The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Rebecca Macijeski

 

I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Rebecca Macijeski. She is the author of Autobiography (Split Rock Press, 2022). She 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 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee, her poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Nimrod, The Journal, Sycamore Review, The Cincinnati Review, Puerto del Sol, and many others. Rebecca is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Creative Writing Programs at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. 

Why do you write?

 I write for too many reasons to count. I’m gonna sound a little like that Terry Tempest Williams essay now. I write because it’s the best way I know to feel present and centered and okay; it helps me integrate the world I’m experiencing inside myself with the world that goes on outside myself. I write because it renders real and tangible the thoughts I make inside my head. I write because it’s exciting and affirming to discover that I sometimes make sense. I write to grow the good parts of my imagination and try to burnish out the bad parts. I write to celebrate the capacity we each have to hold what is beautiful and raw and joyous and horrible and unknowable all at once. I write to connect with other writers, but also to help readers see some more wonder in themselves. It’s too easy to feel small and futile and broken. Writing, unlike other expressive forms, comes alive when we take it into our minds. That feels like a superpower. There are times in my life when reading helped me feel purposeful, like I was part of something bigger or that I could look at myself as stronger, more capable. I write to hopefully help my readers feel that way about themselves. I hope that my writing serves as an invitation for us all to look at ourselves with a greater sense of wonder and confidence.

Describe your book in three words.

Love your brain.



What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were younger?

I wish I knew how many things people say you “have to do” you don’t actually have to do. You don’t have to talk to that relative on the phone. You don’t have to read every sentence of every page of the book that’s assigned for class. You don’t have to cook dinner tonight just because you had already planned to cook dinner. You don’t have to get up early. You don’t have to take the laundry out of the dryer as soon as the buzzer goes off. You don’t have to change how you do things because one person is unreasonable and can’t understand where you’re coming from. You don’t have to police your feelings (but you also don’t have to be ruled by them). You don’t have to have a to do list every day. You don’t always have to know what your next project or task is. You don’t have to care about everything all the time.



Summarize your book using only gifs or emojis.

🧠🌿🌱 🧠⭐️✨ 🧠🔭 🧠👁️ 🧠🐙 🧠🪺 🧠🚦🎡



If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

Ross Gay. I love the sense of wonder and scale he brings to the world of his writing. There’s this absolutely perfect YouTube video of him reading “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” when he interrupts his own poem after he looks down in genuine delight to discover that he’s wearing a button-up shirt. I aspire to that level of presence and joy. Whether I’m reading one of his poems or essays, I feel immediately part of something bigger, more consequential, more special. I feel invited to tune my attention to the delight and joy and resonance in my life. I want to look at everything I love the way he looks at sunlight and faces and growing things. His writing also has this great capacity to hold all kinds of things at the same time—the joyous and terrible, the very big and the very small. I’d love to connect to that perspective. Plus, with all his knowledge of plants, I’d like to hope we could make some pretty delicious meals to share with everyone we could find.



What is your favorite way to waste time?

I have two—being in good company, and learning something random. I define “good company” lots of ways—seeing a good friend for happy hour, putting a favorite show on in the background while I hang out with the cats, communing with nature on a good walk around the neighborhood, etc. I also love learning about random cool things via a podcast, a documentary, whatever. I always love a good take on popular neuroscience, space theory, the Dutch tulip crisis, all of it.

Are you a toilet paper over or under kind of person?

Over. It’s the only way. I’ve got to be able to pull that little exposed tab of paper and see it dispense neatly in that satisfying clockwise roll. Luckily my spouse and I agree on this important tissue issue. I’m not sure what would happen if we didn’t.



If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

This might not be the sexiest or flashiest answer, but I’d like to have the superpower to remove financial barriers. Can’t afford to move to start a new life? Poof. Not a problem. Need to replace your pipes after storm flooding? Bam. There you go. Poverty mindset affecting your ability to succeed at school or in your therapy journey? Doesn’t matter anymore. Here’s the capitalist nonsense dollars you need for your dreams to match your reality.



What made you start writing?

At first it was the actual tangible part, the handwriting. I loved the feel of a pen in my hand, holding it just the right way, and making letters take shape. There were handwriting competitions in my grade school. One year I won. I got a congratulations letter from the principal. Pretty nerdy, I know. But it helped teach me to love the physical process. After that it grew into something deeper. I fell in love with how writing was a way to build my own reality, or to render my own version of reality that was better, kinder, stronger, more full of imagination. I loved that I could take the ideas and thoughts that lived only in my own mind and make them make sense out of my own mind. I guess I was always a weird little meta kid, but I felt like I was powerful when what began inside me could continue outside me. It made me feel like I mattered, like the way I thought mattered. As I grew older and dedicated myself more formally and more fully to what writing could bring me, I began to see writing as my best way to communicate what I choose to care about and celebrate in this world. Writing has literally brought me almost everything I love. Writing has brought me to two graduate degrees, offered me the chance to travel to unexpected parts of the world, introduced me to my partner, and led me to a a career I love. Writing helps me learn how to create the life I want to live, and it helps me understand the power we all have to connect to each other. Writing is, and I’m risking hyperbole here, everything. Writing is everything.

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Autobiography is a celebration of the experience of discovering, recovering, and re-envisioning the self. At the center of these poems is the impulse toward imagination as a vital tool for reconciling what it’s like to move through the world from a neurodivergent perspective. Rather than offering more traditionally accepted or expected narrative constructions of what builds a life, these poems are interested in exploring selfhood through metaphor. Each poem argues a different way to see the brain as a temperamental collaborator in the creation of self. The brain and self are interlinked, but not entirely unified or harmonious; their relationship becomes complicated—sometimes friends, sometimes adversaries, always searching for new methods to grapple with reality.

buy a copy here

https://www.splitrockreview.org/store/autobiography-rebecca-macijeski