Heather Jessen, a finalist for poetry contests at Ruminate, Atlanta Review, and Quagmire, has poems appearing or forthcoming in Poetry South, Connecticut River Review, and Pangyrus. A former resident of Australia, she lives in Connecticut and can be sporadically found on Instagram at @maxhj1 and Twitter at @hjessenwrites.
You can read her poem What I Don’t See is the Kill in the July 2023 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
Since I worked one summer near Glacier Park in Montana, I’ve been fascinated with how “the wild,” gets talked about and related to—especially animals. After writing What I Don’t See is the Kill, I got curious about how other poets had been inspired by bobcats and especially admired two poems: The Bobcat by Matthew Olzmann (published in Adroit)—a riff on perception and fear in response to a bobcat’s print—and Jane Wong’s The Waiting (first published in Poem-a-Day)—in which the bobcat appears with the prey in her mouth and inspires a meditation on the body, inner life, and creativity.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
I don’t have one big question, but a constantly shifting set of questions that I’m playing with. One of the craft questions I’d been thinking about was how to write a poem in which its title is essential to the meaning of the poem, but is not the poem’s first line. I’d also been reading swathes of spare poems, some wonderfully so, some not, then wanted to experiment with a descriptive and sonic lushness—even play around with the dread adverb.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
I’m currently reading Inga Simpson’s Willowman, a novel set in Australia about folks obsessed with cricket, which I know next to nothing about. The writing is beautiful, the setting feels both like home and discovery (I’ve lived in Australia), and the focal characters are quirky and dedicated to their passions—a combination I find inspiring.