Q/A with Bailey Schaumburg

Posted by Nick Martinez in Creative Writing

Photo by Ash Haywood

As a part of an ongoing Q&A session with the Creative Writing and Literature Department’s Senior Reading Class, Jackalope Magazine sat down with Bailey Schaumburg. Schaumburg discussed sass, self aware poetry and poet-lady sex.

Schaumburg reads with Mark Feigenbutz and Leticia Gonzales at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 21 in O’Shaughnessy Performance Space. 

Jackalope Magazine: How dare you?

Bailey Schaumburg: I like to throw sass back when I get the sass. It’s like sass softball.

JM: How did you get into writing?

BS: I’ve always liked writing, but I took a creative writing class in high school and just loved it.

JM: What genre do you work in and why?

BS: Poetry. (awkward pause)

JM: OK, do you work in other genres as well?

BS: Not really. I like to pull things from other genres into my poetry. Or try to. I fail miserably sometimes. I’d say fiction actually has helped me most, because it helps to tell lies.

JM: What three words would you use to describe your writing?

BS: Uhh. The only three words that comes to mind are: bloody, shitty and badass. (laughs)

JM: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever written?

BS: One time I wrote a poem about writing poems that was really self aware. It was horrible. It was sappy, maudlinesky as Dana [Levin)] would say. It was called the “Poem Poem” or something like that. It was bad.

JM: How do you balance work and family?

BS: Yeah, I have a daughter named Calypso. Not really. I don’t very well.

JM: Marrry, Fuck, Kill: Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Ashton Kutcher.

BS: Oh God. Fuck Sylvia, Marry Ashton, Kill Gertrude Stein. Sylvia and I would have crazed poet-lady sex! (laughs)