A lovely interview with Maria Jastrzębska, our tattoo anthology contributor and a well-established poet here in the UK. Maria shares some great info about how she got her first poetry collection published and some advice for poets who are currently pitching agents and publishers.
I hope you enjoy it.
xx Julianne
Director at Guts
1. Tell us about yourself.
I was born in Warsaw, and came to the UK as a small child with my family who were fleeing from communist Poland. I’ve always been a writer, but I’ve also done a variety of jobs, including working in a refuge for battered women, community interpreting, teaching self defence and creative writing.
2. Tell us about your first published book of poetry.
It happened in fits and starts so it’s not clearly a debut. My first solo (book length) collection was called Syrena which means mermaid in Polish. Before that I’d done a collaboration with Jola Scicińska. She is a visual artist who was part of Working Press, a cooperative of working-class artists self-publishing their work. We managed to get funding for the production of our book, Postcards from Poland. I had also had pamphlets out like Home from Home from Flarestack Books with the enormously supportive Charles Johnson who edited it then.
Syrena (also the title poem) was inspired by the myth of the Warsaw mermaid who is said to defend my birth town though men (sic) have tried to capture her and curb her freedom. I guess it was also about the way society had done its best to best to hem me in. There are poems in it about family, about religion, health, migration and imperialist history and about love. All my usual themes are already there!
3. When did you write it?
I was writing Syrena at the end of the 1990s and early noughties before I knew what it would be exactly. I only knew I wanted to write a full collection. Then I collected what I’d been working on, weeded out poems I thought were weaker and shaped it. I was part of a peer poetry group – I still am – and they helped, which was fantastic.
4. When was it published? How did you pitch it?
Syrena was published in 2004. I send it round to several publishers including the more mainstream ones. I think it was harder at that time than now to place the kind of poems I was writing, both as a migrant, as a lesbian/queer poet and as someone who wrote prose poetry which the UK was still not really open to then. I think publishers didn’t quite know what to do with me or what box to put me in.
5. How long did it take you to find a publisher, and who was it?
I can’t remember how long it took, but initially I’d been sending out my work to poetry magazines and I had a good track record. I’d also had some pamphlets out. So I wasn’t a complete unknown but the more mainstream publishers didn’t want to take a chance on me. Redbeck Press in Bradford did. It was run by David Tipton and it’s said he funded the press by supplementing grants from West Yorkshire Arts Council with his winnings from betting on the horses. Like most poetry editors he did it all out of love and worked hard, selflessly promoting all kinds of poetry. Sadly, he died some years back and the press no longer exists.
6. Do you have any advice for poets who are currently pitching agents and publishers?
I would say don’t take that side of it too seriously. Don’t rush to publication. Read other poets. See what else is out there. Work on your craft, follow your nerve, dig deeper into what you have to say. Take part in workshops. Get feedback but don’t be too swayed by fashions which exist in poetry as much as anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong: it is important to get your work out. Magazines are a great way to test the water and have your poems rub literary shoulders with other poets’ work, especially if you like working on the page. Go to local readings and open mics too. Ask to read/perform. Meet people, find supportive networks, share your work. Remember editors are human, usually overworked, rarely paid. What I mean is: don’t be fooled by what Jackie Wills, in her inspiring book On Poetry (Smith/Doorstop), calls ‘capitalism’s great invention, the winner’ or be too preoccupied with how many likes you collect on social media.
7. What have you been working on recently?
I’ve been working on my mother’s papers from the 1940s and 1950s (including Nazi occupation and post-war communism), translating them from Polish and editing them with a view to writing a prose/memoir book – a new departure for me – about my relationship with my mother. Alongside that I’ve been writing poems about growing up ‘other’ and I’m still writing completely new poems.
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Poet, editor, translator, Maria Jastrzębska came to the UK from Poland as a child. Her most recent book is Small Odysseys (Waterloo Press 2022). She co-edited Queer in Brighton anthology (New Writing South 2014). Her work is translated into Polish and Romanian. She was writer for ACE-awarded cross-arts project Snow Q.
Instagram: @maria.jastrzebska.35
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