Julia Kooi Talen is an essayist and poet based in the midwest where she teaches creative writing and composition. Currently a PhD Candidate in Literature and Creative Writing, Talen lives with their cat, Otis and holds an MFA in creative writing from Northern Michigan University as well as an MSW from the University of Denver.
You can read Meditation for Mine Body in the April 2025 issue.
How do you revise your work?
Revision looks different for each poem and depending on the project. In early stages I will play around with breaks and spacing on the page as I revise. I will change words, move lines around, change images, experiment with repetition. I am currently in graduate school, so the writing workshop helps me greatly in revising poems that aren’t quite figured out yet. Having other writers share their responses to my questions about my own work often helps to illuminate answers or directions for where the poem wants to go. In a later stage of revision, I will practice reading my work aloud and seeing where my voice gets snagged in a line. I might try to smooth that line out, perhaps add a break, or punctuation, or an extra noun. This can sometimes be an experiment and takes a few tries to get it right.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
While I do find that there are so many places for poets to publish in literary journals, in bookstores the poetry section is usually so small and in the back corner. It can feel discouraging, but I often remind myself why I started writing in the first place. Reading helped me often feel less alone, and I think that if one person connects to a poem of mine, or even just a line in a poem of mine that makes them feel seen, that feels like success.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a book length hybrid essay that explores how trauma manifests in the body as illness and how such manifestations are connected to patriarchal and eco-violence. I’m playing around with form and using x-ray images and text collages. It’s still in the early stages, but I’m having fun with it, which is so important in writing!
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
I love visual art and find it to be such a fruitful place for inspiration. A lot of my writing is engaged in ekphrasis. I write poems inspired by other poems, by photo projects, abstract paintings, cyanotypes. Going to art galleries and museums can help open up creative channels within me.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and have realized that my daily routine with writing poetry ebbs and flows because that’s how my brain works! Sometimes I regularly wake up and write for 30 minutes before my day begins. Sometimes I don’t write for weeks, but I’m reading books of poetry or spending a lot of time in nature. I think of writing really broadly. I think engaging with the world and thinking about the world as an artist is also writing, even if you don’t get words onto a page until days or weeks after. I usual cycle between a stint of daily writing and a stretch of being in the world as an artist.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
My dissertation advisor recently recommended I listen to the album Crushing by Julia Jacklin, and I have become obsessed. I might even try to write something inspired by the songs on that album. I’ve been reading a new essay collection called Thank You For Staying With Me by Bailey Gaylin Moore. Much of it takes place in Missouri, where I’m currently based, and it’s such a brilliant collection. I’ve also been reading Carin Beilin’s Blackfishing the IUD, Jade Lascelles’s Violence Beside, and Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s Borealis.
Also, I’ve been watching Severance and you should too.