Chapbook Interview: Julie Bloss Kelsey

We’re in the final three days of preorder for the Cuttlefish Books Summer Book Launch! I’m grateful to all of you who have ordered copies so far. Earlier this month, I featured fellow Cuttlefish poet Lenard D. Moore, and today I want to feature the other member of my cohort: Julie Bloss Kelsey.

Julie creates the New to Haiku column for The Haiku Foundation, and also serves as the THF secretary. Her first collection, Grasping the Fading Light: A Journey through PTSD, won the 2021 International Women’s Haiku Contest. Julie is also a freelance writer, environmental scientist, and a mother.

You mentioned on Instagram that After Curfew  was inspired by Rowan Beckett’s Hot Girl Haiku. Can you say more about that inspiration, and how it helped you write and shape your collection?

Rowan held an online launch party on Facebook for their book, Hot Girl Haiku, in May 2022. My friend, haiku poet Susan Burch, reminded me to attend. I’d never been to an online launch party. It was fun! Rowan had posts and videos set up on a schedule. One of the prompts was to write our own “hot girl haiku.” It brought me back to that time in early adolescence and young adulthood when I wanted so much to be a “hot girl” but I was more of a “geeky girl.” I wrote this in the comments:

face-first
in a stranger’s lap—
tequila shots

Joshua Gage, of Cuttlefish Books, wrote back that he’d like to hear more of that story. I said there wasn’t much to tell — I didn’t think I had too many “hot girl” moments. But it got me thinking, which led to writing the collection. 

On a related note, I read online that you wrote most of After Curfew in one sitting. Do you usually write in big spurts? How was creating this collection similar to or different from your usual process? 

I rarely write in big spurts! This was very different than my usual plodding along. I just felt inspired. It was like Rowan gave me permission to write about my past. 

What was your editing process like? Did you have to cut any haiku? Was there a point where you found yourself needing to add some to supplement the original poems? 

I wrote the poems quickly at first, jotting them down as they came to me. When it came time to order them, I wanted to tell a cohesive story: of first love, of loss, of moving on. When I realized that I really did have a collection, I wrote a few poems to fill gaps in the narrative, and I dropped a few that didn’t fit. Originally, I had a few tanka in there too.

In English-language haiku, poets are often instructed to focus on composing from the present moment. After Curfew is written in the present tense, but concerns the past. Did you make a conscious decision to keep the poems in the present tense? Or did that emerge organically during the writing process?

I think the present tense brings an immediacy to haiku — writing in past tense puts some distance between the reader and the poem. I’d like to say something profound about how I wanted the reader to share in my awkward moments, but the truth is, I was reliving my memories as I wrote them.

What was it like to relive those awkward teenage years in such an immediate and compressed way? Did that awkwardness feel fresh, or has distance lessened it? 

Oh my goodness, reliving those years still feels awkward! But I can laugh alongside the discomfort now. I’ve read this collection aloud to friends and most laugh and nod along. We’ve all been there, but when you are living those years, it’s so tough.

Cuttlefish Books has been posting some of my haiku from the book on Instagram. I was really struck by the response to this one:

strangers at the bar
trying to remember
my fake name

To me, that was a funny memory of getting called out for using a fake name. But when I saw a hashtag about the patriarchy, I realized that’s true as well. I was using a fake name to keep myself safe. That experience was just so normalized for me that I never saw it that way. It adds a whole new dimension to the poem, and to the collection. Rowan wrote an Afterward for me that touches on this.

What level of vulnerability was required to not only write these haiku, but publish them in a collection? Is it similar to, or different than, the levels of vulnerability required in other areas of your work?

I’ve said that my first print collection, Grasping the Fading Light: A Journey through PTSD, was equally embarrassing, but for different reasons. This collection is much easier for me to see in print. I’m not sure I will ever publish anything that makes me feel as vulnerable as my trauma collection does.

I love that you used your 8th grade class photo as the cover image. What was the thought process that went into your cover design decisions?  

My best friend posted that picture of me on Facebook for my birthday one year! I saved it and reposted it to my Facebook wall in December of last year. Joshua Gage, of Cuttlefish Books, noticed it and asked if we could use it for the cover. 

Is there anything else I haven’t asked that you’d like to say about After Curfew, or about haiku in general? 

Reading over my answers, I realized that Facebook played a huge role in this book coming into existence! Social media, for all of its ills, can be a great tool for poets. I cut my teeth writing haiku on Twitter. 

Writing haiku can be isolating. Most of us don’t interact with other haiku poets in person in our daily lives. Helping new haiku poets find connection is a primary goal of my haiku column, New to Haiku, at The Haiku Foundation.

More from Julie Bloss Kelsey

Check out the New to Haiku series at The Haiku Foundation.

Order a copy of Grasping the Fading Light: A Journey Through PTSD.

Read more about Julie’s literary accomplishments in the Poets & Writers Directory.