By Anna Butler
Jeffrey Thomson is a poet, memoirist, translator, editor, and the author of multiple books including: Half/Life: New and Selected Poems from Alice James Books (October 2019), the memoir fragile, The Belfast Notebooks, The Complete Poems of Catullus, and the edited collection From the Fishouse. He has been an NEA Fellow, the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellow at Brown University. He also directed Chatham University’s creative writing Master’s program from 2000-2005, and he founded and served as the first Editor-in-Chief of The Fourth River. He is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington.
I spoke with Dr. Thomson after he was featured in a reading at Chatham University in February (one of the last the MFA program hosted before the pandemic). As an editor on The Fourth River team, a beneficiary of Dr. Thomson’s travel additions to the curriculum, and a reader of his work, I was pleased to learn more about his poetry and his contributions to Chatham University.
The Fourth River: What surprised you when you were compiling Half/Life?
Jeffrey Thomson: A lot of things. That book is basically 26 years of my publishing life—which is not my whole writing life. I hadn’t gone back to my first or second books in a long time. The violence, history, sexuality, birds…there’s a way to which I have approached the subjects that’s the same.
Also, fallen angels. I was surprised by how much I write about that concept. I’m interested in liminal space. Fallen angels are between the divine and human. Why are they fallen? People are so fascinating that the angels give up the divine to help us out. Why? People thought that it was because we were so interesting, that this was why it happened, but we’re also so helpless.
TFR: How long did the writing take?
JT: As I said, 26 years. The unifying took about two years. I wrote a bunch of new poems. I was writing up to 2016, so within the lifetime of this presidency.
TFR: Half/Life has very strong, seemingly disparate themes: history, mythology, science, pop culture. Were you concerned about tying these interests together? How did you balance the composition?
JT: I’d think it starts that way [disparate], but I’m just writing poems on what I’ve read about or care about. You get 80 pages, and then put them together. You just follow your interests and desires, and when you get a critical mass you see what this book is about. You see places to fill in 60-70 more pages of book. The instigating process follows where my brain goes.
TFR: I’m curious about your science interest, because I’m a scientist as well as a writer. Do you have a background in science? What do you read/consume that feeds that interest?
JT: When I started college, I was a biology major, so I’ve always been interested in birds and nature. Then I came to Chatham in 2000. There was a program for Chatham sophomores to go abroad. They were going to Costa Rica. I’d taken a trip to Costa Rica when I was 22, so I went with the education faculty. This is the most interesting place I’ve ever been. In the tropics things are so dense and so rich: 900 species of birds, 12 different major ecosystems. I was just chaperoning that trip, but I came back really charged up. I started studying the tropics, etc. The interest followed from there.
Also, a lot of my history poems stem from things I’ve seen in Europe, Italy, the States. I read omnivorously, and find the places where my mind catches on something. I’m not a scientist or historian, but I find things that are worth investigating. You can find so much information on anything. Two books came out of Chatham.
TFR: What did the writing program at Chatham look like before you arrived?
JT: It was a Master’s of Arts; Chatham had just started the program. It was a strange little hybrid MA in Nature Writing and YA, with Kathy Ayres in charge of the YA. When I came, maybe 20 students were enrolled, mostly local people, some community members. When I was interviewed, I was asked, '“How do we grow the program?” I said, “Make it a MFA, a MA is unclear.” And they told me, “Good. Do that.” So I proposed bigger credit and adding travel and poetry and fiction—the demand is higher than nonfiction. They said ‘yes.’ So we did that. The adjusted program grew pretty quickly. Soon we had 60-70 students. I left in ’05. And of course Sheryl St. Germain [next MFA Program Director], added pedagogy to the program.
TFR: Why the travel component?
JT: The travel component fit into Chatham’s model of ‘World Ready Women.’ Getting students out, abroad, even just for two weeks—it’s useful for being a writer. When you’re abroad, you pay more attention to things; you feel safe here. When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, you’re more attuned to the days. You’re paying attention. You can turn on that.
TFR: What led you to start a literary journal at Chatham?
JT: I was specifically hired to create a literary journal because the program didn’t have one. I served on The Missouri Review, and that experience was pretty important. After seven years I had risen to Poetry Editor. I knew how you put one together. So we put out a call for writing. We had to think of the name. We developed the nature-based environment brand—but Pittsburgh; urban space is natural space too. When we started it was just print. Print had authority.
TFR: Do you have any memories you’d like to share from your time with The Fourth River?
JT: We did an early conference based on urban environment and writing. I was convinced we were going to have no one show up. I was talking about it with Lynne Bruckner [former professor in the writing program at Chatham]. She walked away, and came back with a sign that said, “Come To Our Fucking Conference Or Else.” People showed up. It all worked. I feel lucky it did. It helped me just take a deep breath.
TFR: You wear a lot of writer-ly hats—poet, nonfiction writer, editor, translator—how do you balance these? How do you choose what sort of artistic project you will embark on?
JT: I’m not doing all of these things at once. The subject matter chooses you. It fishhooks you and won’t let you go. Bad writing starts with answers. Good writing starts with questions. I listen to the material.
I went to Ireland with a book of ideas. The poems weren’t any good. What was I going to do? I had to tell the narrative. I wasn’t listening to my own material. So I started working on a novel. Same thing with my memoir. It was a long lyric poem. I had to go back in and teach myself how to write. You have to persist with attention. The reader has to be signposted when you switch genres. I learned to listen. I understood how the pieces were connecting. That only happened through my material, not trying to force it.
TFR: What are you working on right now?
JT: I was in Italy teaching at a conference, and I discovered the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, which contains objects burned by the souls of purgatory. Things like a shirt with hand print, a book made with candle and wine corks. I’m intrigued by this idea of magical objects with a story: Christian relics, Han Solo. Did you know you can buy a full size carbonite statue? I’m not Catholic, so I had no experience with that kind of relic. And that was the hook. So that’s what I’m researching: magical objects.