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Writer’s Block: Nathanael Jones
Informed by early inspiration drawn from underground hip-hop and his preference for poetic prose, Nathanael Jones explores the intersection of language, rhythm, and structure in his work. In his collection of prose poetryAqueous (The Porcupine’s Quill), Nathanael weaves a complex tapestry of prose poems exploring fractured identity, history, and community within the Afro-Caribbean Canadian diaspora.
Today, he reflects on a pivotal experience that shaped his poetic voice, fear disguised as writer’s block, and more.
All Lit Up: Is there one stand-out moment or experience you had that helped you realize you wanted to become a writer?
Nathanael Jones: In 2001 I was 13. That summer I remember watching an issue of 411 video magazine—a now defunct, multimedia skateboard periodical—and hearing a song during one of the segments, “Araingus (Race the Moon),” by the underground hip hop group Mystik Journeymen. I kept thinking, “This sounds wicked; I want to do this too.” This is the moment I keep going back to with regards to my writing practice. The way they were using language was exciting and still inspires me to write today. I stopped rapping a long time ago but there are a lot of lessons I learned from that time that I still carry forward.
ALU: Which writers have influenced you or had the most impact on your own writing?
NJ: In my early twenties, I remember trying to watch the Terry Gilliam film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas several times, and not succeeding in getting to the end for many years. The reasons for this are still a mystery to me. What I do know is that these repeated viewings helped me figure out how to take speech cadences I had picked up from hip hop and translate them to prose. I’m not a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson, but his writing comprises a lot of the voiceover in that movie, so credit where it’s due. A more conventional list of influences might read like so: W.G. Sebald, Cia Rinne, Dionne Brand, Kodwo Eshun.
ALU: Have you experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?
NJ: I think that what others call writer’s block I call, “I don’t know what I want to say right now,” or, “I don’t know how to say what I want to say right now and am afraid to try something out.” This happens to me almost every other day. I just tell myself not to be afraid and to write, to write literally anything. Fear stops you from writing; and fear is always going to be there trying to stop you. This doesn’t mean you just write all the time to keep the bogeyman away either though (see my answer to “Do you have any rituals that you abide by when you’re writing?”).
ALU: Do you have any rituals that you abide by when you’re writing?
NJ: I don’t think I’m naturally inclined toward ritual per se. I do try to write down ideas as quickly as possible when they come to me though. At the worst of times this becomes a cruel compulsion, but more often than not it helps me get beyond self-doubt and perfectionism. I also try not to throw out my notebooks anymore. Yeah, that’s a good one.
ALU: What do you enjoy reading?
NJ: I like prose that functions or is structured like poetry; poetry that’s very prosaic; poetry written seemingly without the use of determiners or conjunctions, just noun verb adjective noun; writing that compresses a lot into a little; writing that is very conscious of how language sounds. What this means practically is that I spent a long time being dissatisfied with most fiction and poetry and instead felt kinship with people breaking conventions in nonfiction. I grew up reading encyclopedias and dictionaries. This is a very hard question.
ALU: Do you have a book that you’ve gone back and read several times?
NJ: There are quite a few books I’ve reread, and I’ve definitely read all the books I still own multiple times, but I remember reading Martin Creed: Works almost monthly in my mid twenties. Martin Creed is a British visual artist and the book is just a long list of his output over a twenty year period. The titles for his pieces are all very formulaic and self-descriptive (e.g. “Work No. 3319 Running Guitar and Violin, 2019”).
ALU: If you had to describe your writing style in just a few words, what would they be?
NJ: Breakbeat science fiction.
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Aqueous by Nathanael Jones is a collection of prose poems that address the ways in which post-colonial realities in the black diaspora continue to fracture concepts of identity, history and memory, place, and community. Through the use of extended metaphors relating to the transatlantic slave trade, contemporary art, marine biology, and the commercial construction industry, both personal and collective experiences of being Afro-Caribbean Canadian in North America/Turtle Island are described and enacted as indefinitely liminal. Organized into three main poem sequences, the collection first uses a fictional sound art piece as a way of diagramming the kinds of fractured subjectivities engendered by colonialism and its after effects. In the second sequence, a beleaguered speaker navigates realities of manual labour and how they are used to shape racialized and gendered identities, and the pressures these forces exert upon interpersonal relationships. Lastly, the third sequence delves further into oceanographic themes in order to compose a portrait of Montreal’s black anglophone communities as both invisible and yet forever in the peripherals of mainstream cultures in Canada.
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Nathanael Jones was born in Montreal, Canada, and studied art and literature at NSCAD University and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of two chapbooks: ATG (HAIR CLUB, 2016) and La Poèsie Caraïbe (Damask Press, 2018). He has exhibited and performed his work in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., and has been published online and in print with DREGINALD, Ghost Proposal, Aurochs, Heavy Feather Review, and TIMBER, among others.
