Author Q&A with jaz papadopoulos

To bring back our Author Q&A series, we're looking back at jaz papadopoulos's excellent debut poetry collection I Feel That Way Too from our Fall 2024 season. Get to know jaz and revisit their poetry through these insightful responses!

From where did you write the majority of I Feel That Way Too?  

I wrote this book during the first two years of COVID-19, so it was almost exclusively written from my East Van collective house. As soon as lockdowns started, one of my roommates basically just moved back in with her parents on Vancouver Island. I swear that at first we didn’t even realize she was gone—she was so quiet, and barely ever home. We only knew she’d been there if there was a half-eaten pie in the fridge. Once I realized she had skipped town, I sent a text offering to pay half her rent if I could turn her bedroom into a writing space. I flipped her mattress against the wall and set up a desk against the window, overlooking the North Shore. We kept on like this until I eventually moved out. I never saw her again.

Did anything surprise you during the process of writing or publishing this book? 

I was surprised I finished this project! Initially it was my thesis project for my MFA; when it was accepted by Nightwood I added pages to make it about 25% longer. If it wasn’t initially a school assignment, I don’t know that I’d ever have written a full-length book. Later on, after I’d finished it, I visited the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. The museum is absolutely amazing (100% recommend!) but what really stood out to me was how it showcased process. When it comes to making something, there really are just so. many. steps. Now I keep in mind that things actually just take a really really really long time.

Do you have any routines or rituals that help you write?

Does taking my medically-prescribed stimulants count? Lol. My most ritualistic activity is this: when I’m nearing the end, as in I’m several drafts in, I turn my attention to language. I look at all the verbs, adjectives and nouns I’m using and try to make them more meaningful, more specific. I do think by lying in a dimly lit room and reading this enormous vintage dictionary my ex-wife gave me. I’ll choose a word, turn to the section of the dictionary that starts with the same letter and just read words/definitions until I find a more interesting word to replace it with. This is, for example, how I turned my line about predatory male camp counsellors from “tall, dark and handsome” to “tall, dark and haptic.”

My brain really prefers puzzle pieces and pattern recognition to just generating thought, so many of my routines revolve around finding my own puzzle pieces to work with. (I also do a lot of printing, cutting, and re-arranging.)

What lives on your writing desk? 

I have this woven coaster that a friend gifted me while I was working on I Feel That Way Too. It’s straw-coloured, circular, woven in a tight spiral at the centre and then fanning straight out around the edge, like rays fanning out around the sun. The friend who gave me this coaster had also bought one for themself, so for years when I sat a mug of coffee on the coaster it felt like a portal to that friendship. That friend died a little over a year ago, and now sometimes I wonder who keeps the matching coaster that was theirs. Either way, it’s a love object that gives a little snuggle to my heart.

What is a fun fact about yourself?

I am a certified clown. I started writing experimental poetry after going to clown school. I had been reading a lot of critical theory, and I thought to myself, poetry is the linguistic version of clowning. I think this has helped my writing in myriad ways—most obviously, a clowning practice helps me be present, observant and willing to disrupt supposed writing norms. But it has also gotten me in touch with a more nuanced depth of emotional experience, and ways of communicating that through the body (and then through language). I recommend clown school to anyone who is willing to try it.

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Lambda Literary Fellow jaz papadopoulos offers a poetically critical look at how sexual assault trials impact survivors.

A critical response to the #MeToo movement, I Feel That Way Too is an experiment in narrative poetics. It weaves through past and present, drawing together art, philosophy, the Jian Ghomeshi trial and childhood memory to interrogate how media and social power structures sustain patriarchal ideologies. Inspired by the works of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Anne Carson, A.M. O’Malley and Isobel O’Hare, these poems are lyrical and meditative, moving to make sense of the nervous system in battle and in recovery.