Jewel is to Taylor Swift as Ben Niespodziany is to ______________: An Interview with Benjamin Niespodziany

Leigh Chadwick: Hi, Benjamin with the really long last name. Welcome to my “Mediocre Conversations” interview series. You’re welcome for getting to be here. 

This is the first day of the rest of your life. I hope you’re ready. 

Benjamin Niespodziany: Is this thing on?

I just poured coffee and am determined to spend my Saturday morning (and Sunday morning) on all things writing, editing, interviewing, as well as other -ings along the way. Thank you for your mediocrity. Happy to be here. 

LC: Wait, you’re doing other interviews besides this one? 

Seems silly trying to top this one…

BN: Ha! This is the only one where I’m the one answering questions, but I have two [neonpajamas] interviews I need to post to my website, one with Shane Kowalski and one with Mikko Harvey. 

LC: Okay, enough with the pleasantries. Let’s get this going. 

First question: Your debut full-length collection, No Farther Than the End of the Street, is scheduled to be released (November 2022) the same month as me and Adrienne Marie Barrios’s collaborative collection Too Much Tongue. You must find that quite intimidating? 

BN: Terrifying! And it’s two against one, so I’m in over my head. With your collaborative book, did you both worth together on every prose poem? Or are they largely back-and-forth solo pieces shuffled accordingly? Intimidating regardless. 

LC: It’s actually more than two against one because I count as my own trinity. But yes, I understand why you are terrified and intimidated. It’s okay though, as a professional influencer, I am here to make sure you are not forgotten in the tidal wave of acclaim and adoration Adrienne and I are set to receive. 

To answer your question: We worked together on every prose poem except maybe two of them, where we each wrote one of them ourselves. Other than that, we wrote them all together, taking on each other’s personas when we felt necessary. It was a fun project; nice to be able to collaborate on such a lonely thing as writing. I know you’ve done your own collaborations in the past? 

BN: The Holy Trinity of Leigh Chadwick. A future book title for sure. Collaborative writing is so interesting and so rewarding (when it works), and I love the idea of the lines blurring so by the end of the process, you’re not quite sure which line is your own and which line is the other’s. 

I’ve done a bunch of collaborative writing in the past. I have heaps of pieces with poet/novelist Gary Barwin. Often they begin with a tweet or a line, then Gary will use Google Translate to send me a reworking, then I’ll reply with a further re-working, and it kind of snowballs from there.

I also released the collaborative e-chapbook with Evan Nicholls and Evan Williams for Ghost City’s summer reading series. We decided on a premise/concept/tone where every poem is titled “THERE HAS BEEN A MURDER” but we all wrote our respective poems. I like the idea of people having to guess who wrote what while reading. 

Additionally, you and I have a bunch of prose poems (five or so?) with that back-and-forth line format, which can be so fun when you’re on the same wavelength. I also have some other scraps and pieces-in-progress with Barton Smock and Jay Besemer and C.T. Salazar and Jon Cone and Zachary Schomburg and CB Auder and A.K. Kidd (as well as individual pieces with both Evans mentioned above).

LC: You wrote 229 words in that answer and my response is: way to namedrop. (Though I bet those poems you co-wrote with Leigh Chadwick are absolute fire.)

I guess we should talk about this book. As with your last name, I have trouble remembering the long title, so I am most likely going to refer to it as “the book about the street.” Tell us a bit about this book about the street. Did I read correctly that it was published by a donkey that is generally feeling pretty ok? 

BN: I am nothing if not a list of 50 poets better than myself. Hopefully some of those collabs see the light of day. I’ve said too much…

About my book: I gave myself a constraint where each entry must take place on a single neighborhood street. Many of the poems are inside the main characters’ home, but often they are outside in the front lawn, or back yard, or just down the street visiting a neighbor. While most of the pieces weren’t written with this concept in mind, once I found my through-line, I was able to collage and re-work them into some type of (hopefully visible) narrative, all the while writing pieces to connect the dots and fill in some necessary world-building details.

And yes, this book is with Okay Donkey Press. My book is their third poetry collection (alongside Todd Dillard and Dani Putney). It’s still so surreal to have a book in the world, so thank you to OKD for showing interest in the very early stages of this weird collection. 

LC: That is a lot of words right there. My takeaway is that there are 50 poets I should’ve asked to interview before you. But I guess we’re already kind of deep into this, so I’m stuck with you. 

Isn’t Todd Dillard just absolutely wonderful? That tweet about the burnt quesadilla. His poems. The kindness dripping from his ribs. He is the full package. 

I guess it would be safe to say that this is your version of a concept album? What made you decide to a conceptual project as opposed to say, 70 really fucking good poems that don’t connect in any specific way except for the fact that you wrote them? 

Also, why am I asking you real questions? 

Benjamin Niespodziany's work has appeared in Fence, Fairy Tale Review, Puerto del Sol, Wigleaf, and various others. His debut chapbook The Northerners was released in 2021 by above/ground press and his second chapbook Pickpocket the Big Top was released in May 2022 by Dark Hour Books. No Farther Than the End of the Street, his debut full-length collection, is out now with Okay Donkey Press. You can find out more at neonpajamas.com.

BN: Todd is a gem! He was a loud cheerleader when this book was only a manuscript and has been a great help along the way. Love how the quesadilla is mentioned first THEN his poems.

This is definitely my version of a concept album. I’m not sure if I can function any other way. I have a few folders of random poems, but I don’t know what to do without that through-line. Singular, standalone poems are great (and many of my favorite poetry collections are made up of just that) but once I find a way for the pieces to converse and overlap and bleed and blur into each other, I start to really see a manuscript take shape. That world-building part (even if it’s made up of a few silly rules) is a large part of the joy for me. Shout-out The Mars Volta and The Flaming Lips for exemplifying the concept album for me as a teen, and poets like Victoria Chang and CAConrad for showing me how to do it in a book.

LC: As a poet who is just releasing their debut full-length, what are your expectations? (I don’t think this is a question that gets asked often enough, so I am truly curious.)

BN: Honestly, I have little to no expectations. I think from the start, the idea of a “debut” haunted me, and it seemed so loaded and intimidating (much like releasing a book the same month as TOO MUCH TONGUE) that I kind of forced myself to expect nothing. As a result, I’ve been pleasantly surprised and overwhelmed (in a good way) by the positive conversations and interactions this book has allowed me. From this interview to people sharing poems on Twitter to being asked onto podcasts. It feels like a dream, and I’m soaking it in, but my anxiety still refuses to ask OKD how many copies have been sold. Hopefully a million after this interview runs. 

As someone who has released numerous books and chapbooks in the last couple of years, do you worry or focus on (or ignore) the numbers and “stats” and metrics of physical copies?

LC: I didn’t really start to think about sales until Your Favorite Poet, which is probably because it was my debut full-length. In all honesty, I worry quite a bit about it. What’s a good number of sales for your first full-length? What’s an okay number? What are we averaging in the indie lit community? How varied is it really? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions. I wish I did. I wish we were more open about that, but I don’t think we ever will be.

Ha. So, yes, I think about it a lot. 

A lot a lot. 

I feel like if you can somehow keep the two separated, if you never have to ask OKD how many copies you’re selling and don’t know until you see your royalties, then I say, God bless you. 

Should we equate sales with how good something is? Of course not. I don’t do that for anyone else’s work. Do I do it for mine? In some way, I suppose I do. 

I feel like I’m supposed to be interviewing you, but you seem to be the one interviewing me. 

On another note: Which Jewel song is your favorite and how many of her songs do you have memorized? 

BN: I used to BELT the words to “Foolish Games” in high school / college, back when I still burned CDs and drove around Indiana with nothing to do. Jewel is the goat. Every track is a hit. Now I’m listening to “Who Will Save Your Soul” for the first time in 15 years. 

LC: As I now listen to “Foolish Games” on repeat, I ask you, please finish this sentence:

Jewel is to Taylor Swift as Ben Niespodziany is to ______________.

BN: Shel Silverstein

LC: Ben Niespodziany is to Shel Silverstein as Leigh Chadwick is to ______________.

BN: Matthea Harvey. Or Jenny Offill. Or Guy Fieri.

LC: You are 66.666% correct, but I will not tell you which 66.666% is correct.

OK, I think it’s time for the speed round portion of the interview. 

Are you ready? 

BN: READY

LC: For this section I’m using Mitch Hedberg jokes as motivation for these questions. So, here we go:

Question 1: How do you feel about frilly toothpicks? 

BN: If I see one, it means I’m about to eat a sandwich or a pig in a blanket. 10/10 recommend.

LC: Question 2: Did you dress up for this interview? 

BN: I’ve been wearing the same yellow shorts for two years. But, yes, I’ve added a bow tie.

LC: Question 3: Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamus?

BN: God, I miss Mitch Hedberg. And I feel like I read somewhere that hippos kill more humans than lions and tigers combined? I had to look this up: hippos kill around 500 people a year, while lions only kill an average of 22. Thank you, BBC Wildlife. 

LC: Question 4: If you find a sheet on the floor, would you think it was a ghost who passed out?

BN: hahaha yes, and I would be sure to revitalize it by throwing it off the roof. 

LC: Do your fake plants ever die because you forgot to fake water them?

BN: I always eat my fake plants before encountering any other results. 

LC: Xylophone is spelled with an X. That isn’t a question, just a fact. 

BN: Xactly. This interview might be too Xtreme for most. There’s an X-Games joke here that I won’t make. 

LC: Do you think Bigfoot is real? And if so, do you think there are no quality pictures of him because he is, in fact, blurry?

BN: Bigfoot is very real. So is Swampsquatch. But I don’t know about Yetis.

Now I want to watch Missing Link (2019) again. 

LC: Where do you see yourself in five years? 

BN: For the first time in my life, I’ve started asking myself the same question. It’s always been school to school to new gig (“just here until something else pops up”) to graveyard shift to part-time work to temp work to finally settling in and finding my way. In five years? Hopefully still working in the music industry, hopefully with a shitty draft of a novel(la) on my desktop, and a shitty draft of a screenplay on my desktop. I’d like to visit a few more countries in the next five years as well. Mongolia looks really cool.

LC: As this interview begins to wind down, I am going to close out with some of the more important questions of the interview. 

Like: Who is your favorite poet and why is it me? 

BN: You masterfully blend the tender and the absurd in your poetry.

I think Mary Ruefle is my (second) favorite poet.

LC: I like to end these interviews on a positive note. I’d love for you to give a shout out to a poet you admire who does not yet have a book. Who is a poet whose writing you’re wild about that should have a book coming out tomorrow? Also, feel free to drop a link to something they’ve published

BN: Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi! I wish every poet could read at least one of his poems. He has a novel of linked micros called The Book of Kane and Margaret, which is magical and touching and out with FC2, but his poetry collection has yet to be released. It’s called Disintegration Made Plain and Easy and I hope the world is able to get their hands on it soon.

Also, John Maradik’s debut collection Surprises & Pleasures should be out with Scram Press sooner than later, but I’m still waiting for the announcement. His poem “They Found the Python” is my favorite poem. Ever.

LC: And lastly, because I know you need the book sales, go ahead and drop links to where we can buy your book. Also, feel free to include a link or two of work you published online. 

BN: Thank you for this, Leigh! It’s been a joy.

Book link: https://okaydonkeymag.bigcartel.com/product/no-farther-than-the-end-of-the-street

Website with chapbook links: https://www.neonpajamas.com/eyes

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi’s writing: http://www.kiikak.com/read/