was in graduate school my drive was to stand out, ace my classes, write at the top of my game, prove to the people around me that I was the real deal. That I didn’t come here to mess around. When I received the first-year award I was really quite surprised, I started grad school in Fall 2019 so my second semester was Spring 2020–you can imagine how that went. But my work stood out to my professors apparently. The same thing happened to a greater extent in my second year. I took on roles of leadership, spearheaded a mentorship program, became a resource for my peers, continued to write consistently and well, and at the end of my second year I was awarded the second year fellowship. Which was student nominated and faculty voted, so it wasn’t just my professors seeing my work it was my classmates recognizing my worth. That one meant a lot to me. I’ve always gravitated toward leadership roles. Something about the ability to accomplish something in a group setting feels good. I’m a very organized person, I know that once I have a vision about something I will bring it to life. It is only a matter of time and resources. My parents and grandparents raised me to chase after everything I’ve ever wanted in life, they never made me believe there could be anything in this world that couldn’t be mine if I wanted it.
PT: I see that you’re the Director of Sticky Fingers over at Honey Literary. What is your role as the Director? What has been the best part of your job?
JNR: So Sticky Fingers is like a catch-all section of Honey Literary. It can essentially be whatever I want it to be and it exists outside the regular publishing schedule of our two yearly issues. In it I try to publish reviews, interviews, special interest pieces that don’t fit within the parameter of the magazine but still feel related somehow. We don’t get a huge influx of submissions but it is fun getting to read what does come in and coming across something exciting. I recently edited an interview by two black female authors where they talked about publishing, the industry, life, community, and friendship. When they pitched it to me it sounded so fun! And then when it was finished I really loved what came out of it. We published it this past summer and it was truly one of my favorite things I’ve assisted with in a while.
PT: I’m doing a pass-it-on question at the end where each poet passes on a question to the next person being interviewed. Your question from Megha Harish, queer writer and facilitator, is: "What are some ideas your past selves have had that you don’t think you’re the right person to write anymore but you’re still oddly attached to?”
JNR: Honestly, there’s never been something I wanted to write about that I didn’t write about. I don’t deny myself access to a particular topic or narrative just because it might be hard to write it. I think the opposite is true in that I’ve had topics I’ve wanted to write about for years but it took arriving at specific points in my life and career where I finally had the arsenal to approach the content. When I was in college I wanted to write about my family but couldn’t really do it. So I studied instead, read a lot, learned more about poetics. When I got to grad school all those years of studying backed me up, my skill had improved, and most importantly I had lived. I think if there’s something I want to write about in the moment and don’t have the ability to write it quite yet, then it is just a matter of time. Of experience. Before I have the tools to tackle it.
PT: What question would you like to pass on to the next person?
JNR: I believe all new poems are in conversation with all poems that have already been written. Under this belief, whose work are you in conversation with? What literary traditions do you ascribe to?
Thank you for your time!
Jessica Nirvana Ram is an Indo-Guyanese poet. She is the author of the poetry collection Earthly Gods (Game Over Books, 2024). Her work has appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Prairie Schooner, Honey Literary, and elsewhere. Jessica was a 2022-23 Stadler Fellow, she currently works as the Publicity and Outreach Manager for the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts.
Phoenix Tesni (she/her) is a poet & multidisciplinary artist. A Best Small Fictions finalist and Best of The Net nominee, her works also appear in Surging Tide, Limelight Review, Sage Cigarettes, Celestite Poetry, and many other places. Once she worked in hospitality management and teaching, now her life revolves around consuming, curating, and creating art. Her latest projects include “darling, mister graphophone”, a short experimental film that was selected for the International Bornova Shirt Film Days festival, and “Water”, a digital interactive fiction game. When she’s not immersed in creation, you will often find her watching a South Korean film, or petting a cat.
This series is currently on hold until further notice.
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