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by Simon Jacobs
J. Bradley is not an unfamiliar face at PANK – the longtime interviews editor before DeWitt and I came aboard, he made a point of interviewing every single writer and artist who appeared in the magazine’s pages – as an editor, writer, and performer, J. Bradley has been, consistently, an indefatigable, tireless, and rampantly productive member of the literary community. His latest book is an illustrated collection of poetry called The Bones of Us, and will be out in March from YesYes Books. J. was generous enough to reply to my prodding questions about the ghosts of his past, and provide us with a few vivid samples from The Bones of Us.
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Your most recent project, The Bones of Us, is what you’ve called a “graphic poetry collection,” with your words illustrated by Adam Scott Mazer. What was the genesis of this project – how did your work and Adam’s begin speaking to each other?
KMA Sullivan actually came up with the idea of turning my manuscript into a graphic poetry collection when she accepted it in late 2011. There were other books ahead of mine, which allowed us time to really make sure we found the right artist to illustrate the poems. In February of this year, KMA found Adam through Dolan Morgan, who stated interest in the project. From the moment we received the first samples in April, KMA and I knew we found the perfect artist for The Bones of Us. Adam constantly amazes me with each new illustration. His artistic vision complements and enhances the experience of processing the poems in ways I never thought possible.
Can you share an example of how Adam’s artistic vision has complemented yours? Have there been any cases where what he’s drawn up for your poem was wildly different from what you were imagining?
It’s hard for me to imagine what a poem might look like if it was illustrated. When I’m writing a poem, I’m more focused on the sound and the images created, so when I see Adam’s interpretation of my poems, I love that I usually don’t have a set expectation in mind of what any of the poems should or should not look like in a graphic medium.
The art for “Poem Tied To A Brick And Thrown Through Your Window, Pretend Style” complements the poem’s light hearted, hopeful tone, where the speaker is telling his partner he enjoys being with her and hopes for a future together.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the art for “The Ghost Staring At You Is Your Ex-Wife’s New Girlfriend” at first. After thinking about it and processing it, I realized that Adam externalized the unspoken horror of finding out that someone you were with for a long time has moved on and the surprise over their choice. You want to warn their new lover about what they are getting into, not so much to block them, but to make sure that their new lover is well informed about who they are with. Adam’s choice to turn that narrative into a dark fairy tale was perfect.
This is your second full-length poetry collection. How long did it take the pieces in this book to come together? You mentioned that it was completed back in 2011 – what kind of life-space did this emerge from?
My first full-length collection, Dodging Traffic, came out in October 2009, and the poems in it were mostly about my ex-wife and our relationship leading up to our marriage. Six months into touring and promoting the book, I found out about her rampant infidelity during our marriage. The Bones of Us began the day she began to move out of our apartment and the initial version of it was done in late 2010. I received a lot of positive feedback when I was shopping it around but there was still work to be done. In June 2011, I was named a Write Bloody finalist based on the sample I sent to them and I made another revision to the manuscript to make it ready for the panel review. I didn’t make the cut, but I knew it was almost there. YesYes Books picked it up a couple of months later.
When I was making additional revisions before sending it off the final version to YesYes Books this past December, it got easier to get through the manuscript. I was divorced over two years at that point and a lot of the wounds were healed. When I was getting it ready for Write Bloody in 2011, I was revising and crying since everything was still fresh. It didn’t help I was also trying to be friends with the ex during that time. Writing was the only way I could process the tremendous upheaval going on in my life.
Given that these books have developed during these stages in your life, how does it feel to look back on them given what you know now? When you look at the poems in The Bones of Us – and, I imagine, to some degree when you look back at Dodging Traffic – how do you reflect on the context from which they emerged? And given that the book has just recently undergone its final set of revisions, how have the poems changed as you’ve healed, if at all? Or does time only make the swords sharper?
Looking back at Dodging Traffic, it was a largely misanthropic collection. I was dealing with a lot of conflict professionally and personally, and writing was my way of dealing with that conflict. I thought I was creating a narrative that showed from being single to getting married and that marriage was the ending to that phase in my life. The ending of that phase turned out to be the beginning of a completely different journey in The Bones of Us.
Regarding The Bones of Us, it’s gotten easier to let the ghost in. I lived in the apartment that my ex-wife and I shared after the separation for two and a half years until February 2013. I didn’t do a real good job of keeping it clean because the apartment was a physical representation of what was really going on in my head and heart. I took a promotion that would finally force me to move out of that environment. This allowed me to become more open and accepting to an outside perspective when the edits began. Having that dispassionate outside perspective removed the emotional fat from the poems, and get to the core of what they were really about. I’ve been able to make a lot of emotional progress this past year as I was able to get a true clean slate, something I should have done when the separation occurred instead of holding onto the apartment like a scalp. While I’m cognizant of the emotions within the poems of The Bones of Us, the emotions within them now aren’t overwhelming as they would have been two years ago.
This has always been an interesting issue to me – the creation of the work, and then, two or three years later, when the work is finally sold or published, its revisitation. I think book-publishing (or probably any production industry) is weird in that regard – strangely retroactive, like, unleashing this wrenching emotional piece of work you wrote three years later. Not a lot of knee-jerk room, I suppose.
Which kind of brings me approximately to another question: you’re a fairly eclectic member of the literary community. Off the top of my head, you’re responsible for a novella, a series of detective stories, a digital series called “Porn for the Blind,” hashtagged poems, an epic poem, and a Florida reading series, as well as editing for a couple of different literary magazines. How do you keep all that going at once? What draws you in these directions? WHY?
I work on what is interesting to me and when it comes to creative projects, I develop tunnel vision on a singular project and work on it until I finish or I lose interest. For example, I had six weeks to write the first draft of Bodies Made of Smoke. It only took four. For Porn for the Blind, the creative project was my way of learning how to use Adobe Captivate better, which is a software commonly used to create learning modules. With Jesus Christ, Boy Detective, the interest comes and goes. I don’t really do any juggling. I’ve maintained There Will Be Words for almost three years, and that was after running a poetry slam for ten years. I got tired of doing a poetry slam and wanted to do something different, something Orlando needed (a regular prose reading series). Since starting There Will Be Words, the prose reading scene has exploded. We have two other really amazing shows here, each with their own format that engages the audience. From an editorial standpoint, I was at one point holding down three positions but I got burnt out. It affected the quality of my work and I knew I had to walk away because I just wasn’t into it any more. Now I just edit for Monkeybicycle and do a guest spot here and here.
It’s kind of amazing to hear that you composed Bodies Made of Smoke (a mytho-poetic pop novella) in just four weeks – what does your typical writing schedule look like? You have a very prolific output, and I’m always interested to know what the life of a creative person looks like on a practical level.
My goal is to create something or work on writing Sunday through Tuesday at the very least. If I write more during the week, I’ll write more. I work a full time job that takes about 40-50 hours a week. I also balance all that with a relationship. She supports my writing. However, I know better to not make writing my be all, end all. If you want to have a healthy relationship with someone, you have to find that balance and I think I finally have that figured out between work and life and writing.
What would you say was the least-balanced period of your (creative/emotional/etc) life? What was the difference in output or tone?
The least balanced period of my life was when I was married to my ex-wife (October 2008-April 2010). I was working long grueling hours and I wasn’t getting the support and understanding needed while working 10-12 hour days. A good deal of the poems I wrote from that time (with the exception of Esmeralda Estrus) had a lot of misanthropy in them because I was frustrated with my career and with my personal life. I look back at Dodging Traffic and see how much I wanted to punch people in the face, but with words. I started getting back into fiction, making my way back in with flash, and that helped take the edge off some of the poems. The misanthropy was still there.
Where is the misanthropy now?
It’s pretty much gone. Some people have a weight to them and even though a separation, a break up, a divorce is a harrowing time for most, when the weight is distancing themselves more and more, you feel lighter, even though what you are dealing with is tumultuous. The moment she said she was moving out was the moment things became lighter. In the absence of the weight, I made new and interesting mistakes. As someone going through a divorce, you are undateable. I wished I realized that immediately instead of being an emotional toxic waste dump.
But things are clearing up? The oily top layer is being dredged away?
Another horrible mistake I made was staying in the apartment we lived together in after the divorce. In my school of breaking up with someone, I believe in a quick, cauterizing amputation. I thought holding onto the apartment would be like a trophy but I treated it more like an external manifestation of what I was really feeling.
Last year around this time, I was interviewed for a position the Friday before Christmas Eve. When I came to work on Christmas Eve, they offered me the position. I took the position and had to either learn how to drive (which is terrifying) or move closer to work (Orlando’s public transportation isn’t that great) to commute via bike and bus. I chose to move out. Leaving that apartment was the biggest leap forward, one that officially took me out of a very long grieving period. Things have been quite cleared up since I made the move. I’m accepting that I deserve all this good that’s happened this year.
And we are very glad to hear it. Would you care to leave us with a telling snippet from The Bones of Us indicative of where I’ve found you, where we’ve come, and where we’re yet to be?
I’m not sure this can address everything you’re asking. I consider The Bones of Us the Empire Strikes Back of a trilogy. This is one of the happier poems from the collection.
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J. Bradley is the Web Editor of Monkeybicycle. He runs the Central Florida reading series/chapbook publisher There Will Be Words and lives at iheartfailure.net.