Jordan Hanson is a poet and writer currently living in Philadelphia, USA. Her poems “Red Women” and “[How were you to know it was your last] family vacation” can be found in issues 6 and 8 of orangepeel, respectively.
op: Could you give us a quick introduction to yourself?
jh: Hi y’all! I’m Jordan. I’m a chronically online poet/writer living in Philadelphia with my partner and my cat (Ravioli). I grew up in the Midwest and attended Roanoke College in Virginia, where I majored in English and Creative Writing. Now I work in healthcare tech (unsure how I got there), but in my free time I do a lot of listening to music, going to concerts, reading, and writing in cafes. I love poetry but I’m also working on my first novel 😉
op: We appreciate the vivid description in “[How were you to know it was your last] family vacation.” How do you choose the right details to include in your writing?
jh: I had a lot of fun thinking about past beach vacations and the parts that always felt nostalgic to me. It was kind of like immersing myself in all the things I love about the beach, no matter how silly: I wanted to smell the sunscreen and the chlorine, feel the sunburn, see the technicolor mirages. Most things are specific at least from my own memory. There is one thing in the poem that’s not from the beach and is actually a little easter egg for myself from my neighborhood in Philly, but something I felt would look right at home on a future-beach when all the tourists have gone.
op: “Red Women,” featured in Issue 6, and “[How were you to know it was your last] family vacation” vary in form and perspective. How did you approach each poem differently?
jh: I think both of these poems actually represent a divergence from my usual form. I find that I at least start out with what people may think of as “typical” poetry, with shorter lines and stanza breaks, everything on the left margin. Both of these poems started out that way, but as I worked on them more, I wanted to explore a different way of presenting the poem. For “Red Women,” I wanted to work with the two perspectives within the poem, of the two women in the painting that inspired it. I liked the look of two parts, and felt it better signaled to the reader that there were two speakers. Red women came together fairly quickly as part of a larger project of ekphrasis, and once I tried out the new form, it was settled.
“[How were you to know it was your last] family vacation” also started as a typical poem for me, as some notes jotted down in my phone about vegetation swallowing up beach houses. It was a partly formed idea of the oceans creeping up on beaches and what they would look like in the future when the tourists had vacated for higher ground. I had also written down “Spanish moss is full of ghosts” and really liked that idea. The original poem draft was short, maybe 15 lines. Then the note sat in my phone for about two years. I came across it again when I was looking for poems I could submit for the future edition, and took about two days to edit it. First I just added more beach imagery and started playing around with the brackets, but then I realized I had written the original lines on what would actually become my last family vacation. I started thinking about how not only how the beach would change as time passed, but how our lives can change in unexpected ways, ways that we couldn’t predict. It ended up becoming a much more personal poem as well as a way for me to process things—and I think the poem is better for it.
op: Where do you find inspiration for your poems?
jh: I take a lot of inspiration from nature, artwork, and tiny moments in my own life. Most of my poems are about myself (though not all!), or at least start out that way. There’s a quote from my favorite book that sums it up well: “Everything starts with a little truth, then I spin my webs around it—sometimes I spin completely away from it.” (That’s from Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl.) So I’m inspired by truths: things that happened to me, or to a friend, or things I saw or heard that were interesting to me.
op: Lastly, what are three things you want us to know about you or your work?
jh: 1. A lot of my work is very personal, but I try not to take myself too seriously! Sure, I have a degree in creative writing, so I know a thing or two about craft. But really, I just had four years to read a lot of creative works and practice a lot of writing. Art/writing should be fun, and when I have work published it feels really cool that someone out there connected to and liked something I wrote, even if it’s just the magazine editors and my friends. Writing can be lonely sometimes, and it’s nice to share it with others.
2. Though I’ve written a lot of poetry (and you can find what’s been published on my website, https://jordanhansonwrites.wixsite.com/writing), I’m also finally working on fiction. It’s been a dream of mine for what feels like forever to write a novel, so I’m spending my free time chugging along on a fantasy book, which is so fun. Maybe one day it’ll be published! I’m optimistic in the face of low odds! If for some reason you want to keep up on that progress, I post somewhat regular updates on instagram @jordanhansonwrites.
3. I’m really lucky to have a lot of people in my corner supporting my writing. They’re a big reason I’m still doing this. So thank you to my partner Jack, who is the first person to read everything I write, to my friends and family who read and share my work, and to my cat Ravioli, who can’t read but is around for moral support.
orangepeel literary magazine 