Wess Mongo Jolley is a Canadian novelist, editor, podcaster, and poet, most well-known for hosting the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel for more than ten years. His work has appeared in journals such as Off the Coast, PANK, Danse Macabre, The Chamber Magazine, and Apparition Literary Magazine. His horror trilogy, The Last Handful of Clover, is being released on Patreon, Wattpad, QSaltLake, and as an audiobook podcast. Mongo writes from his home in Montreal, Quebec. Find him at http://wessmongojolley.com
You can read his poem Lost Love 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?
I think of myself as a desert rat. I was born and raised in Park City, Utah, and spent much of my formative young adult years hiking in the various hills and backcountry of the desert southwest. Perhaps because of this, I associate the desert with introspection. There is nothing like the stark emptiness and beauty of the western desert to strip away all your defenses and let you see what your heart is really made of.
This is an older poem, written almost twenty years ago, that I recently dug up and polished (rewrote, really) for submission. I’d suffered a loss back then, like the figure in the poem. And as I processed that heartbreak, I kept picturing myself driving a car out into the desert, and wailing all that grief into the sand, and into the endless blue sky. Unfortunately, I was living in New England at the time, and there was no desert to be had. So, I channeled it all into the poem.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
I also write short stories and novels, but for me, poetry works best when there is a single powerful image you want to invoke, stripped bare of any complex story or narrative. I could imagine writing the fiction version of this incident, detailing all the story of what came before. But I think it probably works better as just a short poem.
I often think of poems as jewels. They need to be carefully cut, and highly polished. But they are small, compact, and highly focused bits of beauty. Short stories and novels can cover more territory, but I want my poetry to catch a single ray of sunlight.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
Oh, there are so many! I’ve spent my life reading and studying Allen Ginsberg, but in terms of a single collection, it probably has to be Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I’m attracted to the long line, and to the “barbaric yawp” you find in both Whitman and Ginsberg. But I also love the spare beauty of Emily Dickinson, and the soaring celebration you find in Carl Sandburg. So, I’m kind of all over the poetic map!
I also cut my chops in the poetry slam scene and ran a podcast for performance poets for over ten years. I see a direct through-line from Whitman to Ginsberg to slam poetry, and love seeing how modern poets are still bungee jumping into their own souls.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I’m truly not sure!
I’m in my sixties now, and one of those persistent nightmares is the possibility that, in my old age, I’ll no longer be able to write. It’s similar, I suppose, to the nightmare actors have about being on stage and not remembering their lines.
Nothing in my life fills the same role as writing. Reading and writing have been the only constants in my life, and I can only hope that I’ll slide gently into the next world with an open book in my lap, and a pen in my hand.
How do you revise your work?
Well, it’s a long process!
I tend to write all my poetry in “freewrites” in my journal, and then later, pick through those pages to find bits and pieces that speak to me as poems. I collect those into an “inspiration” file, and then go through those hundreds of fragments from time to time to find those that call out to be actual poems. When I find them, they get drafted and moved to another folder. And then, so on and so forth, with each new rewrite and redraft.
Honestly, most of the fragments remain untouched, and most of the first drafts never get beyond that stage. I’m very critical of my own work, and when it feels like I’m trying to force a poem from a fragment or draft, I walk away. But from time to time, I’m happy with the result. When I am, it’s usually been anywhere from a year to twenty years between idea and final draft.
It’s kind of chaotic, but the pieces that float to the top are the ones that eventually go out for submission.
What are you working on now?
I’m actually writing more fiction than poetry right now! I have a three-volume epic supernatural thriller (with a gay protagonist) that I just finished serializing through Patreon, WattPad, as an audiobook podcast. It is also currently being released through QSaltLake.com “Tales of the City” style, at two chapters per week. And that’s been a lot of fun. It should come out in paperback later this year. (For more information: http://wessmongojolley.com/novels.)
I’m working on a novel about the year I graduated from high school, came out, fell in love, and had my heart broken. It’s called (appropriately) “1979.” I’m also working on a novel about a summer I spent in the wilderness of northern British Columbia, that is like “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” meets “Into the Woods.”
I also work as an editor, so I’m keeping busy. {:{)}
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
Sometimes, it’s tough. Technically, I’m retired from my day job, so you’d think I’d have time for nothing but writing. But for some reason, I feel busier, and my time is more precious, than it ever was when I was working a day job. The refrain “you should be writing!” constantly plays in my head, whenever I’m doing anything else.
The best advice I ever heard (and I don’t remember where I found it), was to get up in the morning and put on your workout clothes, then sit down and write. Then write until you hit the wall, and immediately jump into your workout.
Making sure I sit down in the morning and write is hugely important.
I also never go anywhere without my journal and my iPad with all my writing loaded up on it. Sitting in a coffee shop or in the library here in Montreal with a notebook is still some of my most productive time.
Honestly, the biggest competition for my time is to figure out how much of my day I want to devote to reading, and how much to writing. I know that’s a dilemma a lot of writers wish they had, so I feel very fortunate.