00:00:49.020Hello to the Missing Witches Coven.0.89
00:00:51.620Today we're so excited to chat with poet, witch, eco-feminist.
00:00:59.060We'll get into all of these terms and more.
00:01:03.720Jem, thank you so much, Jem Rosenberg, for being here to talk about your new book of poetry, Sticks Stone.
00:01:12.340and the process of being a witch poet thank you so much for joining us
00:01:20.680thank you so much for having me I'm so delighted to be here I love your podcast and your book
00:01:29.940and it's just kind of a dream come true to be able to talk to you about my work so thank you
00:01:36.300Thank you so much. And thank you for sending me this copy of Stick Stones.
00:01:43.260Excuse me. You had filled it with like dried leaves and petals and it was just like a such a emotional tactile material experience to pull it out of the envelope and have it sort of flow over me.
00:01:59.140so thank you um for those of our listeners who don't have the copy in my hand my paper copy in
00:02:07.160my hand can you start us off with a reading yes i would love to um i'm going to start
00:05:48.080when will my house fall into the ravine but there's also like you say the the smoothing
00:05:53.760you know erosion doesn't necessarily have to be like a loss but maybe like a smoothing of roughness
00:06:01.200like as in the water yeah definitely and I think that with this poem and a lot of these poems they
00:06:11.460they can be interpreted either way or interpreted different differently depending upon
00:06:18.080how you're feeling when you read it that day yeah this is how art teaches us compassion right
00:06:24.800to me anyway you know that you can look at something and take an equally valuable meaning
00:06:30.960away from it that is the opposite of someone else's equally valuable meaning that they took
00:06:35.880so you described stick stones to me as an eco-feminist memento mori so i really need to
00:06:43.700like let's do one one piece at a time if you can tell us like because i know everyone always says
00:06:51.040like well i don't want to speak for all insert whatever you know word here so we know you're
00:06:57.440not speaking for all eco-feminists but if you could give us like your personal definition of1.00
00:07:02.020what that means and then your personal definition of memento mori and then your personal definition1.00
00:07:08.080of what it means when we put those two terms together yeah definitely um so ecofeminism
00:07:16.320uh very simply is a form of intersectionality that just focuses on the environment and
00:07:32.020anything relative to feminism um for me personally it goes back to that concept that we spoke about
00:07:42.240previously with erosion about there not being a separation between our bodies and earth bodies
00:07:50.760and, um, or the earth body and that there's, uh, a denigration of women and gender non-conforming
00:08:06.440people. Um, and also a denigration of the earth and a history of, um, I'll just speak for myself
00:08:14.780because I identify as a woman um that there's a history of women being seen as you know dirty and
00:08:24.820less than and just of the earth in a way that men are not and it's kind of like well um embracing
00:08:36.240our bodily processes as just like any other process, like erosion or the ocean ebbing
00:08:48.400and flowing or whatever that might be.
00:08:51.700And I think for me personally, identifying with the earth in this way, it's supportive to me because I think sometimes as humans, we can often fail each other.
00:09:12.920and um there's a way that our landscape can kind of hold us and support us and mirror us
00:09:24.780so for me that that's what eco-feminism is for me
00:09:31.860and um if you want me to jump right into the memento mori um so
00:09:42.700A memento mori is seen as kind of a reminder of our mortality, and it's often associated
00:09:57.160So I think that with the ecofeminism and everything that's happening to the earth and, you know,
00:10:07.260just heard on the news that they made abortions legal in Florida. And that there's just kind of,
00:10:19.680again, this sort of preoccupation with death, with thinking about our relationship to the planet
00:10:32.240right now there's mass extinction uh we're just losing so much so quickly
00:10:39.380um and then there's uh mental health is a huge theme in my in my writing as well and uh feeling
00:10:51.320just personally what what comes up um when something's so precious this body that is
00:11:03.800you know our earth body our our body um wouldn't wouldn't be able to we wouldn't be able to exist
00:11:14.960without without it um so there there is an acknowledgement of grief and loss and um
00:11:27.480a lot of writing on the cemetery and a lot of uh writing has come out of meditative walks
00:11:35.940in the cemetery um so yes that's the eco-feminist memento mori
00:11:42.820and how does writing poetry help us slash you slash us resist these destructive forces
00:11:54.140well i think that simply acknowledging it is the most basic uh first step
00:12:12.820um in resistance and I feel like that is what poetry does why are you a poet
00:12:22.020that's such a good question these are great um why am I a poet I feel like it happened on accident
00:12:32.240um I wrote I always wrote a little bit um
00:12:41.020and one day how this book came about um Emily Cobb who is my publisher from Free Witch Press
00:12:52.200and we'll get into that yeah yeah we'll get into it well one day she just put out a call
00:13:01.000for poetry and I thought oh I have a few poems um it would be nice for them to have a life
00:13:07.840beyond just sitting in a journal. So I submitted and she got back to me and she said to me,
00:13:16.100um, do you have any more poems so we can write your book? And I was like, what, what did I just
00:13:25.360do? What did I just sign up for? And, you know, immediately there was like this rush of doubt.
00:13:32.180well I'm not really a writer I'm I'm didn't identify as a poet before I wrote this book
00:13:38.980um and I just rose to the occasion I just kind of told myself there's no way I could pass up
00:13:51.920this opportunity. Um, and I just went for it and wrote this book for like a year. And, um,
00:14:08.160there were other contributing factors. Um, spiritually, I grew up Jewish and still identify
00:14:17.500in that way and am reclaiming, trying to reclaim Jewish magic and mysticism and some of the more0.71
00:14:25.600fun witchy sides of Judaism that I didn't learn about growing up. But before I got into that,0.88
00:14:35.200I made my way back into spirituality via spiritualism and started going to message
00:14:43.780circles and um right before this book happened I got a message that I was a poet in a past life
00:14:54.760and I always had a ever since I got that message I had this vision of her um
00:15:06.300who is me which is interesting um you know just sitting in like victorian garb like totally
00:15:16.200covered in like black cloaks hunched over like an old secretary desk like the one behind me
00:15:23.240and i and i never see her face but i just see her writing um so once i got that message it opened up
00:15:33.620this like this portal or something where all of a sudden these words started pouring into me
00:15:42.580um almost like lightning strike or something um and that's how I became a poet
00:15:55.360so for all of our listeners who have their you know Emily Dickinson filled journals of secret
00:16:04.800poems in their secret journal caverns um and short of you know someone just saying like
00:16:12.180send us more poems so that we can make your book how do you think that the people listening to
00:16:17.980this can conjure that vision of their future selves or their past selves as identified poet
00:16:25.060um the so the question is how can we conjure our our future and past selves
00:16:38.560or just that the the quote-unquote message that you are you were you will be a poet
00:16:48.940how do we conjure that message for ourselves oh oh that's that's great yeah
00:16:54.540I, I mean, in a way, I'm not sure because I really felt like this medium, like he kind of lit that match for me and through his gifts was able to kind of open me to my gifts.
00:17:24.540And I think that's the, the great gift of mediumship. Um, so I do think that having a relationship with a medium can be a way to learn more about your past self and open yourself up to the present and what your future may be.
00:17:45.860um I do think that ultimately we don't necessarily need that and that we have it
00:17:54.560within ourselves all along and that's what he told me he told me he didn't do anything
00:18:00.620and that it was inside of me the whole time and I think I'm still wrapping my head around
00:18:10.160how that was in me and I didn't know. Um, and you know, how can I be more aware
00:18:23.380of what's of who I've been and what's inside me and what my potential is. And I think a good
00:18:32.100starting place is really just trusting your intuition um no matter how quiet that little
00:18:41.220voice inside you might be if it's saying a word or a phrase or you're coming across the same thing
00:18:53.200over and over again like a synchronicity um to really trust that and do what it says
00:19:01.400yeah period yeah i mean it's it it relates to our our you know um notions about ecofeminism and the
00:19:15.740the degradation of the idea of intuition all plus you know bodies are degraded but also or degraded
00:19:25.280excuse me but uh also our inherent knowledge that doesn't fit into the capitalist patriarchal model
00:19:33.680of what knowledge is yeah i think that's a good answer if you can't access a medium if you don't
00:19:41.060have a medium in your circle of friends then you can start by just really listening to your own
00:19:47.860voice giving voice to your own voice yeah and I do have a recent example of where that came
00:19:59.240together for me just within my inside myself I felt really I've been making all this jewelry
00:20:07.980with like shells and minerals and um I felt really called to make a mirror with shells
00:20:16.160there's actually one hanging just behind me here you can see um and I started making all
00:20:25.220these mirrors with clay and shells and painting them and then uh a friend reached out to me and
00:20:33.340told me that they were like a portal and started talking to me about mirror magic and I had no
00:20:40.300idea what mirror magic was or that it was even a thing um and then all of a sudden everywhere
00:20:48.240on Instagram threads feeds mirror magic mirror magic showing up so all of a sudden there was
00:20:59.880this class talking about it and I was like well I'm gonna sign up and take it and that's kind of
00:21:06.800a perfect example I think of just trusting your intuition you're doing something maybe you don't
00:21:14.420really know why you're doing it you just feel called and then the answer becomes clear as you
00:21:21.020go along. One of my favorite examples is this is the the painter Mayumi Oda and she was painting
00:21:27.640these sort of large beautiful goddess figures and she didn't really know why she just sort of felt
00:21:32.800compelled to paint these goddess figures and then and then afterwards she started learning about
00:21:40.020Maria Gimbutas and these similar shapes you know the work of um of Monica Cho and Barbara0.81
00:21:47.700Barbara Moore and these she was she had been painting these things that like archaeologists0.79
00:21:53.680and researchers were finding at the time without knowing that they and I really think there is
00:22:00.680something to this this notion of zeitgeist you know and sometimes we we listen if we go forth
00:22:07.140and listen to these like little downloads that we get then we can be exposing ourselves to
00:22:12.180any number of amazing things because we didn't notice them before but then when you start
00:22:17.080noticing noticing is like the same thing that you're talking about with poetry it's noticing
00:22:20.860is acknowledging and acknowledging is resistance and resistance is enchantment so really it's like
00:22:28.660the smallest I spoke to uh another writer um Ilva Radaszewski who told me that
00:22:36.420her process of writing her book was like healing on a deadline do you relate to that at all or did
00:22:44.940you sort of have like a more nebulous time frame to work on your poetry book it was kind of an open
00:22:52.240time frame which felt very freeing but there wasn't any stagnation with the process and I
00:22:59.740think that's what felt so wholesome about this like just writing it is that I was always working
00:23:08.740on something for it um and we sort of had like a loose deadline of when we wanted to release it
00:23:18.160and we mostly kept to that and and it felt felt good like this birth moment although it's been
00:23:28.280in COVID so I'm glad that um I found some other ways to connect with people about the book and
00:23:34.700share it um since I haven't been able to do live readings as much as I would like to just yet um
00:23:42.020but yeah yeah so tell us about this process then let's get into free witch press I know a lot of
00:23:50.040our listeners are going to be just like drooling even over just the name and even like the ethos
00:23:56.380behind it is even more exciting than possibly than the name um I know it's being run by two
00:24:02.900people who were not the founders. So it is like a growing and evolving house. Can you tell us
00:24:10.560about Free Witch Press? Yeah, I can tell you a little bit about it. It's a very kind of DIY
00:24:19.500independent women run press. It's based in Dedham, Massachusetts. So I'm originally from
00:24:31.040Eastern Mass. And that's where I met Emily, who, um, as far as I know, has always had a role with
00:24:39.240the press. Um, but I know, um, the, her partner that she's working on it with, with now, um,
00:24:46.980that's kind of a newer thing. And, um, yeah, it's authors, um, previously before my book,
00:24:58.060as far as I know everything was published in a very handmade kind of way um you know
00:25:05.720hand stapling it together almost like zine style um and and we talked about actually making
00:25:13.700uh the book in that fashion but it the project just ended up being so huge that by the end of it
00:25:21.780when we had to make a decision um uh we were very much like we just want to reach out to someone
00:25:30.020and have them like really printed and just have that new I'm touching the book for those of you
00:25:38.580who can't see what I'm doing just yes it feels really good it's a nice object and that was a
00:25:45.640bit of a departure from what the press normally does but it's very it's very in the spirit of
00:25:51.980like I I personally feel like uh DIY but very like just fine art fine craft at the same time
00:26:02.520a lot of precision and care and thought is put into the work that the press produces
00:26:10.120do you ritualize your writing practice at all
00:26:16.200um I feel like I struggle with ritual in general because my
00:26:27.240personality is kind of for better for worse it's kind of like I like to do things when I feel like
00:26:37.200or just when the inspiration strikes and, um, not forcing it on any kind of timeline
00:26:47.260or moon cycle or anything like that. Um, so I, I just sort of, um,
00:26:58.060I, I don't know. I think of ritual as this formal thing, but maybe it doesn't necessarily
00:27:06.360have to be um uh yeah so I don't I don't feel like I write on a formal ritualized timeline
00:27:16.560it it's just sort of random kind of maybe not random within the context of the universe
00:27:25.760because it's happening exactly when it needs to be happening yeah good point yeah um I think that
00:27:35.240writing in general and maybe more specifically but maybe not writing poetry is akin to witchcraft
00:27:43.460you're nodding so you agree with that statement good can you tell me how and why
00:27:49.740you agree with that statement how it is why it is well I think it's the only thing that makes me
00:27:59.040feel like I am a witch because I would kind of consider myself to be sort of like a baby witch
00:28:09.100and I felt very self-conscious about using that word or identifying in that way because I just
00:28:18.720you know I didn't I I had this idea of like oh I need to have studied all this and read all these
00:28:27.440books and just, you know, have been practicing for a really long time or something, you know?
00:28:36.260And I was like, well, if I were to consider myself a witch, like in which way am I a witch?
00:28:44.800And there's so many ways to be a witch. And I feel like for me, it's really my art and my writing.
00:28:55.040and that that is where the most magic shows up in my life and even though I have doubts about it
00:29:06.420sometimes I also know that what's happening is totally magical and undeniable what does the word
00:29:16.960magical mean to you i think that for me it's any experience that is outside
00:29:31.160the realm of what is ordinarily perceived as reality so it is
00:29:41.980relative, but within the context of the society that we live in, or perhaps more specifically
00:29:58.920to my experience, the culture that I feel like I'm a part of, I feel like
00:30:07.640people don't believe in this kind of stuff so uh that it's real um so to me that is what
00:30:21.600makes it magic is that it's outside the realm of what people perceive to be real
00:30:29.840which is a pretty broad definition and I can go into like specifics of how I experience magic like
00:30:38.700um yeah so uh I think that we're all mediums um like psychic I think we're all psychic too
00:30:52.540um and that it's just a matter of tapping into that in my journey with spiritual spirituality
00:31:00.740i i was atheist for a while i didn't really believe in life after death or anything beyond
00:31:10.580this material world um but i was never necessarily against the idea of possibility
00:31:18.780and I met just some very trustworthy people that had these otherworldly experiences
00:31:28.380and I trusted them and as soon as I opened myself up to what was possible things started
00:31:39.540happening that I had never experienced before um like uh one time I was in the spiritualist church
00:31:52.020and I saw blue light like blue lightning inside of a building and the lights flickered and
00:32:03.800I looked around to see if anybody else saw that. And there were people making eye contact with me
00:32:11.660like, whoa. Um, and we talked about it afterwards and, and what that was, or, um, one time I was
00:32:20.200visiting my grandmother and, um, it was going to be her birthday and I wanted to get her flowers.
00:32:27.720I wasn't sure which kind of flowers to get her um and I was in her house I came home to her house
00:32:36.840one day and I walked in the door and I just started smelling lilies like you know that like
00:32:42.480saccharine sweet lily smell like very strongly I started smelling lilies to the point where I was
00:32:50.080kind of looking around like where where are the lilies they're not in season right now um
00:32:56.960And then I was like, oh, OK, you know, thanks for the message, you know.
00:33:02.640So when I when I first started experiencing these things, I couldn't tell the difference between these two different realities, you know, like that's how real it felt.
00:33:16.500And I have a lot of experiences and the most experiences like that with my art and with my poetry.
00:33:25.740you said something that i i just really want to dig my claws into this because you know i i can
00:33:37.160only speak for myself but i've definitely lost relationships because people couldn't stop
00:33:43.020demeaning what i was doing you know and you said um that you weren't quote against the idea of
00:33:53.300possibility and that I'm sort of like framing this in my mind is like all these people who
00:34:00.180are demeaning me us which is in general other forms of knowledge you know non-colonial ways
00:34:06.620of thinking all of this are they against the idea of possibility and I think the answer is yes
00:34:15.580and that blows my freaking mind imagine I mean I don't I don't think anyone certainly no one
00:34:22.420here in this circle today or anyone who's listening to this podcast is against the idea
00:34:28.440of possibility certainly in this group but it's something that I'm going to take with me when I
00:34:34.560meet someone who's I'm skeptical you know I I'm an old-time punk and I don't you know
00:34:41.520but sometimes you meet people who are scornful about it you know like I'm like I don't know0.98
00:34:49.360that sets off my bullshit detector. But some people are like, no, that's wrong and you're0.95
00:34:54.360stupid, you know? And maybe we've all experienced that in one form or another. And now I'm going to1.00
00:35:00.160ask them like, why are you against the idea of possibility? How could that conceivably make your
00:35:07.620life better? Being against the idea of possibility. I really want to thank you for that. I'm circling
00:35:14.620it in my notes against the idea of possibility can you imagine what a sad fucking life that must be0.89
00:35:22.240oh I'm against that yeah and and you know what I don't have anything against somebody being0.89
00:35:30.540atheist I mean it makes total sense to me if that's all you've ever experienced or known then
00:35:38.380of course you're going to be partial to that um it just so happens that in my experience I had
00:35:46.420a total shift in in my experience of what was possible to perceive um and
00:35:56.640yeah I I try to I try to associate with people that are at least open-minded about it because
00:36:06.480it's such a big part of who I am in my life and how I experience the world it feels kind of
00:36:13.380sad like you have to hide a little bit when someone is so closed off to the possibility
00:36:24.780you know we're not saying like closed off to the definitely I would never say definitely anything
00:36:32.660you know yeah do you maybe I'm too old but do any of you remember that game a question of
00:36:37.840scruples and it was like cards and the cards would have like a sort of moral dilemma and you
00:36:44.180would always you would have to answer yes no or depends and the other people in the game would
00:36:48.200sort of guess what you were going to say and I was terrible at the game because literally every
00:36:52.980time I picked depends literally every time you know you can't play scruples with Amy because
00:36:58.640it it always depends but let's not be against the idea of possibility
00:37:04.120yeah I love that I'm so filled with that I'm gonna ask you to do another reading so I can
00:37:10.880just sit in this moment yeah all right well I'm gonna do some bibliomancy and just see where we
00:37:20.780end up. Okay. If you happen to have the book, we are on page 24. The world above the blue.
00:37:38.080I am yours. I am scales of rusted rainbows and iridescent hues. I am scar tissue. Will you take
00:37:51.180me or leave me be? For at any given time, my body will not be mine. I have no chance to fight you.
00:38:02.200I surrender to the world above the blue.