Jennifer Hambrick

Oyster River Pages: How is your art or writing informed by current social and/or political issues?

Jennifer Hambrick: I respond to the brokenness of the world on a deeply interior level.  I prefer to write about things that, in their universality, unite people, rather than about things that divide.

ORP: We often think of ourselves as writing or making art, but the process often changes or makes us as well. How do you feel like your writing or art makes you?

JH: Writing gives me a voice, which I often find I do not have in day-to-day discourse.

ORP: If you could add a prelude, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?

JH: There is emotional gold in those moments of youth that hum with transformation.

ORP: What do you hope readers or viewers of your piece take from it?

JH: Something meaningful. I’ll let them decide what.

ORP: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your relationship to art and writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?

JH: Never have I been more convinced of the need for art in the world than I have been during these pandemic times. I have seen people stretch themselves and find joy amid the fear and sadness of the current situation by exploring new art forms in online art classes. On social media, I have seen people rally around their friends’ artwork with displays of support and encouragement and love. Right now, even in the midst of a terrible pandemic, art is enabling people to connect with the voices deep inside them and to share those voices with other people at a time of separation. This is what it looks like when art heals us, when art heals the world.

ORP: Do you believe that hope is a luxury, a responsibility, a danger, or something else? Why?

JH: Hope is an imperative that resides in each of us. On an individual level, hopelessness leads to depression, anxiety, addiction, despair, and, if left unchecked, destruction. On a societal level, hopelessness leads to the idea that nothing has value – even people. That thinking manifests in countless conclusions too sorrowful to contemplate. Why live in a world of negativity and darkness when a world of positivity, support, love, and growth awaits within us?

ORP: If you could choose one writer or artist, living or dead, as a best friend or mentor, who would it be? Why?

JH: Almost anyone who has been strengthened by creating art in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.  I crave gallons of their pluck.

ORP: Are there any artists, writers, or works of art (including music, film, literature, etc.) that you believe are fundamentally misunderstood? In a sentence, how would you rectify the misunderstanding?

JH: I think all artists are fundamentally misunderstood.  My solution: Experience the art and, thus, the voices of others with an open mind, and look for things your spirit shares with every work of art and the person who created it.  This is compassion and the beginning of true community.

ORP: Years from now, when historians look back on the art and writing of the early 21st century, how do you think they will articulate the zeitgeist?

JH: In the poetry in the early twenty-first century, the discontinuities of the second half of the twentieth century dispersed into a long tail of disparate subjectivities – ironically – in the name of community.

ORP: What do you think is the most essential advice that most writers and artists ignore?

JH: Give yourself permission to enjoy writing (or creating art in some other medium) at all cost.  Enjoying writing imbues the process of writing with a joyous life of its own.  This enjoyment is what makes writing a gift.  Fiercely protect that enjoyment.  Let writing be the leaven of your life.

Multi-Pushcart Prize nominee Jennifer Hambrick is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection In the High Weeds, winner of the 2020 Stevens Manuscript Competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Joyride (Red Moon Press); and Unscathed (NightBallet Press). She was appointed inaugural Artist-in-Residence at Bryn Du Mansion, Granville, Ohio, and her poems appear in The American Journal of Poetry, Santa Clara Review, The Main Street Rag, POEM, San Pedro River Review, Maryland Literary Review, and elsewhere. Awards from NHK World TV, Haiku Society of America, and others. Her website is jenniferhambrick.com. Hear her read her poetry here.