Joellen Sweeney - Author Interview
Verdant Publishing is thrilled to share an interview with author Joellen Sweeney who’s debut poetry collection The Small Particulars will be released on Dec 16th, 2025. We hope you enjoy.
Your book was written “in the margins” over a decade-on scrap paper, in odd moments, even in the shower. How did capturing poems this way shape their voice and feel?
I keep saying it was written “in the margins”... what I mean by that, I guess, is that I was rarely (if ever) intending to write a poem when these were made. They mostly visited me quite suddenly and unexpectedly – the shower one was especially surprising – and each one feels like a little portal back into that moment in my young adulthood. I wasn’t thinking of myself as a writer at all then, but every once in a while, a poem would emerge as the most potent way to share a feeling or a thought that I was wrestling with. My hope is that this offers the reader a bit of what I felt making them – immersion, spontaneity and delight.
The poems span from the vastness of the multiverse to a few blades of grass. How do you see the relationship between the cosmic and the everyday in your work?
There was a book I loved as a kid called “Powers of Ten” that tried to describe the relative size of things in the universe. It started with an image of a couple on a picnic blanket and zoomed first in and in and in so we could see them at the atomic level, and then out and out and out until they disappeared in the vastness of space. Flipping back and forth in that book filled me with wonder, and in a way, I think my poems are pointing to the same thing – what a miraculous (and confusing, and surprising, and wonderful, and scary) thing to be alive in the very middle of all that.
You’re also an actor, theatre maker, and vocalist. How do these other artistic disciplines influence the rhythm, imagery, or performance of your poetry?
I’m obsessed with rhythm! I really hope people will read some of these outloud, because that’s how I enjoy them the most. I think pleasure in rhythm is the primary driver of so many of my choices in these works (and in all my writing). And I suppose it’s due to my theatre background that there are some little Shakespearean references in these poems – it may be cliché to say, but I love his language so much, and he shows up a lot when I write.
The title The Small Particulars hints at finding beauty in overlooked details. Can you share a moment when you discovered a “small particular” that deeply stayed with you?
I think hindsight is what helps me notice them! I wish I could say I live everyday with a ton of presence and gratitude, but it’s oftentimes only when I’m looking back that these moments pop out as so special. And then they’re everywhere! I think that’s why so many of these poems address childhood… it was full of small particulars for me.
But if you’re really holding me to one moment, I’d say everytime my cat Poppy crawls up into my arms to be held, and I can hear the snuffling of her breath in my ear. That’s pretty much the best.
Photo by Jaren Kerr Media
Nature is a strong thread in both your poetry and theatre work. What role does the outdoors play in your creative process?
I love being outside so much that I think I’m always looking for ways to be there more. So it just makes sense, in a way, to make work that requires me to go outside–for inspiration, or for setting. I often find myself wanting to write after taking a walk outside - that seems to be where the poems are roaming, and when I roam with them, they’ll visit.
This is your first published poetry collection. What surprised you most about the process of bringing these pieces together into a book?
It was sweet and a bit vulnerable to bring together work that spans such a big period of growth in my life. The earliest poem in here is from January 2015, when I was only 23. It feels like a whole different person wrote those! I can remember the big emotions that led to those older poems being created, but I’m looking at them from a distance now… So it’s a powerful way to feel the shape of a whole decade.
It’s one of the reasons I chose to include the whole Fear series – that’s one little arc of a relationship that’s changed for me over the course of that time.
And it brought up other memories too! Making this collection prompted me to spelunk in my parents’ basement and find the fairy notes, which I have now. So I’m grateful for this time spent rummaging in the creative archives and am feeling inspired about writing more from my perspective now.
If a reader could only take away one feeling or idea after reading The Small Particulars, what would you hope it would be?
Connectedness. Whether that’s connection with me, in some feeling or fear or delight we share, or connection with some of the sensory pleasures of the world around us, I really hope The Small Particulars communicates that we aren’t alone out here. Our world can be very hard and very lovely, and I’m grateful to be in it.
Your poems feel intimate yet expansive. Do you imagine them being read quietly in solitude, or do you see them being shared aloud, like in your theatre work?
Oh, I hope people read to each other! Or to themselves! Outside! Or in a pub! Theatrically is encouraged.