Interview: Jackson McCarthy talks about Portrait

Jackson McCarthy is a poet based in Te-Whanganuia-Tara Wellington. He is of Lebanese, Māori, and Pākehā descent. His poetry has been published widely in Aotearoa literary journals, including Landfall Tauraka, Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, The Spinoff, Starling, and Sweet Mammalian. Portrait is his first book. Jackson talks to NZ Booklovers.

Tell us a little about Portrait.

Portrait is my first collection of poetry. It’s got all my greatest hits thus far, as well as some new ones to keep you on your toes. I think of the poetry as lyrical in the sense that it aspires to the status of voice, whether that means reading in your head or aloud — though my preference is always for the latter. The mode is confession, but the poems are not me because I’m a person and they're poems. Interrupting this confessional, lyrical tendency is a sequence in the middle of the book of seven prose poems — the narrator of these poems, in his tragicomic dedication to his interior life, has some rather fraught relationships with the people around him. I think this sequence emphasises something the book makes felt elsewhere, too: the gap between a poem’s ostensibly fictional speaker, a created effect on the page or in the air, and a poem’s author.

These poems are not me, but they are of me. My sense is that the book tracks the development of a voice — a voice which, being rendered in the crafted, aesthetic register of poetry, is not my own. Yet as the book goes on, that voice becomes more firmly placed on what seems like my voice, becomes more civic, public, and personal in utterance. 

What inspired you to write this collection of poetry?

I don’t know! I think that not knowing is one reason not to kill yourself today: you might get a poem tomorrow. 

What was your routine or process when writing this book?

I don’t have a routine. There’s a lot of mental preparation that goes on before I write a poem, so in that sense I’m always working because I’m always thinking. I take down notes, formal shapes, phrases — both mine and others’ — sometimes in a notebook or on my laptop. But sometimes I just keep things in my head and let them marinate. And then (let me pursue this dodgy metaphor) I flash fry whatever it is I’ve marinated, writing a poem rather quickly. I return to it if need be a month or so later as an editor. I’m against stewing on poems, because stewing makes everything taste the same. Of course, I like to eat stews. Usually I like to eat cool things, though, like fries or yakitori or crudo or chocolate. 

If you had to choose a favourite poem, what would it be and why?

I love “Happiness” right now, which is one of those more “civic, public” poems that appears toward the end of the book. I remember wanting for a long time to write a poem I could call "Happiness". It was the last poem I wrote for the book, and it's seemed to have dropped me into a new style and swagger, a new directness, which I feel ready for. But I worry that it includes a line I feel sometimes but don’t hold to be true: “I don’t believe that life is real”. Oh, and just in case you meant a favourite poem of someone else’s! I find Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone” supremely moving. 

If a soundtrack were made to accompany this book, name a song or two you would include. 

I love songs... I love music! Beethoven is my hero. But I had a very dance music summer, so I thought I was done with him and the world. Then one day, this January, I was vacuuming the house, and I started hearing a tune. It was so redundant and circular, and you could hear the cadential scaffolding so clearly that it barely was a tune. And then I realised with a thud that it was the first subject of the fifth piano concerto. Woo hoo! Portrait owes a great deal to the songwriters, though — and the ones most special to me are, in no particular order, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Laura Marling, Mike Hadreas (Perfume Genius), Caroline Polachek, Sufjan Stevens, Robyn, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Phoebe Bridgers, and Taylor Swift. If I could only pick two songs... today they’d be “Go As a Dream” by Caroline Polachek and “All for Myself” by Sufjan Stevens, tomorrow they'd be "All Too Well" by Taylor Swift and "Chinese Satellite" by Phoebe Bridgers.

What did you enjoy the most about writing this collection?

I’m not sure I really think about enjoyment in relation to my work because, as I mentioned earlier, I spend a lot of time not writing, in a dull and constant low-buzz anxiety about my ability to write, and I call that my practice. So when I do get to write... it’s a relief. Just writing itself is enjoyable, something to be grateful for. Sometimes it's nice and quick, and something pretty good comes out of all that waiting. Other times it's slow and dreary, and all you can know for sure, to paraphrase Frank O’Hara, is that you did it.

What did you do to celebrate finishing this book?

I love to drink. I love being alive — it’s just my favourite thing. I love my mind, too, and my thoughts are good, and it’s good to be among them. I love my friends for how they make things clearer or more complex, which is another type of clarity. My friend Corey was visiting when I got the big yes from my publisher, and I love him very much. He’s like a brother to me. We went for a drink with our friends and my flatmates. I got a negroni. But I’d finished a revised version of the manuscript a month or so before they accepted it, and I’d done nothing to celebrate then because I didn’t know if it was finished or not. And then my wonderful editor, Louisa Kasza, and Imade little tweaks up until December last year. And then I consulted for a final time my trusted friend Cadence Chung. I guess what I’m saying is that the book is a process, especially a poetry book, which sort of just... happens to you. All you’re thinking about is writing individual poems, and at some point you start to have an idea that they’re talking to each other and working in sequence in a generative way.

I don’t think this book will feel finished really until I’m selling copies at the book launch, after which I hope to become drunk and very charming. For now, I still think of Portrait every day, and I’m ready to be released from it. 

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

The new Ben Lerner novel... wow! He does this thing where he rattles off a wonderful descriptive pause, then finishes it off with a sudden shock of clarity. It’s very much a poet’s technique, and it works every time. I’ve always adored his writing, ever since I read The Hatred of Poetry when I was sixteen or so. I think some of my teachers at uni are still a little hostile to his work, but I’m sick of apologising. I just adore it, even the early stuff — especially the early stuff, as in “The chicken is a little dry and/or you’ve ruined my life”!

What’s next on the agenda for you?

I’m working tentatively toward book two. There are some very beautiful poems in it already, which is concerning. And I’m also trying to put together a show of poems and paintings, all new stuff, with my friend Anneke Westra, the painter. It's looking like it'll be on later this year. Keep an eye out!

Auckland University Press