The Work Room Interview: Patricia Spears Jones on Her Workshop, Nine Women Poets

Interview by Cheyenne Paterson

CP: Can you elaborate on the origin of this workshop? 

PSJ: My workshop is a variation on one that I started in 2017. There are many workshops that are de facto gender-segregated—women’s workshops often provide a safe and nurturing space for poets and writers. And in them, a litany of powerful poets served as models: Adrienne Rich, Emily Dickinson, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucille Clifton. Every one of those poets offers each of us a foundation on which to explore language and humanity. But, I thought, what about living breathing women poets whose work can be also explored and inspire others? 

CP: With the subject matter primarily focusing on women, would you say that this class will be beneficial to all students or will people who identify as women be best served? 

PSJ: While I did not create a workshop specifically for women –poets of other genders most certainly can participate in the workshop. I really wanted to focus on who is writing now and what they are saying. As a Black woman poet, I know that I bring very different and, I hope, fresh approaches to diverse topics: relationships, philosophy, art, the family, social justice, political activism, sexuality, youth, aging, the environment, American history and culture; cross border relations, friendship, rage. My peers are often daring in their subject matter, their modes of expression, their interrogation of language and how it can repress or liberate. They are stimulating and challenging and sometimes very very funny. 

CP: The literary canon is always such a dynamic and subjective concept. What authors or works are deemed worthy of canonization to you? 

PSJ: I think of writers now as canon making, not as canonized. Poets who have made work for several decades such as Maureen Owen, Trish Salah, Brenda Hillman, Marilyn Chin, Joy Ladin, and Marilyn Nelson are in conversation with the new generation of powerful wordsmiths: Natalie Diaz, Donika Kelly, Megan Peak, Tonya Foster, Nathalie Scenters-Zapico, among others. 

CP: Is there any pattern of either continuity or contrast between femininity as expressed, explored, and depicted by contemporary writers vs. those from the earlier centuries? 

PSJ: Women poets writing in the 20th and 2lst centuries are encountering both old issues: sexual and political oppression, violence, war, and new ones: technological disruptions environmental degradation, diversity of sexualities and gender identities, monetization of just about everything and often with fresh approaches to language. Students who read their work and respond to the prompts are going to write some interesting and hopefully important new poems—they have in my earlier workshops. My peers are fierce. Let us put that fierceness to work.