Poetry Grrrowl: Amanda Jernigan + Years, Months, and Days

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Interview with the Poet

All Lit Up: Tell us about your collection.Amanda Jernigan: Years, Months, and Days is a collection of lyric fragments, small meditations on lines or passages from hymns in Die Gemeinschaftliche Liedersammlung, a Mennonite hymnal published in rural Ontario in 1836. ALU: What is your process for beginning a poem? Has it changed since you began writing?AJ: I have no particular process for beginning a poem, and for this reason, when I feel a poem beginning in me, I try to stop everything and listen. If anything has changed, in this, since I began writing, it is that I have become less sure about where the poems come from, and whether there will ever be another one.That said, sometimes one hits a vein, and this was the case with Years, Months, and Days. I began making these small poems almost in secret, without a sense of where I was going or what I was doing, but they continued to come — more and more of them. Eventually, Inter Arts Matrix, an organization in Waterloo, commissioned a series of them as words for music; fourteen of them make up the libretto for the choral piece Years, Months, and Days, by Colin Labadie. It was premiered by Menno Singers in 2017.Despite my superstition about where poems come from, I do like an assignment. There’s something workmanlike and proper about making words for a particular audience and occasion — and I love writing words for music. Music is a superpower, I think (see below). When words put on music, it’s like they’re putting on a cape. ALU: What sparked your initial love of poetry?AJ: Hearing poetry read aloud, when I was a child. ALU: Who are some of your fave women of poetry?AJ: Jay Macpherson, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop.ALU: What do you find most informs and inspires your writing?AJ: Conversation, in the broadest sense. ALU: If you had one superpower, what would it be? Could you describe it in a haiku?AJ: To sing like my friend,the countertenor DanielCabena. And, yes.  * * *

A Poem from Years, Months, and Days

That Iwho isbut clayshould feelsuch joy.* * *

Amanda Jernigan is the author of two previous books of poems, Groundwork (Biblioasis, 2011) and All the Daylight Hours (Cormorant, 2013), as well as of the monograph Living in the Orchard: The Poetry of Peter Sanger (Frog Hollow, 2014). She is the editor of The Essential Richard Outram (Porcupine’s Quill, 2011) and, with Evan Jones, of Earth and Heaven: An Anthology of Myth Poetry (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Parnassus, PN Review, The Dark Horse, Atlanta Review, and The Nation, as well as in numerous Canadian literaries, and have been set to music, notably by Colin Labadie, whose piece Years, Months, and Days was premiered by Menno Singers in May 2017.* * *During the month of April, you can buy Years, Months, and Days as well as  any of our featured Poetry Grrrowl books for 15% off (+ we’ll send you a stack of our exclusive temporary tattoos and stickers to show off your woman pride!)Keep up with us all month on    Twitter,  Instagram, and  Facebook with the hashtag #poetrygrrrowl.BONUS: Test your knowledge of all the rad women of poetry with our  Poetry Grrrowl quiz! (Amanda Jernigan, from Years, Months, and Days, Biblioasis, 2018)