The Work Room Interview: Nikki Wallschlaeger on Cosmic Poetics: Writing with the Poetry of Sun Ra

Interview by Cheyenne Paterson

CP:  It’s evident you have an unwavering interest in the conveyance of things that are unknown. How did this curiosity come to be? 

NW: I’m a curious person. I was an only child, so I began to develop the art of how to amuse myself at an early age. I also didn’t grow up in a moneyed household. I also love(d) to read. Add all these elements together and chances are, you become an artist of some kind, expressing the unknown, or what you think and feel about it, through the known. 

CP: Where did your appreciation for Sun Ra and his work stem from? 

NW: I love jazz. Naturally, Sun Ra eventually finds you, and then I was pleasantly surprised to learn he was also a prolific writer. Poetry and jazz are family. 

There are certain voices that come through my work from time to time- reminding myself that our violent shared realities do not have a monopoly on everything, especially when it comes to the complex matters of the spirit. I often imagine, through my poetry, that the speakers in my blood are larger than Earth; a cosmic dawn chorus. Grounded by the unknown, I can navigate through the known. A nourishment of the spirit through the give and take between dreams. 

CP: Why Cosmos? Why not the unexplored or neglected subject matters that exist in our society? 

NW:  My last book, Waterbaby (Copper Canyon Press) is about personal, historical, and contemporary Black grief. Poetry is a medium for expansion–from the difficult and painful, to the vivacious and irreverent. As a poet, I try to neglect nothing. I believe in looking at life directly. There’s room for considering the cosmos at work in making art. Leaving Earth once in a while is a good idea–provided it doesn’t become a prolonged habit of escape. Getting too attached to an emotional theme, particularly if it’s traumatic, can end up in disaster.