Interview with Writer J. David
This interview was conducted on December 16, 2019 by EIC Sarah O’Brien for Boston Accent Lit. This is the second in a 2020 Boston Accent interview series with writers.
J. David is a Ukrainian-American writer and laboratory geneticist from Cleveland, Ohio. They identify as non-binary as well as asexual and live with the symptoms of Schizoaffective Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. A member of the Sad Kid's Superhero Collective, Editor-in-Chief for FlyPaper Lit, Art and Media Editor for BARNHOUSE Journal, and Chief Poetry Critic for the Cleveland Review of Books; their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salt Hill Journal, Passages North, The Journal, Lunch Ticket, Blue Mesa Review, Frontier Poetry, Cosmonauts Avenue, Puerto del Sol, Reed Magazine, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and others. They released their debut chapbook, Hibernation Highway, in March 2020 from Madhouse Press. Learn more about J. David on their website.
Boston Accent Lit: Why did you become a writer? Have you always been a writer?
J. David: My writing life began after reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Up to that point, I was an avid reader with a lively imaginative life, I had so many stories and ideas inside my head that I never knew what to do with. When I found out Christopher was 15 when he wrote the book, it gave me the permission I was looking for. I started writing fantasy novels when I was 9, 10, 11 years old, around there. Although I only ever finished one of them, it was the incidence of opportunity and license that catapulted me into writing. There was such a deep love of the creative aspect in writing, it was pure freedom to imagine the self and the world as I saw fit.
Boston Accent: Describe the intense feelings you have for Cleveland.
J. David: Cleveland is by far the best city on the planet, I will spend collectively about 34,732 hours a year defending this statement and will die on this hill gladly. I have numerous threads on twitter praising Cleveland that happen pretty frequently so just watch out for those, I guess. What truly elevates Cleveland in my eyes is the density of talented writers living here—Megan Neville, Daniel Gray-Kontar, Nikki Zielinksi, Jason Harris, Matt Mitchell, Mary Biddinger, Noor Hindi, Phil Metres, Leila Chatti, Akeem Jamal Rollins, Geramee Hensley, Naazneen Diwan, among others. The truly magnificent part about all of these humans though, is the community. They’re not just writing there, but they’re hosting readings, workshops, panels, running lit journals and festivals together, hanging out together. The community here is the best in the world, everyone is supportive and jazzed to be around each other, and the community drastically improves the work produced. A special shoutout is in order, to Kevin Latimer and Alex DiFrancesco, two of my favorite humans alive and two of the most exciting writers, they make this city truly special.
Boston Accent: You recently completed a full-length manuscript. What is the book about?
J. David: This year [2019], the sixth of my friends committed suicide. This year, my partner left me—my schizophrenia worsened and they could no longer navigate our relationship. To cope, I spent the year writing. These poems are an obsession with grief and its many flavors. They consider the process one goes through in deciding upon suicide and meander through the shape of loss in an attempt to come out on the other side of sorrow intent on joy. These are the most honest poems I’ve ever written. They construct a narrative around characters I’ve used to represent different emotions and weave symbolism throughout a life history. Within, they reminisce about the past, intent on making meaning from hardship. Also considered is the cost of mental illness upon ourselves and those around us. I attempt to weave a fairy-tale dream-state with reality and use imagination as a catalyst for understanding. The poems together constitute an argument for staying alive, finding joy, and choosing to heal.
Boston Accent: You write a lot of essays in addition to your poetry work. How do you choose which genre to use for each creative piece? Does most of your inspiration come from your lived experiences and from music? (We all know about your love for Julien Baker.)
J. David: Most of my creative pieces begin as poetry, usually in the general blob of a prose poem for the first few drafts before I begin to play with form and language. Some pieces resist poetic language or line breaks, or require more space to negotiate the subject, and these ones I’ll begin drafting as an essay from there on out. Also, whenever I write about music I want it to be an essay because the form allows me more space to unspool the song/artist on the page. Most of my inspiration does, in fact, come from my personal life. I love the Oscar Wilde quote “be yourself; everyone else is already taken,” it often times reminds me of just how unqualified I am to tell any story that isn’t my own in some shape. I am constantly learning myself and it is a truly miraculous journey. I think all folks discover themselves in much the same way and grow into their humanness, like buying shoes a few years early in anticipation. I think by talking about ourselves and unpacking the density of our lives we build bridges to other people to show truly how similar we are, and the ways in which our differences should engender love.
Boston Accent: How does serving as Editor of the literary magazine FlyPaper Lit affect the way you approach your own writing?
J. David: It allows me to be in conversation with more writers, to see what conversations the literary community at large is engaging in. I want my work to be contending with as many systems of power as possible, and this serves as a pillar of my education in that area. It also puts my work in perspective, helping me realize that there are hundreds of reasons a poem might not be accepted for publication, very few of them having to do with the quality of the work—a lot of great poems don’t get accepted for publication. Being an editor has taught me to weather rejections graciously and without discouragement.
Boston Accent: You are originally from Kharkov, Ukraine. How does this identify inform your writing or your writing life?
J. David: I am carrying not only my history, but the history of my people—these are big shoes to fill. I no longer call Ukraine home, and never belonged to the country in many ways, I am an American. I carry this too. I negotiate both stances in my work at large and extricate the meaning of home. I am searching for my belonging. I ask myself every day the meaning of home.
Boston Accent: In an alternate universe in which you are not a writer or editor, what are you doing?
J. David: Easy, I would be an MLB closing pitcher. I love Cleveland Baseball and I daydream daily of playing for them.
Boston Accent: You have a poem called “The Asexual Boy Buys Roses for the Entire Strip Club.” Would you like to share anything about the process of writing this piece? To me it feels very personal, especially with the use of the first-person perspective. I keep going back to this piece for its title. After reading the poem, this title breaks me both for its unapologetic claim of identity despite past traumas (“The Asexual Boy”) and for its desire for acts of selfless love, even if absurd (“Buys Roses for the Entire Strip Club”). How do you come up with titles for your poetry?
J. David: At this time in my life I still identified as a cissexual male, though I was questioning. I knew however, that I was asexual. It was my first time ever going to a strip club, and I was really uncomfortable. During this period I was still finding healthy ways to navigate sex and sexuality. At some point I was so overstimulated and anxiety-ridden that I left the club to get some air. While I waited outside for my friends, a homeless man approached me selling flowers. I bought a dozen and returned inside to pass them out. The poem itself is attempting to grapple with the violence we inflict on ourselves while learning ourselves. Specifically, in this poem, the ways I’d harmed myself by engaging in sexual acts before I understood my sexuality in full.
Boston Accent: Many might be surprised to learn that you are also a laboratory geneticist. What do you like about this career? Have you ever found inspiration for poetry or creative nonfiction while in the lab or while traveling for work?
J. David: I love science in much the same way I love poems. Frequently, I misquote, what I am told is originally one of Carl Sagan’s quips, “I am the student of a cosmic curiosity.” The fiercest desire I have ever encountered in this life is my own, the one in which I, above all else, wish to learn everything I can about as many things as possible before I die. This includes both the exterior world, which I achieve through science; and the interior world, which I achieve through poems. Both my poetry and my research contends with my current curiosities. After I finish my MFA I want to go onto a PhD program in Genetics. I also have a debilitating penchant for particle and theoretical physics.
Boston Accent: What are you reading right now?
J. David: I am rereading, for the third time, Julia Kolchinsky-Dasbach’s The Many Names For Mother, while also encountering She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. The next few books in my pile are Houseboat Days by John Ashbery, All City by Alex DiFrancesco (for a second time), and Space Struck by Paige Lewis.
Be sure to add J. David’s debut book, Hibernation Highway, to your reading list. Out now from Madhouse.