Jeannine Hall Galley

Jeannine Hall Galley

- Rita Maria Marinez

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jeannine Hall Gailey, a poet I have long admired. Gailey recently served as the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and is the author of four books of poetry: Unexplained Fevers, Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, and The Robot’s Scientist’s Daughter. Her work has been featured on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and was included in The Year’s Bet Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her website is webbish6.com.

You have written your fair share of persona poems in The Robot Scientist’s Daughter and in previous poetry collections. What is it about the persona poem that has charmed you so?

I’ve always loved the freedom that persona poems provide for the imagination—I love not being limited to my own story, background, body, but to imagine embodying something completely different—from a mech a girl to a rocket ship to a cyborg, in this book, for instance. When I started writing poetry, I think I really liked the tools of fiction writers—scene-setting, dialogue, character creation—and I wanted to figure out a way to use those in my poetry. I also like the idea of exploring female pop cultural creations, whether anime or super heroines or sci-fi characters, the way they reflect back our contemporary struggles and social mores.

The love of nature is explored throughout The Robot Scientist’s Daughter. Any poetry books or other books out there you turn to again and again that are rooted in the natural world?