Poet Spotlight: Jocelyn Ajami
Sentinel
Oval
October 2020
Jocelyn Ajami, a painter and filmmaker for over twenty years and founder of Gypsy Heart Productions, was interviewed by Caroline Johnson. As an artist with a global perspective, Jocelyn has been the recipient of numerous awards, including major grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Leadership Foundation, International Women's Forum, and the Goethe Institute. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 and has been published in several anthologies of prize winning poems, including Encore (2018) in which her poem, Un Deseo, won the Founders Award/first prize, from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
When did you begin writing poetry?
I had been a painter for over twenty years with no real interest in poetry. I started writing in 2014 even though I didn’t think of it as poetry, just words to share. When I performed Still Until at the Green Mill, I started to get the message that this was spoken word poetry and by 2017 these “shared words” lead me to the semi-finals at the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic competition.
What triggered your interest in creating poems?
I turned to writing poetry out of despair. It was around the time of Laquan McDonald’s murder and I decided to write “texts” to accompany a couple of my drawings on a project called FRAGILE. The poems, Still Until and Chicago Burning were examples of this.
Who are your favorite poets?
This is a tough question. My taste is pretty eclectic from rappers Nas and Tupac Shakur to Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Federico Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mahmoud Darwish, Juan Felipe Herrera, Tracy K. Smith, Ocean Vuong and many of my fellow poets.
What inspires you? Other poets, painting? music?
As artists, I think everything has the potential to inspire us, from a tossed feather to the condition of humanity. I also find poetry, painting and dance to be direct sources of inspiration.
Where have you published?
I have been published In the Journal of Modern Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review bottle rockets press, Modern Haiku, Encore, Distilled Lives, Northern Colorado Writers, Highland Park Poetry
Are you in a feedback group that meets regularly? If so, How often?
Yes, Brown Bag Poets at the Cultural Center once a week and P&P workshops four times a year.
We know every poem is different but--on average--how many revisions does one of your published poems require?
More often than not, I make twenty or more revisions. With haiku, I might hit on it right away or change it dozens of times. But I am still learning.
Do you gear some of your work toward performance poetry rather than the written form? Why or why not?
I actually don’t. Several of my performance pieces just ended up that way, but I notice that these pieces usually have a political or protest bias. However, I wrote some, based on music and dance, that also seem to come alive with performance. Others are more introspective. I don’t think these distinctions matter too much, except in the world of publishing which seems to avoid “spoken word” in print and has a nose bleed when it comes to rhyme. Although that is slowly changing.
How long might you struggle with a poem that doesn’t seem to want to come together?
It feels like a lifetime. Seriously, I might work on a poem for a whole year.
Is there a special person in your life you’re inclined to share your work with? Explain.
My fellow poets are a great source of support and insight, but I find that folks outside the literary realm can hone in on weaknesses immediately because they are unfiltered. My husband, Jim, has a great ear for pointing out when something is
out of sync.