Lindsey Schaffer’s poem “Untitled” appeared in the very first issue of Variant Lit back in 2019. In the time since, she published a chapbook, City of Contradiction, (Selcouth Station 2022) , became a Poetry Editor of Variant, and wrote a second chapbook, Witch City, (dancing girl press) which is now available for preorder.
This interview was conducted over email in June 2024 between Megan Nichols and Lindsey Schaffer. It has been edited and arranged for clarity and length.
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Megan Nichols: Your poem, “Untitled” appeared in the very first issue of Variant, back in 2019. Do you remember the process of writing this poem or having it published?
Lindsey Schaffer: Five years ago I was lucky enough to stumble across Variant Literature on Submittable. I was a new writer at the time, working at my undergraduate campus for the summer. In the mornings I would often go to a coffee shop and write. On the drive to work my friends and I would pass this beautiful pond that reminded me of Monet’s Lilies. The poem “Untitled ” began with this moment, me reflecting on the natural beauty of the pond. Then it occurred to me to play with perspective. What if I was Monet? This was the plot twist I threw in at the end with the line “Monet sets down his brush.” That is something I love about poetry. It gives you the opportunity to transcend time and space. My favorite poems are a mix of truth and imagination.
MN: When did you begin writing poetry? Who were some early influences?
LS: I started writing poetry in undergraduate creative writing courses. Prior to that, I did not have much exposure to poetry outside of Milton or Shakespeare, neither of which resonated with me. My professors introduced me for the first time to contemporary poets that changed the way I viewed poetry. Some of these collections included Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky, and Registers of Illuminated Villages by Tarfia Faizullah – basically any book that came out of a Minneapolis/ Saint Paul based press. These books taught me that poetry did not have to be a static and inaccessible medium, but rather a tool to promote social change and explore difficult topics.
MN: You have a new chapbook coming out. What was the process of writing it?
LS: I have a chapbook coming out called Witch City which will be published by dancing girl press this year. I wrote this collection while I was living in Massachusetts completing my graduate degree in museum education. Museums and creative writing have always been my two passions. I find that they are mutually beneficial. My writing experience equips me to discover and refine the stories a museum is trying to tell, whereas my training as a museum educator taught me to look closely at things and examine them from multiple perspectives. Because of this, visiting museums has always been a part of my writing process. I find the technique of ekphrasis very helpful for me. For class, we visited the Peabody Essex Museum and the Salem Witch Museum. As I examined each object on display, I knew that there were so many stories waiting to be told. Following my visit I did a lot of research into the trials, modern witch hunts, and dark tourism. I wrote so many poems about these topics that I decided to compile them into a chapbook.
MN: The field trip aspect of Witch City is deepened by your choice to include a vocab list and pop quiz. Had you experimented with form in this way before? Could you speak about what inspired the less traditional elements of your chap?
LS: I have not! I was inspired by Franny Choi’s poem “Glossary of Terms”, where she broke down the associations and definitions of words to reveal their complexity. I found that by associating Witch Hunts with things of the past- where there were only good and bad players- took a lot of the nuance out of the situation. So I chose instead to implicate myself and others in moments where I also chose to remain silent. The chapbook is in part critiquing how, although we are taught to never repeat history, we always do. Implying that something must not be working in the “these naive people of the past did something we never would” approach we learn in school. To do this, I coopted tools commonly associated with a classroom (word bank, pop quiz) to explore the complexity of this idea.
MN: In Witch City, you write, “Yes, I lied to survive. Wouldn’t you do the same?” which to me feels like a statement most women I know have either stated directly or felt. When writing, did you have a specific reader in mind? A person or a particular group of people?
LS: This collection is certainly aiming to connect the struggles of women 330 years ago to the continued struggles of today. Many women understand the experience of being gaslit, like I explore in the poem “The Examination of a Witch”, without actually being accused of witchcraft. These situations are different, but both are about a person being denied a voice. This was how I decided to tell the victims stories without attempting to speak from their perspective directly. A mentor told me to only write from the perspective of someone other than yourself if you would feel comfortable with them in the room with you as you wrote it. It took a lot of time, research, and care for me to get to a place where I felt ok speaking about these real victims. I think anyone that has an interest in the Salem Witch Trials, dark tourism, or museums will find something to enjoy in this collection.
MN: This is your second chapbook. What do you like about the form? For either project, did you have the arc in your mind early in the process or did it feel mostly retroactive to assemble?
LS: I think chapbooks are my ideal length. I am a generalist and love diving deep into topics until I have nothing left to write about them. A chapbook is the perfect format for this. My previous chapbook (City of Contradiction, Selcouth Station), focused mainly on Greek myth and my experience studying abroad in Athens. I found that because I had such a strong foundation of history and literature to consume about Greece, the poems basically wrote themselves! The same goes for Witch City. I knew I wanted to write something about Salem. Once I decided that I started research and visited the city itself. I usually have a good idea of where I want a collection to start and end, but this changes a lot through the process of writing and editing. In Witch City I tried to develop narrative threads around certain themes I wanted to emphasize (love, loss, tourism). Once I had enough of each I arranged them in a pattern, one poem for each theme, then repeated. I feel like I still have a couple more chapbooks in me, but I would love to publish a full length collection one day.
MN: How has reading for literary magazines shaped your own work or experience as a literary citizen?
LS: I started reading for Variant Literature in 2023. Reading for Variant has helped me understand the trends and cliches of the literary scene. It has helped me articulate what I like and don’t like in a poem, which helps my personal editorial practice. It has also given me a lot of empathy for other presses. Whenever I get rejected or have to wait a long time to hear back I recognize how many choices they have to field, and I know it isn’t personal.
MN: Do you have advice for new poets?
LS: One of the best pieces of wisdom I received from one of my mentors is that poetry is always percolating in the background. Even when you aren’t actively writing poetry, poems are forming in the backdrop and will come out when they are ready. It sounds very esoteric, but I have found it to be true. My best writing comes when I am engaging with other mediums I enjoy like film, research, theater, music. This and of course reading lots of poetry. I recommend reading anything that comes out of GreyWolf Press, Coffeehouse Press, or Milkweed Editions.
MN: Because this is our Contributor series, could you select a fellow contributor poem from Variant that you loved?
LS: I enjoy poems that feel urgent and authentic. These are things I loved about Candice Kelsey’s poem Reading about ChatGBT, I Miss My Brother. This poem effortlessly combines a painful family situation with the emergence of Chat GBT in a really interesting way.
MN: What are you working on now?
LS: I am currently in the process of writing two more chapbooks. I received a Writer to Writer Mentorship through AWP and have been workshopping these poems with my mentor, Emily K. Michael. One chapbook is unpacking my experience with my chronic illness. The other is a collection about various muses. I have been doing a lot of research into muses and realizing that so many of our favorite artists were not good people! In this chapbook I would like to give a voice back to these (mostly) women who have faded into history while their artists continue to profit off them.
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Lindsey Schaffer is the author of City of Contradiction (Selcouth Station) and Witch City (dancing girl press). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Minnesota Review, Superstition Review, Reservoir Road Literary Review, and elsewhere. Lindsey has received scholarships and fellowships from the Indiana Writers Workshop, AWP, the City of Bloomington, and the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. She serves as a poetry editor for Variant Literature. Her interests lie in seeking to understand material culture in the context of the cities in which it is displayed. Through this process, she has unearthed contradictions that have culminated in two chapbooks. Both of these chapbooks explore the tensions between the myths and realities of the cities they are based in.
