Interview with Frank Joussen, a German teacher and a widely published poet

Frank Joussen is a German teacher and is a widely published poet. His poems have been translated into German, Hindi, Chinese and Romanian. Here he speaks with us at Lampshade Writers on the journey of his poems and his latest project.

When you pen your poem, how much time do you usually take? Let's consider 'A Night in the Desert' here.

It depends. There are two principal methods:

Method 1: I normally "sketch" a poem when some concrete phrases come to me. The sketch may only take a couple of minutes. On the same day or sometime later I look at this sketch and write what I call "the actual or real poem", but only if the ideas in the "sketch" are good enough. This process may take up to an hour.

The second method is applied when I do not have the chance to write anything down. When I
wrote "A Night in the Desert" I only wrote it in my head. I had to repeat the lines so I wouldn't
forget them. The reason is simple: The poem actually came to me while I was lying in the tent
in the desert, together with my family and some other tourists. So how could I get up, rummage
through my rucksack and find my writing materials? I couldn't risk waking the others. Therefore
I only wrote it in my head that night, learned it by heart and wrote it down hours later.

Also, do you travel a lot? And if yes, how much does that affect your poetry?

Yes, I do. The places I visit, the people I meet, the shows I attend etc. often leave a deep
impression on me and I usually write about it while I am still "there". Two examples may
suffice: During our long trip back by car from the north of Bali to the airport in the south
I wrote my poem "Sonnet for Bali", published in the Indian "Metverse Muse" magazine of
metric verse. Once again, I had to apply "method 2": I wrote it in my head and learned it
by heart. Metric, rhyming poetry is quite easy to remember. So I was writing about the beauty
of Bali while experiencing it. Of course, I mostly apply method one: After visiting my first
Kathakali performance in Kochi, Kerala, I wrote the following poem:
https://onlinepoetrymagazine.tripod.com/soundandimage/the-kathakali-transformation.html


Some of your poems (https://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2015/11/5-poems-by-frank-joussen.html) compare cities and was intrigued. Can you elaborate on this?

From these five poems only one was written in the place I was visiting at the time, "The
Tingzijian Connection". I had read so much about these simple, but very functional old
houses in China that I was actually quite shocked that only a handful of them had survived
the building boom when I first came to Shanghai. I am proud that the poem was published
by multiple Pushcart nominee Yuan Changming, who was born and grew up in China. - The
other four poems are "places in my mind"; especially the poem "Tell Yourself a Story" is
a journey I only took in my mind.

Who are your major influences in poetry and what did you learn from them?

Oh dear, that's a tough one. When I first started writing I knew only a handful of good poets,
so I was mostly influenced by song lyrics - Bob Dylan, The Beatles, etc. I worked with a band
and wrote rhyming song lyrics myself. Later, especially when studying English at Uni, I
got to know all kinds of poets and was influenced either by their themes or their style.

First Shakespeare and Robert Frost for metric, rhyming poetry, later Vikram Seth for the same
and also for what I'd call his elegance; Emily Dickinson and some others for rhythm and "punch lines", and a number of famous poets for free-verse poetry - beginning with Walt Whitman, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath - but also lesser known poets who I met personally. - I am unable to name definitely what I learned from them, but their "lessons" must be connected to what I most value about poetry when writing and reading it: Among other things, clarity of speech, concise brevity, as opposed to tedious redundance or "showing off", a sensual appeal - can the poem let me feel, or even see, taste, smell what it is about? what is often called "the wonder of the ordinary" (in people, in nature etc.); the latter is connected to my interest in finding a new perspective to look at the world, language, people and their strongest emotions etc.

Please share your writing routine. Also, do you like to sip or eat something specific as you write?

Oh, how I wish I had a regular writing routine! As you can see from my answers to question one I write whenever and wherever I can! When working on a book or submission, though, I have a more  deliberate approach. I choose a day when I know that I will not be disturbed by my work for school or by people, and sit down at my desk, preferably with a nice cup of good Indian tea and a cookie or two, and look at poems or stories I have already written with "a critical eye" - first looking for mistakes, then calling into question if the piece is clear enough, concise enough, appealing to the reader etc. and I make the changes I find necessary. Sometimes I keep different typed versions of my poems, but I only submit or publish them after deciding on the final version.

What is your next book project?

My new book, my sixth, will hopefully be published next year. It´s titled The Disappearing Countryside. This collection of mainly poems, but also some prose pieces deals with the small towns and the farmland of my home region whose very existence has been threatened for decades by open pit coal mining. A few pieces are about the protests, which attracted worldwide attention at the beginning of this year, by climate activists (Greta Thunberg, "Fridays for Future"), but most poems and prose pieces are about ordinary folk whose families and farming have been severely affected by the disruptions caused by the mining company. To reach a wider audience, the book is bilingual - English and German. I hope readers will find it both politically relevant and lyrical too.

Thank you so much, Frank, for your time and for sharing your process. We sign off with a poem by Frank. 

A Tourist’s Sonnet for Bali

 

 

 

Your beauty’s unique like the frangipani

your women wear gracefully in their hair.

I am a tourist, but no enemy

And pledge to treat you with reverence and care.

 

Care for your beaches flooded by strangers,

care for the gardeners of your new reef,

care for the animals living in danger,

reverence for your old Hindu beliefs.

 

I rejoice at every smile on my way.

I enjoy every morsel of your food

and the gamelan your orchestras play

for the dancers that perform in Ubud.

 

As long as I only look and don’t touch

yet one more tourist’s stay won’t be too much.

 

 

Annotations: “your new reef”: On Bali, the “Reef Gardeners” of Pemuteran help regrow a reef destroyed completely by El Nino; “gamelan”: Music typical of Bali; it is played for religious rites and special occasions on wood instruments.