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Interview With A Poet- Jessica Q. Stark
FEBRUARY 2026
FEBRUARY 2026
SoFloPoJo: To begin, I’d like to give you the opportunity to talk about anything you’d like us to know about you.
Jessica Stark: Thank you! I'm a poet working and living in Jacksonville, Florida, though I'm a California-native and I'm a bit from everywhere. I lived in New York and abroad for several years, in North Carolina for seven, for a short time in Saint Louis and in Madison. My mother was originally from Vietnam and my father was born in California. Being mixed and from the Vietnamese diaspora has informed a lot of my ways of being, seeing the world, my poetry, my place (or lack thereof) wherever I am. I have a fat cat named Kiki, two sons with names that start with the letter A. I used to be a track star when I was younger. I'm a good cook and a bad baker. These are also apt metaphors for my poetry practice.
SoFloPoJo: How does poetry come to you before it makes its way to the page?
Jessica Stark: I spent a decade trying to become a literary scholar and "failed up" into being a poet, but what I took with me is my love of research, particularly archival research. For better or for worse, I tend to think in forest over trees when it comes to poetry. I love brainstorming what a big canvas poetry book can contain. So I typically start with a book idea and I research for about a year on topics that I think could fly in the conceptual framework before I write a single word. Sometimes the research makes it into the poems, sometimes not. But that experience of deeply researching before writing poems towards ideas is really important for my process. When I feel confident on the ideas, I write poems towards the forest. I know a book is "done" when most of the corners of those ideas have been explored (which takes a while, as unexpected corners keep popping up as I write of course). I think this is symptomatic of my scholarly training, where I was pushed again and again to think of archives in different, new ways. And to cultivate obsessiveness. To be okay with the long duree of a project. The circularity around places, moments of history, people. I like doing that with poetry; it just takes a big, fat canvas to pull it off. I'm not a poet who typically writes standalone poems, and oftentimes I wish I was. It seems like that would feel more immediately and periodically satisfying. And it certainly would take less time to feel rested, complete.
SoFloPoJo: I know a lot of that research went into Buffalo Girl. Talk a little about the poems in that, and also, your riverun project.
Jessica Stark: For Buffalo Girl, I spent about a year researching before starting to write any poems. After reading several versions of the Little Red Riding Hood stories to my young son, I became a little obsessed with this story and began researching its origins, its multifarious versions and endings, its cross-cultural movement across time. It's one of our oldest stories; its oldest origins predate written language. In the dozens of different versions I found of this story in my research, so many of them focus on a loose morality tale cautioning young girls to not wander from a path, not to pick flowers, not to risk the woods, not to chase curiosity, not to dally, lest they want to be potentially ripped apart by a wolf (or worse). While researching this book, I had also been having a lot of conversations with my mother on her immigration story from Vietnam to the United States in the chaotic wake of a concluding war in 1975. Naturally, I began to think about these two threads together: my mother's requisite wandering, the stories that we tell about girlhood, and how we frame and perpetuate simplistic tales of victimhood and survival. I also wanted to think about the counterintuitive parallels that could be imagined between the girl and the wolf, in thinking about the "monstrosities" that survival often breeds in reality. The poems do a lot of this questioning. How does violence rupture neat narratives of victimhood? When is survival monstrous, and how can we still honor that difficulty? How does love continually foil the hard edges that time and trauma make of us? Unfortunately and unexpectedly, my mother passed away about two months after the publication of this book. So, while it wasn't intended to be so when I wrote it, it is also a book that is (and always will be) deeply marked by my own personal grief.
Riverrun is a project I started recently as an ode to orality and homage to websites like PennSound that I encountered when I was a young poet and which was so instrumental in allowing me to access the texture of poets' voices and performance when not physically proximate to performances of this caliber. Riverrun was also inspired by (so many!) casual conversations with other poets, usually at national conferences located outside of the US South, that expressed surprise that there are so many poets living, working, and loving in Florida. With some support from my department, I wanted to create a living, growing testament to the vibrancy and diversity of poetry in Florida. I am a transplant and I have been living in Florida for only six years, which feels like a relatively short time in some ways, but I love this state for its wildness. It's difficult, it's chaotic, it's unpredictable, it's overgrown and a bit untameable like its water, its vines, its wildlife. What better grounds (albeit not the most peaceful) for poetry--for cultivating communities of poetry that move and challenge. I'm working on adding to the catalogue and I would love to showcase poets from all over the state reading a selection of their published work, as well as add to the recorded, live poetry events. I'm also working with students to produce an ongoing poetry podcast in the future as well. I'm excited for that prospect down the line. It's still in a nascent state as I do this work in the corners of my FT work and my own poetry writing, but I'm excited to see how it grows. So the next time somebody expresses surprise, I can just point to the river.
SoFloPoJo: If there is one, what image appears most in your poetry?
Jessica Stark: A friend recently pointed out that many of my projects involve animals. The observation was obvious once stated, yet it still surprised me! I don’t think I’ve been consciously writing toward them. On reflection, though, I see that much of my work is concerned with peripheral histories: overlooked people, places, and stories, the marginal narratives that exist within larger ones. In that sense, animals fit naturally into my concerns. In relation to human attention, they are often treated as peripheral: overlooked, underestimated, or dismissed altogether. My latest project includes sprawling, serial poems devoted to the flea and its long, intimate relationship with humans. Animals, for me, function as powerful reminders of the limits of human perception and control; they expose our assumptions and our enduring flaws.
SoFloPoJo: And finally, What contemporary poet(s) do you find the most interesting or compelling?
Jessica Stark: I have a soft spot for poets mixing genres and writing hybrid work like Mai Der Vang, Anthony Cody, and Bhanu Kapil. To boot, I draw a lot of inspiration from poets that challenge AI's ability to mimic what we do. I think right now that translates to poems that resist epiphany, that challenge narrative satisfaction, and that undo familiar ways of using language. I align Dionne Brand and Ariana Reines' poetry to this hard work (as well as the aforementioned poets). Love for eternity to Florida-based poets, of course, for writing quite literally in a storm. I hear you Lenny, Tiffany, Dorsey, Michelle, Andy, Asa, Anna, Caridad, Nicole, Natalie (among so many other voices in the wind). The weather simply can't stop us.
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, 2023), winner of a Florida Book Award and a finalist for the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020), and five poetry chapbooks, including most recently The Flea, which won first place for the MAYDAY microchapbook prize in 2025. She is a Poetry Editor at AGNI and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. She was named the 2025 South Arts Fellow for Florida and currently co-organizes the Dreamboat Reading Series in Jacksonville. She also curates the Riverrun Poetry Stream, an audio-collection of Florida-based poets.
Link to my website: https://jessicaqstark.com/
Jessica Stark: Thank you! I'm a poet working and living in Jacksonville, Florida, though I'm a California-native and I'm a bit from everywhere. I lived in New York and abroad for several years, in North Carolina for seven, for a short time in Saint Louis and in Madison. My mother was originally from Vietnam and my father was born in California. Being mixed and from the Vietnamese diaspora has informed a lot of my ways of being, seeing the world, my poetry, my place (or lack thereof) wherever I am. I have a fat cat named Kiki, two sons with names that start with the letter A. I used to be a track star when I was younger. I'm a good cook and a bad baker. These are also apt metaphors for my poetry practice.
SoFloPoJo: How does poetry come to you before it makes its way to the page?
Jessica Stark: I spent a decade trying to become a literary scholar and "failed up" into being a poet, but what I took with me is my love of research, particularly archival research. For better or for worse, I tend to think in forest over trees when it comes to poetry. I love brainstorming what a big canvas poetry book can contain. So I typically start with a book idea and I research for about a year on topics that I think could fly in the conceptual framework before I write a single word. Sometimes the research makes it into the poems, sometimes not. But that experience of deeply researching before writing poems towards ideas is really important for my process. When I feel confident on the ideas, I write poems towards the forest. I know a book is "done" when most of the corners of those ideas have been explored (which takes a while, as unexpected corners keep popping up as I write of course). I think this is symptomatic of my scholarly training, where I was pushed again and again to think of archives in different, new ways. And to cultivate obsessiveness. To be okay with the long duree of a project. The circularity around places, moments of history, people. I like doing that with poetry; it just takes a big, fat canvas to pull it off. I'm not a poet who typically writes standalone poems, and oftentimes I wish I was. It seems like that would feel more immediately and periodically satisfying. And it certainly would take less time to feel rested, complete.
SoFloPoJo: I know a lot of that research went into Buffalo Girl. Talk a little about the poems in that, and also, your riverun project.
Jessica Stark: For Buffalo Girl, I spent about a year researching before starting to write any poems. After reading several versions of the Little Red Riding Hood stories to my young son, I became a little obsessed with this story and began researching its origins, its multifarious versions and endings, its cross-cultural movement across time. It's one of our oldest stories; its oldest origins predate written language. In the dozens of different versions I found of this story in my research, so many of them focus on a loose morality tale cautioning young girls to not wander from a path, not to pick flowers, not to risk the woods, not to chase curiosity, not to dally, lest they want to be potentially ripped apart by a wolf (or worse). While researching this book, I had also been having a lot of conversations with my mother on her immigration story from Vietnam to the United States in the chaotic wake of a concluding war in 1975. Naturally, I began to think about these two threads together: my mother's requisite wandering, the stories that we tell about girlhood, and how we frame and perpetuate simplistic tales of victimhood and survival. I also wanted to think about the counterintuitive parallels that could be imagined between the girl and the wolf, in thinking about the "monstrosities" that survival often breeds in reality. The poems do a lot of this questioning. How does violence rupture neat narratives of victimhood? When is survival monstrous, and how can we still honor that difficulty? How does love continually foil the hard edges that time and trauma make of us? Unfortunately and unexpectedly, my mother passed away about two months after the publication of this book. So, while it wasn't intended to be so when I wrote it, it is also a book that is (and always will be) deeply marked by my own personal grief.
Riverrun is a project I started recently as an ode to orality and homage to websites like PennSound that I encountered when I was a young poet and which was so instrumental in allowing me to access the texture of poets' voices and performance when not physically proximate to performances of this caliber. Riverrun was also inspired by (so many!) casual conversations with other poets, usually at national conferences located outside of the US South, that expressed surprise that there are so many poets living, working, and loving in Florida. With some support from my department, I wanted to create a living, growing testament to the vibrancy and diversity of poetry in Florida. I am a transplant and I have been living in Florida for only six years, which feels like a relatively short time in some ways, but I love this state for its wildness. It's difficult, it's chaotic, it's unpredictable, it's overgrown and a bit untameable like its water, its vines, its wildlife. What better grounds (albeit not the most peaceful) for poetry--for cultivating communities of poetry that move and challenge. I'm working on adding to the catalogue and I would love to showcase poets from all over the state reading a selection of their published work, as well as add to the recorded, live poetry events. I'm also working with students to produce an ongoing poetry podcast in the future as well. I'm excited for that prospect down the line. It's still in a nascent state as I do this work in the corners of my FT work and my own poetry writing, but I'm excited to see how it grows. So the next time somebody expresses surprise, I can just point to the river.
SoFloPoJo: If there is one, what image appears most in your poetry?
Jessica Stark: A friend recently pointed out that many of my projects involve animals. The observation was obvious once stated, yet it still surprised me! I don’t think I’ve been consciously writing toward them. On reflection, though, I see that much of my work is concerned with peripheral histories: overlooked people, places, and stories, the marginal narratives that exist within larger ones. In that sense, animals fit naturally into my concerns. In relation to human attention, they are often treated as peripheral: overlooked, underestimated, or dismissed altogether. My latest project includes sprawling, serial poems devoted to the flea and its long, intimate relationship with humans. Animals, for me, function as powerful reminders of the limits of human perception and control; they expose our assumptions and our enduring flaws.
SoFloPoJo: And finally, What contemporary poet(s) do you find the most interesting or compelling?
Jessica Stark: I have a soft spot for poets mixing genres and writing hybrid work like Mai Der Vang, Anthony Cody, and Bhanu Kapil. To boot, I draw a lot of inspiration from poets that challenge AI's ability to mimic what we do. I think right now that translates to poems that resist epiphany, that challenge narrative satisfaction, and that undo familiar ways of using language. I align Dionne Brand and Ariana Reines' poetry to this hard work (as well as the aforementioned poets). Love for eternity to Florida-based poets, of course, for writing quite literally in a storm. I hear you Lenny, Tiffany, Dorsey, Michelle, Andy, Asa, Anna, Caridad, Nicole, Natalie (among so many other voices in the wind). The weather simply can't stop us.
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, 2023), winner of a Florida Book Award and a finalist for the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020), and five poetry chapbooks, including most recently The Flea, which won first place for the MAYDAY microchapbook prize in 2025. She is a Poetry Editor at AGNI and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. She was named the 2025 South Arts Fellow for Florida and currently co-organizes the Dreamboat Reading Series in Jacksonville. She also curates the Riverrun Poetry Stream, an audio-collection of Florida-based poets.
Link to my website: https://jessicaqstark.com/