In Conversation with Josie Sullivan

My interest in Josie’s work started when I saw her read at a society event earlier in the year. The atmosphere of the entire room changed as she began, her soft voice very purposefully cutting through the bated breath of her spectators to pick out rhythms and emphasise phrases. I was enchanted. Sitting in the Senior Common Room, I am almost shocked by the fact of her, surprised that this person who held an audience in thrall could exist so normally in the real world. But she does, inhabiting the space with consideration and care. As we begin to talk, I realise that no word leaves Josie’s mouth without that same precision and thought I felt coming through in her poetry. The common room has a quiet buzz to it, and with morning sun flashing gently off the surface of my phone, we start recording.

M: So the first thing I’d like to ask is about you as a writer. How do you perceive your work- how would you describe it?

J: That’s a- I don’t know, a simple and a complicated question for me because I’ve never really thought of myself as a writer very much.

M: Oh, okay!

J: I did drama at undergrad, um, more because I was indecisive than anything else. I was considering so much and drama just seemed-

M: It answers so many questions, doesn’t it?

J: Yeah and there’s a lot of access if you want to study something else: there’s a lot of overlap. And, I don’t know, I sort of fell into this degree, but I’ve been writing since I was like seven. Um, everyone in my family writes poetry of some kind, and so, like, our mom made us memorise poems.

M: Oh, I love that so much…

J: Like, as soon as we could read, that’s sort of how we learned. And so, my sister and I just sort of started writing as soon as we could.

M: Do you feel like drama is a particularly important part of how you write your work or deliver your work? Do you think about how it will sound?

J: Yeah, I definitely think about how it will sound. I did a course in drama called audio dramaturgy and we got to do, like, audio plays. So we listened to lots of podcasts and audio dramas and then we would go into the booth and do our own stuff. And we did stuff sort of everyday- or as much as possible- so, you really heard how… Everyone really got to know how they sound, because when you do that over and over, you’re like going over your own voice every edit. If you’re adding music then you’re listening to the rhythm- you’re seeing the exact wavelengths! And I think there’s definitely a value there. There’s a point, I think, where you get super self-conscious and you’re like- what is this sound? And then you just have to come out of the valley in order to keep working with sound as a medium, because you can’t live in that self-deprecation.

M: I guess it’s that thing where everyone hates the sound of their own voice recorded. Like, I hate hearing these recordings back when I’m transcribing. But I like that you’ve described it as a valuable process of, like, determination. Because I get it even with my writing at the minute where I write something and go ‘that’s cringe’, but you have to push forward and learn that it’s not.

J: Yeah!

M: I like that. Now, I know you’ve already kind of answered this, but I wanted to dig into it a little more. Poetry is your medium? I wonder how it works for you as a medium as opposed to anything else?

J: I think poetry sort of came naturally. I never questioned it as much. Whenever I write other stuff I question myself after every sentence, after every word, I’m like ‘Is this important enough?’ I never want to waste the reader’s time- I’ve got a terrible fear of that.

M: That’s such a lovely, pure intention! How do you combat that fear? Or do you just write until it’s perfect?

J: Well, that’s something I’ve been working on a lot recently, because a lot of my poetry just used to consist of image after image after image… I didn’t want to waste the reader’s time so I was like: boom, boom, boom! Keep hitting the attention! Because also, I have a very short attention span. I need to sort of be bombarded sometimes, and so I’ve been working on moving past that because lots of images are lovely, and it’s nice to have a collage of beautiful moments. But it’s equally nice to just stay in a moment for an extended period of time and see, like, if you write a poem about a house, like what does the house look like in different seasons, how do different people see it? You don’t necessarily need to move to the house down the road right away. So that’s something I’ve been working on…

M: That is such a difficult thing to do when you have so many different images in your head and you’re just, like, this is so beautiful I have to share this. I sent someone a piece of my work recently and they were like ‘Wow, there’s a whole lot of plot here!’

[Laughs]

M: ‘There’s a whole load of things happening.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah that’s the good bit!’ But she just needed time to process all of the content I was throwing at her. So, I had to do a redraft of that one… You have to give yourself time to enjoy it, I guess.

J: Yeah!

M: So, I’m going to move on to the poems you submitted to ENIGMA. I love Bullfrog Elegy. I love it so much, especially the line ‘I want the future to kiss my head and tell me it’s not as bad as I think, it’s worse.’ For me, it was a lovely microcosm of the piece as a whole, because it drew me in with this nice, soft imagery, I felt so comfortable and then this slightly unsettling tone creeps in and catches me off guard. So, yeah, with that in mind tell me about your intentions for the piece?

J: It was actually hugely inspired by Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay. I love when people talk in poems. I love when things come alive and start talking to you. There’s a moment where a kid in his dream sort of speaks to him and the world’s kind of ending and I loved that moment so much. So capturing that was sort of the intention…I think.

M: Yeah no, I mean inspiration is a hard thing to pin down but that’s a wonderful inspiration and intention. On that point, do you draw more inspiration from other writers…or other mediums?

J: Oh, definitely other mediums. I am just everywhere in the arts. I love photography. Before I did drama, I thought I was going to go into film, so screenwriting, cinematography, that’s definitely always in the back of my head when I’m writing. And I think they all overlap in really neat ways!

M: I agree, I love the intersection of all these things. For me it’s video games and improv- I love the inspiration that comes from all the silly, crazy stuff people say on the spot. But I find it really interesting that you landed on screenwriting in particular because it’s quite dialogue heavy, and you said you like when people talk in poetry as well, um, do you feel like human subjects and communication is a big thing for you?

J: Oh, it’s everything! That’s what I’m interested in more than anything, how people- Because I really struggle. It’s always been a puzzle to me. I am very bad at reading people, so, what I do is, when I’m getting to know someone, I have boxes. I have input and output boxes. So, I give an input and I catalogue how people react, and the more input/output boxes I have the better I can predict people. And that’s, sort of, how I learn. Which means I’m kind of strange because I don’t have all the boxes yet. But that’s a lot of how I think about film and poetry too. In terms of our emotions and the images, there’s these little input/output boxes.

M: I like the idea of writing as an experiment. Like, if I put this in the input box, what will I get out?

J: Yeah- it’s chemistry!

M: Writing is science! But yeah, no, I think that’s pretty cool. So, now I wanted to move on to performance, and it’s so interesting to me now knowing you did drama. Do you think that performing your poetry gives it a new nature? Do you see a difference between reading it to yourself and having an audience, and what is that difference?

J: So, one of my teachers gave me some of the most brutal feedback I’ve ever gotten! Not in, like, a mean way- just the bluntness. He said, your poetry sounds good when you read it, just not when I read it.

M: Oh no!

J: And I didn’t know what he meant for a little bit. But I think what he means was that I have a very specific way that I know it’s supposed to sound. The rhythm for me is how I talk, and for a while I really struggled to be able to put that on the page so the reader could have it. So there are definitely two worlds that I’m trying to meet in the middle, and I think that will just come with time and practice of course.

M: Yeah, it’s the best writing advice in the world to just keep writing…but that takes so long!

J: Yeah…

M: With that aim to develop in mind, would you mind telling me about what you’re working on at the minute, what future projects you have in store?

J: Sure! Um, I’m working a lot on ghosts. I’ve always been interested in ghost stories. And things that have ghosts in them, like Bullfrog Elegy is, sort of, all about that relationship with something we don’t necessarily think of as a ghost which is roadkill. And that’s very inspired by Joy Harjo and her book Secrets from the Centre of the World.

M: Gorgeous title!

J: Amazing title, um, but she talks about how everything around us has a voice, and we can’t necessarily… We don’t necessarily have the right to claim that voice as ours but we can try to, like, tip over a rock or look at a leaf and try to translate it to the best of our ability. For a lot of things that could be our responsibility, if we see something that needs a voice we can try our best. So, I think ghosts are a part of that, they are a way we try to give voice to some things we can’t talk about.

M: A beautiful way of putting it, and I feel like really at the heart of eco-fiction. Especially the idea of whether or not it’s our responsibility to give a voice to entities that don’t necessarily have one that we can understand. Are environmentalist themes something you like to focus on?

J: Yeah, I moved around a lot as a kid, and one of the places we lived was this old house at the end of a dead-end road, and there was, like, ninety acres of woods behind us.

M: Wow! The dream!

J: It was the dream! And then when I was ten, we moved back to the city, and that was such a culture shock for me. This is ridiculous- I remember the first time I heard people talk about minecraft and they were talking about zombies and making structures out of wood and I was like, oh do you guys go out in the woods and play games? Because I thought they were going out in the woods and playing zombies. Then I learned that it was a game on the computer and my mind was blown. I was that sort of sheltered.

M: That’s the best kind, though. I wish I didn’t know what Minecraft was! The amount of hours I’ve spent in that game… But, no, it’s wonderful that you had the chance to connect with nature in that way, nice to remember that there are still spaces where we can do that.

J: But it’s also fun to explore all the intersections. It’s nice to know where we can respect and learn. A lot of romantic nature poetry- I don’t really vibe with that just because it’s all spectator. Even if they’re out there they’re still looking through a pane of glass, and I think that only goes so far.

M: I couldn’t agree more, like, I did a module last year that reminded me I’m just a person, and I can only see person things. So I agree, like especially with romantic nature poetry, it’s important to remember that we only have so many means of articulating things and it doesn’t necessarily align with what the natural world is doing or thinking or feeling. I’m going to switch subjects now though as we draw to a close and I want to ask, I don’t want to be boring but- no, I think it’s interesting- what is your favourite thing you’ve ever written?

J: That’s really hard… Well, there are a couple answers. I remember the first bits of poetry I ever wrote and those are some of my favourites just because I read them and I’m like, seven-year-old me, what were you thinking? 

[Laughs]

J: Um, and then all of the stuff I’ve been writing recently I’ve really enjoyed, but honestly Bullfrog Elegy is probably my favourite.

M: I am so glad that we have it in ENIGMA. It’s just- it is gorgeous!

J: It’s all my childhood memories I think. But I wrote it after… My therapist was explaining to me about trauma induced memory loss. Knowing that there are things that are…gone, um, that’s how I think I started writing that. There’s so much that… Like, how do you move on with your life knowing that there’s so much that’s falling out of the trunk as you speed along the highway.

M: That has put a whole new perspective on it. As it’s one of your favourites recently as well, I think it speaks to the idea that the best kind of work is, like, something that speaks to oneself before it speaks to anyone else. And what you were saying about reading poems from when you were younger too, I love and hate that. My stories were so edgy as a kid. I think most of my stories from when I was younger were all fantasy stories- but, no, the worst kind. Complete self inert, vampires all over the place. It was a mess.

J: My mom found a thing from when I was about six years old, my school did a bookbinding thing where we wrote little books. She found it and I had completely forgotten about this, but it was, like, these animals, these ground-nesting birds that were being attacked by snakes and they had a revolution and they had a little rat friend. I didn’t remember writing any of that! It was wild!

M: That’s so good! That’s the good content.

*Bonus content*

M: You know, like, My immortal? Yeah, that’s the vibe. I did not write My Immortal, but I could have.