Rebecca Macijeski

Oyster River Pages: 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?

Rebecca Macijeski: Process is curiosity, is discovering. That’s why I love the process of creating much more than the product. Yes, I love when I’ve written a poem that feels like it’s doing the work it’s meant to, but I love the moment of drafting arrival toward a finished product much more than what I’ve finished. I think this is why I follow other creative pursuits in addition to writing. It’s much easier to see the process when I’m drawing or making a quilt, for example. Process makes me by requiring that I pay attention and slow down with myself. I am constantly learning and re-learning how to do this.

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

RM: I hope readers see my poem as an invitation to wake up again to the wonder in our lives. It’s easy for us to move passively through our experiences and simply let time pass without fully living our moments. I know this is especially hard (and important!) right now when we’re living with such uncertainty.

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

RM: I have a complex relationship with hope. I think many of us do. Hope without action or conviction can be dangerous. Hope without listening or perspective can become naive optimism or exceptionalism. Hope with vigilance and attention and purpose can be our best tool for a better world.

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

RM: I was going to say Emily Dickinson, because I’m sure she would be a wizard at this whole social isolation thing—but nope. I’m going with Jane Kenyon. Maybe she could teach me something about the weird weather of living in the quiet power of poetry. So many of her poems have immense joy and gratitude even in her pain. I’d like to see what we could celebrate together. When I first borrowed one of her books from the library and rode the elevator with it to the circulation desk a ladybug landed on the spine. I think Jane would like that.

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

RM: Don’t compare yourself to others. Find your own way. (Italicize those first two) It’s easy to get caught up in feeling less-than or sorry for yourself if you pay too much attention to who is winning what prize or who landed a feature in a certain journal. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of judging whatever “productive writing” looks like for you by someone else’s yardstick. Maybe you write every day, or maybe you don’t write for months and months but then marathon dump out all of what you’ve been marinating. Your process is your process. Don’t mold yourself to someone else’s way of making. Listen to what feels right for you and cultivate that.

Rebecca Macijeski holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has attended artist residencies with The Ragdale Foundation, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Art Farm Nebraska. She has also worked for Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column, as an Assistant Editor in Poetry for the literary journals Prairie Schooner and Hunger Mountain, and is the recipient of a 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Nimrod, The Journal, Sycamore Review, Potomac Review, Storyscape, Fairy Tale Review, Puerto del Sol, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, and many others. Rebecca is Creative Writing Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor at Northwestern State University. Visit her online at www.rebeccamacijeski.com. Read her poetry here.