Jillian Weise’s first book, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, was published by Soft Skull Press. A chapbook, Translating the Body, was published by All Nations Press. Poems are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Forklift, Ohio, Pleiades and elsewhere. She is part of a project called “Poetry Everywhere” which debuted in the buses and subways of seven cities in February 2008. Jillian lives in Kentucky.

Alfaro: What are your three favorite books?

Jillian: Right now I’m swooned by Juan Ruiz’s Book of Good Love. The poems involve a lot of swashbuckling. I’m a big fan of Stein’s Mexico and Cortazar’s We Love Glenda So Much.

Alfaro: “Poetry Everywhere” sounds like an amazing project to be a part of. What cities were involved?

Jillian: Los Angeles, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago (I think) and some others. It’s sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Film Department.

Alfaro: Very cool. So how did you get into poetry?

Jillian: I started writing poetry late. At first, all my poems were for this guy named Jude who wore beanie hats and smelled like Nag Champa and sat one seat to my right in Poetry 101. One time Jude thought I should take “Nostradamus” out of the poem and that wrecked me for a whole week. I don’t even know where Jude is these days. I heard he was snorkeling for turtles in the Coral Sea.

Alfaro: So you started out writing prophetic love poems? Interesting. Did The Amputee’s Guide to Sex start to take shape once Jude left for the sea?

Jillian: In part, yes, such as the cuttlefish poem. It gets fogged trying to remember what was for what and who was for whom. Mainly I was sitting beside Jude, then eating dinner, then to the sofa, then to the Coral Sea. These migrations tend to be the same: close, close, closer, far away.

Alfaro: So how did you get hooked up with Soft Skull?

Jillian: I sent the poems around in book form to many contests. This was very expensive ($400). I got a nod from a couple, but none wanted to marry the poems. I started wondering why I was paying a couple people–whose taste I didn’t even particularly care for– to read the poems. I picked three presses I really like and sent them ten poems with a query letter. I guess Tennessee Jones over at Soft Skull got the mail that day. And he loved the poems. So the book came out of the slush pile and into print. Which is pretty awesome.

Alfaro: Definitely. How do you feel about the state of poetry?

Jillian: The state of poetry is effing fantastic. “Fersher” (to quote Ben Mirov). I just listened to Maurice Manning read his poem, “Three Truths, One Story” on the Cortland Review’s site. Used to be, if I wanted to hear Maurice Manning, I’d have to travel by carriage or book a cruise to Sylvia Beach’s place.

Alfaro: The internet has done wonders. What are your writing habits?

Jillian: Bad ones. Other ones include long hour blocks. I usually start around 10, 11, midnight and go until 6, 7, 8 am. I can’t flip from one thing to the next. If I’m in something, then I’m in it entirely. I’m bothered by eating unless the character gets hungry too. Then it’s okay. It makes relationships tricky because a lot of people want to sleep at night with other people beside them. There is this idea that if two people don’t sleep beside each other between the hours of 10pm-7am then something’s wrong. I don’t know why that is.

Alfaro: You’re teaching now is that correct?

Jillian: Yes. At the moment, I teach playwriting. We cast and read-through student plays each day. At the end of the quarter, we take a field trip to the Post Office to mail plays to a festival or theater company. This group is really good at using the technology of today (texting, the web, stem cells, etc.) and translating that to the stage.

Teaching playwriting is also a crash course in producing, directing, acting, and set design since an emerging playwright has much better chances of seeing their work onstage via DIY methods rather than say Off-Broadway. Though anything’s possible. I love to tell them the story about Sarah Kane, the British playwright, whose work was ripped to shreds by the press. She gets a knock on her door the day after a performance. It’s Harold Pinter. And he’s got roses.

Alfaro: Do you consider yourself a poet, a playwright or more nondescript as a writer?

Jillian: Writer.

Alfaro: Do you have a project that you are working on at the moment?

Jillian: I just got an agent for something that’s in-progress but I don’t want to talk about it because I’m suddenly superstitious. Poets don’t have agents, typically, so it’s been really fun.

Other projects include … a second book of poems. Though I’m not rushing it. And a play for this theater company to consider. Mainly because they’re in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

Alfaro: You also recently left the country to visit Buenos Aires. What was that like?

Jillian: It was a blast. I planned the trip on a whim and once I got there I kept trying to figure out how to stay. Ultimately, finances decided for me.

Alfaro: That seems to be the way is goes. Where do you draw inspiration or what do you find inspiring?

Jillian: Here are some things I’m inspired by lately: SEED’s Tear-Outable Tool for Living in the 21st Century: Cribsheet #12, paper airplanes, Van Gogh’s Seascape, a poster of twenty doors in Buenos Aires, Exodus, and Joel Brouwer’s poem “A Report to an Academy.”

I also got pretty excited about a piece of cardboard in a shoebox that says: “Attention! It is our nature to create intentional cosmetic imperfections.”

Alfaro: How is Kentucky? Is there a vibrant writing scene?

Jillian: There’s a great scene in Louisville — Jeffrey Skinner, Sarah Gorham, Nickole Brown, Erin Keane, and Adam Day, who is likely driving his pickup right this moment and lining a badger poem. As for my current location in Kentucky, we used to be the playcave for Cincy with gambling, whores, red velvet, and go-go boots. This was the 1940s-80s. We now have a mega cineplex & the best thrift shop for lascivious vintage wares.

Alfaro: You were previously an intern for The Paris Review. Can you talk about that experience?

Jillian: I was at the Paris Review when the office was located right near river on the Upper East Side. So I spent a lot of time on a park bench facing the water with twenty stories to read and a coca-cola. It was a blast, but I realized I’m not good at skimming pages.

Alfaro: Well thanks for taking the time to answer some questions. Best of luck to you.