Tiny Interview #1 - Benjamin Niespodziany

Here we ask authors we admire to share their musings on art and writing, spill their current reading obsessions, and give us a tiny wedge into their creative life. In this Tiny Interview, meet Benjamin Niespodziany, whose piece, "Magus Frustrated," was published in Issue Eleven of Tiny Molecules. 

(Interviewed by Cameron Finch)

Benjamin Niespodziany's work has appeared in Cheap Pop, Fence, Fairy Tale Review, Gone Lawn, Hobart, Wigleaf, and various others. Along with being featured in the Wigleaf Top 50, his writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. His debut chapbook The Northerners was released in 2021 by above/ground press and his second chapbook Pickpocket the Big Top was released in May 2022 by Dark Hour Books. No Further Than the End of the Street is his debut, full-length collection. You can find out more at neonpajamas.com

Q: What book(s) are you reading right now?

A: I'm reading Laura Walker's new collection, psalmbook, I'm reading Mette Norrie's Book on Pauses (which she also illustrated), and I'm re-reading Gregory Orr's first two collections: Burning the Empty Nests (1973) and Gathering the Bones Together (1975). Those two books are the best debut + sophomore poetry releases I've come across. What an untouchable combo.

A: How much time do you have? I'm currently working on a longer manuscript surrounding cinema and film. Snippets of it appear in my chapbooks The Northerners (2021) and Pickpocket the Big Top (2022). I have another manuscript that takes place entirely within a library. I have another manuscript of faith-based prose poems that is nearing completion. I have a novella-in-stories that I haven't looked at in a year that needs some work. And I have a couple others in very early stages and halfway drafts. In between manuscript edits, I like to write centos, practice erasure, and write while watching movies with the sound off.

Q: What are your current writing projects?

A: Visual art, absolutely. I'm always inspired by paintings and illustrations and have a significant amount of ekphrastic pieces (poems and short stories) in various stages of completion. I often find myself browsing art on behance.net whenever I need a break from writing. Movies are in that same world. If it's visually pleasing, I'll watch.

Additionally, music has always been important in my writing life and my life in general. I work in the music industry and have been in music message boards since an early teen. My first taste of poetry was printing out pages of azlyrics.com as a kid and studying the lines to my favorite songs. And maybe not while I'm freewriting, but when I'm editing and fine-tuning my poems, it's always about the music. 

Q: Do any other art forms influence your writing? If so, how?

A: On my couch. At the library. At my desk. In bed. On a walk. I often write a line or a sentence or a tiny paragraph whenever I can, usually in a rush, and later build from there. It might be a day or a week later, but I'll often use that sliver or that line as an entryway into a freewrite or an early draft. Other times, I start from scratch and set my timer by listening to Jon Hopkins on YouTube. He has a combined track that is 14 minutes long and I feel like that's the perfect amount of time to freewrite. It's cleansing every time.

Q: Where is your favorite place to write, and do you have any writing rituals?

Q: Who is a writer you wish more people were reading?

A: Evan Nicholls and Evan Williams. I wrote a collaborative e-chapbook with them for Ghost City Press' 2022 summer series. It's free. They're geniuses. We have another piece in HAD, and some more writing on the way. I've said too much. 

And I wish more people read Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi. His writing will change your life.