In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Josh Nicolaisen
Your piece, “Sometimes I Walk Barefoot Through Freshly Tilled Soil,” wraps up Volume 27. Where did the inspiration for this piece come from?
Yes, and thank you so much for such a prized spot in the journal. I was truly awed and honored when my copy arrived. I wrote this poem one spring after prepping our vegetable garden for the season with my wife and daughters. I was thinking about our gardens and how they bring us together as a family. I was thinking about mental health and personal acceptance and possibility and Willa Cather’s O’ Pioneers and the goats we used to raise and a bumper sticker my wife once had that said “A good rind is a terrible thing to waste.”
There’s a beautiful dissonance of the title, which feels idyllic, and the text of the poem, which gets into the reality of the dirt. Can you talk more about the development of this idea?
Yeah, so that’s the O’ Pioneers part, and it has to do with the indulgences of being barefoot. It has to do with vices and acceptance and personal forgiveness. I think it’s best that I share Cather’s words:
“Ivar,” Signa asked suddenly, “will you tell me why you go barefoot? All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask you. Is it for a penance, or what?”
“No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my youth up I have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to every kind of temptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged. It was necessary to make some allowances; and the feet, as I understand it, are free members. There is no divine prohibition for them in the Ten Commandments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the heart, all the bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but the feet are free members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even to trampling in filth when my desires are low. They are quickly cleaned again.”
You use a lot of taste and smell sensations. Were they part of the first draft or did they get layered in later? Do you use these senses in other pieces?
Those came quickly in this poem, which was one of the rare occasions where the first draft arrived pretty much as is. The piece underwent one minor set of revisions, but mostly still lives in its original form. I think tactful and relatable sensory language is the most effective way to bring readers into poems. My writing students might even say I overdo it in my asking for them to add additional sensory details.
Compost plays such a huge role in this piece. What does this idea of this sort of recycling mean to you?
Aside from teaching writing at Plymouth State University, I’m also a self-employed fine gardener. I work with compost a lot and appreciate the role it plays in our ecosystem. I use compost made at home with food waste, poultry litter, grass clippings, and sheep manure. I also use commercially, mass-produced compost in my clients’ gardens. Humans create an enormous amount of food waste. We eat far too much beef, and too many animals in general. We are obsessed with large, tidy, green lawns. We do these things despite knowing the huge contribution they have to climate change and I think about all of this a lot, probably too much. Additionally, as dirty and gross of a process making them is, most fertilizers (especially organic ones) are created with animal bi-products, and as much as the ethics around our systems of factory farming and big agriculture bother me and cause me to consider my impact and the impact of my business, I enjoy being able see beautiful things grow from what we destroy.
What themes do you write about?
My writing spends a lot of time outdoors, which has been much of my lived experience. I write a lot about boyhood and masculinity and what that even means. I write about family and ancestry and loss. I write about mental and physical health, and gardening, and the forest, and parenting, and love. I write into what I know and what I still wonder about what I don’t.
Who are some of your favorite authors? What books or poems do you love?
I could go on for far too long here, so I’ll try and pinpoint a few writers that really do it for me. Firstly, I have an obsession with Kurt Vonnegut. In my office he resides on a paperweight, a skateboard deck, on several pieces of art, and in the form of a stuffie. I have more than one t-shirt featuring his face and my right leg is covered in tattoo versions of his drawings. I implore you to read some Vonnegut. I always recommend people start with Breakfast of Champions or God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. Cormac McCarthy and Willa Cather are a couple classic fiction writers that I love. I recently finished a streak of new novels by some the Randolph MFA faculty and couldn’t recommend more highly, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr, Julia Phillips’ Bear, and Clare Beams’ The Garden.
Gregory Orr and Ted Kooser are poets whose poems make me want to write poems. Their imagery, economy of language, and ability to see deeply into quotidian situations never ceases to amaze me. I feel much the same about Theodore Roethke, and “My Papa’s Waltz” is probably my favorite poem of all time. Sharon Olds’ odes have been so important to me. Chet’la Sebree was my mentor during the first semester of my MFA program, and her work, work ethic, and kindness are all to be adored. William Fargasson and Taneum Bambrick are two contemporary poets that I absolutely cannot get enough of and whose work I hope mine is in conversation with.
Additionally, I’m so excited to be sharing space in this issue of Water~Stone with NH Poet Laureate, Jennifer Militello, and with my friend and workshop partner Christopher Gaumer.
What are you working on now?
Right now, I’m writing to you from a weeklong residency at Hewnoaks in Maine. This past summer has probably been the most hectic one of my adult life, and I think I’ve only drafted two poems in the past year. I’ve needed this time and space so badly. It’s incredible to feel rested and creative again and I’m incredibly grateful for the good fortune of being awarded this time and space.
I’m working on a couple of things while I’m here. I’m working on a review of Samyak Shertok’s No Rhodendendron, which comes out October 7th. It’s incredibly touching and does some highly impressive work with invented and adapted forms. I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy. I’m also refining a manuscript for a chapbook and another for what I hope to be my first full-length collection. I’m digging into some long-awaited revisions and sorting through lots of highly appreciated workshop feedback that I’m finally finding time to work with. I’m writing some new stuff. I’m practicing patience and rest. I’m thankful to Jenn at Water~Stone Review for asking me these questions and to you for reading my answers. Thank you.
Josh Nicolaisen lives in New Hampshire and teaches writing at Plymouth State University. He holds an MFA from Randolph College and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He has been awarded a grant from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference and a fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His work has recently appeared in Colorado Review, Hunger Mountain Review, So It Goes, Appalachian Review, Poetry South, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. Find him at oldmangardening.com/poetry.
