An Interview with Jackie Craven
By: Athena Kalos
Whish by Jackie Craven, ISBN: 978-1-950413-78-2
Jackie Craven is a veteran of the literary world. Over the past 20 years, she has written for several journals and has had multiple books published on topics ranging from architecture and home décor to fiction and poetry. Her published books include Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018), two chapbooks, Cyborg Sister (Headmistress Press, 2021) and Our Lives Became Unimaginable (Omnidawn, 2016), and interior design books. Craven’s newest poetry collection, WHISH, won the 2024 Press 53 Award for poetry and greatly shows off her skill in writing thought-provoking surrealist poetry. Craven takes seconds, minutes, and hours and personifies them into relatable characters living in the real world. She utilizes stunning short-form prose poems that transport the reader across the electric city.
Athena Kalos: “Whish” is the title of the book, and it also appears in several of the poems in the collection — it connects them in an additional way. Was this intentional, or did it come naturally as you were writing? Did it appear in the poems first and then you made it the title or vice versa?
Jackie Craven: The title WHISH came fairly late in the revision process. For a long time, I called the manuscript When the Clock Breaks and several other names. However, I loved the word “whish.” It seemed to describe both speed (whoosh) and longing (wish). I used “Whish” for a poem I published in Ploughshares. Gradually, “whish” and similar words worked their way into other poems. After many revisions, my entire collection of poems became WHISH.
AK: Following up with that, whish, as you have said before in a previous interview, is a sound. I noticed all throughout the book you use quite a bit of onomatopoeia. Was this an intended goal with the sonics of the collection?
JC: Most of the onomatopoeia occurred organically. I wasn’t aware that I was using so many words like whish, woosh, sssss, and poof until a friend in my poetry critique group pointed them out. I became self-conscious and wondered if I should hold back. But after I decided to title the collection WHISH, I deliberately added a few extra “whishes.”
AK: Your poem 11:59 Slumps on a Stool at the Corner Café paints an incredibly relatable feeling of time not moving. You also make the mention of Salvador Dalí. Just out of curiosity, was this poem inspired by his The Persistence of Memory?
JC: Dalí’s painting of a melting clock is haunting. I think that image must have been at the back of my mind as I worked on WHISH. But in early drafts of “11:59,” I envisioned a very different scene: “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper. In Hopper’s painting, we gaze from a dark street into the glaring light of an all-night diner. A man and woman gaze vacantly at a white-clad waiter behind the counter. A figure in the shadows hunches over his coffee. There’s no clock in Hopper’s scene, but I imagined the kind of hopelessness an imaginary hour might feel. The character I call “11:59 PM” is doomed to be nothing other than 11:59. However, when my editor read the poem, he immediately thought of Salvador Dalí. Edward Hopper practiced stark realism, but Dalí toyed with reality, creating wildly distorted images. Paintings like “The Persistence of Memory” depict scenes that are crazy and unsettling, yet also brightly colored and a bit playful. At my editor’s urging, I revised the poem about 11:59 to reference Dalí instead of Hopper.
AK: In my initial reading of 11:59, I was imagining Nighthawks! The lines “A couple gazes vacantly at the white-clad waiter who clatters behind the counter” and “The bleary window, the empty street, the static air” heavily reminded me of this infamous painting (frankly, one of my favorites). Upon looking at Persistence, I realized it works as well, but you beautifully and undeniably captured the aura of Nighthawks.
AK: What was it like getting into the headspace to write such surreal and powerful images; to give all these times their own personalities and experiences? Did you have a process or a certain technique?
JC: For many months I wrote vague, boring poems about Time with a capital T. The writing was slow and torturous until I began to imagine particular moments — seconds, minutes, hours — as human characters. I put these imagined characters in familiar real-world places and gave them emotions and problems similar to my own. For example, how often have I sat at my desk and dreamed of writing a novel, just like the character named “9:22”? This shift from abstract to personal, general to specific, made all the difference. I discovered that I could free-write a batch of surreal poems in one sitting, often typing them into my phone. From each batch, I chose a couple poems to develop. Every poem, even the shortest ones, evolved through multiple revisions.
AK: Many of the poems feel as though they are all set in the same settings: a city, a workplace, a hospital. Were any of these rooted in real places from your life?
JC: Thank you for noticing that! The “electric city” mentioned in the opening poem references Schenectady, New York. This is where Thomas Edison developed the light bulb and founded the company that became General Electric. After World War II, the science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr worked as a publicist for GE. I’ve lived in Schenectady most of my adult life and I really enjoy the quirky mix of science, art, and history. So, although WHISH is sheer fantasy, the poems contain real world details like Erie Boulevard, Nott Terrace, and a bronze statue of Thomas Edison.
Athena Kalos graduated with a degree in Classics and a minor in Creative Writing in the spring of 2024. She hails from Sussex County where she works at the local library and spends most of her free time playing video games or reading.