NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State University poet and professor Dr. Rebecca Macijeski will be featured at a book launch for “Apocryphal Girl,” her second chapbook. Macijeski will read selections from the book along with newer work at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 30 in the Cammie G. Henry Research Center on the third floor of Watson Library. The reading will be followed by a Q and A. The public is invited.
Macijeski is an associate professor and coordinator of Creative Writing Programs in NSU’s Department of English, Languages and Cultural Studies.
“This book is a weird one. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s an exploration and celebration of childhood, but also a warning against how easily our joy and magic can be taken away. It’s a reminder for all of us to be our own lights in the darkness,” Macijeski said.
Macijeski’s first chapbook, “Autobiography,” was released by Split Rock Press in 2022. “Apocryphal Girl” was selected in last fall as one of the manuscripts for the inaugural chapbook catalog from Pinhole Poetry, a digital poetry journal and chapbook press. (https://pinholepoetry.ca/)
“In the past months, press editor Erin Bedford and I have worked collaboratively to transform the poems into the book manuscript,” Macijeski said. “Erin has done beautiful work to design art for the cover and for the interior pages. She has been with me every step of the way to produce a book that feels truly special. Each book is handmade and offered in a limited edition. The poems themselves were drafted off and on over a period of roughly two years.”
Macijeski provided insight into her work through an interview with Pinhole that appeared online at : https://pinholepoetry.ca/an-interview-with-rebecca-macijeski/#more-1191.
The new chapbook’s title plays with the meaning of the word apocryphal, Macijeski said.
“We call stories apocryphal when we question their truth or their origin,” she said. “Giving something the label of ‘apocryphal’ assigns doubt, but also assigns mystery and intrigue. Apocryphal is a word that, depending on who is using or interpreting it, can either dismiss or elevate its subject. I think of the apocryphal gospels, for example. Those stories were removed from the community of stories to which they once belonged.”
The “Girl” in the title is also meant to be complex.
“Some of the poems incorporate a narrator/character of a girl; this girl is sometimes rather obviously a version of myself in childhood, but at other times it’s less clear which of the stories are biography and which are imagination. I like that. I like playing with that. I hope readers will enjoy thinking about their own childhoods this way. The book is a celebration of the creation of self that occurs when we are young, and a warning against how easily our childlike joy can be stolen. Ultimately, I hope the book invites readers to look at themselves with more curiosity and wonder.”
Macijeski joined the NSU faculty in 2017. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an Master of Fine Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a B.A. in English and music from Simmons College, now Simmons University. She has attended artist residencies with The Ragdale Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Art Farm Nebraska.
Macijeski worked for Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column, was an assistant editor in poetry for the literary journals “Prairie Schooner” and “Hunger Mountain” and is the recipient of a 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. In 2016 she attended the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching at Robert Frost’s former home in Franconia, New Hampshire. She has also offered collaborative workshops at the National Association for Poetry Therapy Conference in Kansas City and Denver. Her chapbook and full-length poetry manuscripts have placed in contests with Comstock Review, Four Way Books and YesYes Books. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee, her poems have appeared in “The Missouri Review,” “Conduit,” “Poet Lore,” “Barrow Street,” “Nimrod,” “The Journal,” “Sycamore Review,” “Fairy Tale Review,” “Puerto del Sol” and many other literary journals.
As a teacher of creative writing, Macijeski said she hopes her poems invite readers to look at themselves as sites of possibility and she encourages writers to continually discover what their imaginations can unlock for them.
“Writing, whether or not you have a goal toward publication and readers, allows us to really see ourselves as individuals who have tremendous power to affect the worlds we live in. I write about myself and my imagination because I am keenly aware of how empowering it is to express my experience in a way that feels real to me—pain, joy, strangeness and all. I’ve had writing mentors in my own life who have encouraged that and mentors who have dismissed or derailed that by trying to turn me into one kind of writer or another. I aim to be the kind of writing mentor who encourages young writers to discover their own aesthetic and methods, to follow their curiosity always. That work never ends, and that work is the joy of writing.
Readers who would like to purchase a copy of the book for pick up at the reading can contact Macijeski for a pre-order link by May 15 to guarantee arrival by May 30. Purchases can also be made through https://pinholepoetry.ca/shop-for-poetry-chapbooks/. Macijeski plans a follow-up reading this fall for those unable to attend the May 30 event.
