Meet J.I. B. | Poet and Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with J.I. B. and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi J.I., how do you think about risk?
I decided at 17 that I was going to dedicate my life to lit and poetry. That’s a tremendous risk. You have to be willing to fail, and believe in your bones that you won’t. That’s the only way to get things done.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
It started simply with me, as a preteen, becoming increasingly obsessed with the arts. I wanted to be an artist, and I want to do so in a rebellious and new way. My artistic efforts lead me to writing, and my primary focus, after a number of years, became poetry. In particular, I write in a form call prose poetry; poetry written in dense blocks of text, in near paragraph form. This was a form invented in France, around the same time Walt Whitman invented free verse (both forms set out to break free from traditional poetry structures).

I tell people I reverse engineer my books. I decide what I want a collection of poems to be, the themes, the symbology, even lines I want to repeat throughout different poems, and I write from there. I do this so that I feel that I have 1) created a work with strong cohesion 2) created a work that explores a subject in its entirety.

Most people who know my work well will tell you, my work is gritty, very personal, often political, intense, and at time overwhelming. If I were to narrow it down; mental health and illness, trauma related to poverty, drug addiction, and toxic family dynamics, culture and social commentary and satire, personal confessions, and the rage I feel as an Appalachian person, and an American person are what you’ll find in my work.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Personally, I would fill in some time hanging out with friends, introducing them to folks, maybe go hiking or to some creeks. But at night, probably go to Port City Pub and Cafe, on a night they have a show, or to The Landing in Portsmouth, again, on a night they have a show.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are a number of people. Neil Carpathios and Kevin Griffith to start with, both were the heads of the two creative writing programs I attended, and both took me under their wing, and the advice and guidance they offered were invaluable. From there, Zach Hannah, fellow poet, got me involved in poetry readings, and got me on some of my first featured readings. Ezhno Martin, fellow poet and editor of EMP, published my first chapbook and first full length, and got me further into the greater poetry circuit. He got my name and work out into the world in a major way. From there, I have other touring partners, C.D. Bailey, Nikki Blankenship, and Dan Denton.

I could really go on and on. I have many dear, dear friends in the poetry world, and my instinct is to name them all, and at length. But these six are absolutely paramount.

Instagram: J.I.B.Trash.Poet

Facebook: J Ian Bush

Image Credits
These were all taken by friends on the road, who I assure you, they don’t mind going uncredited. The drawling was done by Zack Craft, Portsmouth.