JESSIE JACKSON

Jessie is a third-year Writing and Literature poltergeist currently haunting the lakes and sandstone halls of UQ. Her writing has previously been published in Jacaranda Journal, The Tundish Review and PASTEL Magazine. You can find her lamenting the absurdity of humid summers as a ghost and levitating objects at any local poetry reading.

All-Stars is Jessie's second appearance in PASTEL.

It's been a hot minute since your original appearance in PASTEL. Not only are you one of sixteen original contributors, but you also hold the honour of being PASTEL's first-ever, published PASPal. Since Issue One's release, how has your poetry evolved?

It’s hard for me to say how my own writing has evolved since my first appearance in PASTEL, because I always feel close to the writing I’m doing at the moment and it’s an uncomfortable experience for me to look back on anything that isn’t that. but when I do read back on the poems that were published in that issue I feel like they are a very vague representation of the person I was then of the ideas I was working through in regards to myself and the people around me, as all my poetry seems to be. Poetry-wise I’ve gained some courage in writing about deeply personal and often upsetting parts of my life/ but also the amusing or ridiculous or contented moments.

When I first started to write poetry I was afraid of my readers understanding too much about what I was writing and then connecting it to me. But in writing more poetry and living more life, I’ve realised that I can only write to express my own experiences and that connecting to my readers, in making them feel perhaps less alone or finding some kind of comfort in my writing, is the one thing I’d like to do.

I like to be more frank these days, I name people or things as they are instead of censoring myself out of shame. I might one day regret that but today I feel I owe it to myself and anyone who reads it. I’ve gained confidence to speak specifically on my experiences as a young, feminist woman and have finally confronted my opinions that deserve to be heard and matter to me and hopefully to others.

I am also, as a less direct part of my poetry, more involved in the local poetry scene; something that has been an amazing and inspiring adventure for me as a shy and naturally secretive person.

Who or what inspires your writing?

Inspiration is a funny thing and I’m never quite sure when I’ve got it, except I do tend to decide on little images or phrases that I hear or see. I’m not sure why I pick these things, I think they strike something in me that resonates as important, often they’ll be metaphors for something I’m not sure of yet. Animals and natural events feature in my poetry a lot birds and storms specifically, people and houses too. I am drawn often to the suburban, the nominal, the magic and tragic within the ordinary. My loved ones, particularly my mother as of late, feature very heavily and inspire my writing quite a lot. Little pieces of phrases, images, moments like scrapbooking come together over larger themes, that I’m dealing with that day or week.

I think I write a lot about the women in my life because I’m trying to trace their histories back to me, to piece together who I am. The women in my family have a habit of getting lost, and it’s important to me to find them. Often times I will be inspired by sad little moments, tactile physical objects representative of people but recently I am trying to also be more inspired by the happy little moments (the gaze of a butcherbird into your eyes or lipstick stains on toothbrushes). I know that when I’m writing a poem I’m hoping to say something in the spaces between the words, something larger, but I’m not always exactly sure what that is.

Issue One featured four of your poems, each in their own way linked to themes of loss, and the passage of time. A death of innocence occurs across generations in 'Bad Things Happen in Threes', and in '7AM and Life Has Started', you fear losing parts of yourself in the night. How do/did these themes attract you in writing your poetry?

At the time I wrote Bad Things Happen in Threes, I was about 18 and dealing with the death of my own innocence, the death of how I viewed certain people in my life and sulking about what I viewed as a sort of family curse and a propensity towards despair, death and abandonment. In this poem, and often in my own poetry I deal with the idea of myself as being somehow too soft, too easily broken by the world. This poem is very much about the belief I’d always held that my family was made up of little bird women, soft as roses, not so good under pressure. Death of innocence as a wider theme is a cause of constant anxiety for me, and I think that’s why I write about it. I was and am still young and this pity I felt for my grandmother and my mother and myself in turn was what inspired me to write that poem. The theme of losing parts of myself is a common thread throughout my poetry, it links back to the idea of fragility and lack of endurance. That whole poem tracks me trying to work through the feeling that I could never be the type of person that wakes up at 7am, ready to start life, energised by it.

When I wrote 7am I had just been to the dentist and the idea of my body slowly rotting, being replaced by artificial parts re-enforced my neuroses about being born inadequately aided to deal with the world. On the cusp of adulthood, I was writing a lot about the death of my childhood, the discovery’s that you make about your family, and the feeling I had that I wasn’t able to function the way I thought adults had to. I still write about these things, but I’m inclined to also think the women in my family are incredibly strong and resilient and I look up to that instead of lamenting over it. I’ve definitely learnt to treasure my softness in a world where that characteristic isn’t always valued or noticed. I am no better at functioning as an adult should, but I’ve realised through many years of obsessing over it that you are who you want to be and that one day I might, if I want to, get up at 7am and start my life that way. I am infinity interested in the idea that our childhoods pre-determine the adult we’ll be, but I love to think that you can try to completely disregard all of that as well. In terms of adulthood, I think everyone is just doing the best they can.

The night recurs in your poetry, and much of your work (and your personal style) is laden with a stylistic twist on the gothic (Twin Peaks, but glam it up and make it fashion). Have you always been drawn to the darker aesthetic of the witching hours, and what about the ooky-spooky rattles your bones?

I do often feel like I’m having the longest running Goth phase ever! But yes, as a child I loved anything that had to do with true crime, or monsters but I also loved pink and fairies so there’s a dichotomy for you. As I got older I did find I was drawn particularly to anything that could be labelled eerie or spooky. There was always something comforting to me about the night, the moon, the hours where no one was around except perhaps a wide eyed possum. I’ve always identified with the monsters, the creatures skulking around quietly at night haunting the streets. But there’s also a part of me that tends to be afraid of the world, and this comes through in my poetry. I see a lot of negativity, death and terror reflected back at me and being a woman who does love to walk around at night, as many people do, there is a bit fear in me at all times, a worry around the edges of my world. I think my morbid fascination and fear of the world means I write a lot about the darker parts of it, Australian Gothic is one of my favourite genres of anything. There’s this really interesting contrast between the ‘Sunburnt Country’ on tourism ad’s and the dark underbelly of the cities, our horrible colonial past and present. There’s something in the ordinary, the everyday eerie that I’m continually drawn to, the spooky figures that loom in our lounge rooms or the shivers that come out of nowhere, a sense of some other world co-existing with ours.

You maintain a relationship with the colour red throughout your Issue One appearance, and the iridescence of black and gold in your All-Stars return. In creating new work, how significant do colours play a role?

I tend to naturally gravitate to different colours each month or year. I’m not crafty enough to realise I’m doing it but I write in these colours as well. Each place or event I write about has hue to me, so each poem does too. I like to try and capture the mood of a place or a time in my life. In Issue One I was thinking a lot about femininity, pain and loss, and the roses of my hometown, Toowoomba. In The Bay the dark metallic tones of Hervey Bay come through. In a place where the sun reflects off everything in a glare-like fashion as then melts into the dark, black tones of night out on the beach where there are no street-lights. There’s something about bright, bold colours that I love; a splash of bright red blood, or a mass of shining golden corn field. The colours of a place are so important to me when conjuring it for a poem, so I rely heavily on them for descriptions.

'The Bay' is a sombre acceptance of a slowly status quo, but advances parts of the stories started in your Issue One quartet, particularly 'Bad Things Happen in Threes'. Would you agree the former is the latter's spiritual successor? And, if the women in 'Bad Things' were lost, where might you say the woman in 'The Bay' is at?

I would definitely agree! The Bay is about a lot of the same people that Bad Things is about (namely my mother and sister) except in The Bay I am talking more about the closeness of these women to each other, in visiting a place which hold a lot of bad and good memories for us. The women in Bad Things are lost from themselves, and the world, it’s definitely a poem about familial estrangement and bad luck. However, in The Bay the woman, me I suppose, has learnt more about her family is trying to make peace with the sadness that follows them, to grow into herself and alongside her mother and sister past it. There is a pensive, calming sense I have about The Bay that I think reflects the difference between it and Bad Things, which has always felt panicked to me. In the Bay the woman is watching, perhaps lost, she is looking and seeking more than anything. I feel there is a quiet resistance to the doom and gloom I used to feel, much like a seabird watching the rough sea. I would say she is finding happiness in pebbles, flies and grass, home and singing to vacant lots with her sister.

In being a ghost, who or where would you haunt, and what flavour of phantom would you choose to be?

I like to say that I haunt UQ at the moment but I think in truth and despite myself I would for sure haunt my loved ones, probably the houses I grew up in, places that would be dilapidated or maybe even demolished that I would stubbornly hang on to. I might also haunt some beautiful buildings I never got to see when I was alive, old theatre’s or heritage buildings, somewhere dramatic of course. I’d love to be the type of ghost that haunts people and gives them advice, or steers them in the right direction. Like a good spirit I suppose? I don’t think I’d like to scare people, but maybe I’d haunt the streets in some sort of reclaim-the-night gone poltergeist way, making it safe for everyone to walk around at night!

You might be PASTEL's OG, but your story certainly doesn't stop at the PASPearly gates. Where can PASPals find more of your work?

If you say my name three times into a mirror I’m likely to pop up and stutter a couple poems before disappearing in a cloud of smoke, but you can also find more of my poetry at petiteespirit.tumblr.com and when they let me, in The Tundish Review.

To enjoy Jessie's All-Stars contribution, pick up a copy of PASTEL Magazine All-Stars at pastelthemagazine.bigcartel.com