Smooth Lips and Butterflies with Mab Jones
Just before 2pm on Friday, September 20, Mab Jones and I both made a cup of tea. I sipped Moroccan Mint from my apartment in the 6th arrondissement, and Mab brewed English Breakfast, or “Builder’s Brew” if you're in the UK, from her seaside home in Cardiff, Whales.
Nearly 3 months had passed since I last chatted with Jones, a talented poet with lots to say about mental health, domestic violence, and ecological preservation. A guest of AUP’s Creative Writing Summer Institute, Mab offered myself and other AUP writers her poetry, her exceptional story, and some wicked jokes. She also gives great advice.
What you need to know about Mab Jones goes beyond her poetry prowess. She could easily trade stanzas for standup—part of the reason I followed her to a dive bar in Belleville. I don’t think I’ve come across an indoor restroom with a more visceral odor. At the end of her reading, a few pints in, I stood my place in the line of spectators she reigned over and told her that I want to be her.
I already knew Jones was 42, she started to write 12 years ago, and that she has a spoken word poem entitled Cock Sonnet. What I did not know, is that not so long ago, she couldn’t afford lip balm. Jones opened up to me about the struggles of being a contract-to-contract writer, undertaking as many as 5 jobs at once to make ends meet. “I was a spoken word poet, who couldn’t moisturize my lips.”
Between freelance work for the Times, copywriting for Google, and heading a new literary podcast dedicated to the preservation of threatened wetlands in Whales, Jones admits, “I can do some frickin serious namedropping. But, the income is still not what I would like."
Wetlands in South Whales. Through her new podcast and recent creative work, Jones speaks up for these endangered habitats. Image credit: Mab Jones
When asked her reasons for what she does despite its host of challenges, she reveals, “I have to write. I don’t have a choice." Jones spent the earlier portion of her career working what she calls a “normal day job,” where her soul “went to die.” Nowadays, she admits she is more comfortable financially than at the beginning of her writing career, and as far as the soul side of things goes, she describes her life as “lovely,” and relishes in the “incredible freedom” her chosen path has provided.
Three weeks into my Creative Nonfiction course at AUP this semester, father-killing, rape, and crippling depression have appeared in student work. Creative Writing professor, Dan Gunn, finds emotionally loaded subject matter in the work of his students and in his personal library alike, acknowledging the common tendency of writers to “pick our scabs." Jones certainly would certainly agree with this assessment. I wanted to know what she thought about young writers whose efforts are subjects that Sigmund Freud could sink his teeth into, and it turns out that working with heavy themes is hardly a cause for concern--it's actually a promising mark of a writer.
Just as Jones lives out her obligation to write, she too is convinced that material, for herself and others, needs to come from necessity. “You don’t even know what it is, really, or why you’re writing it, what it’s about. You don’t always know why you are drawn to write about something before you start. You must go into yourself and write what you must. Once, butterflies were not possible,” she recalls of her earlier days when she was doing quite a bit of scab-picking herself.
Mab's recent inspiration: A butterfly in South Whales. Image credit: Mab Jones
Today, Jones finds her creative necessity in the butterfly. Ultimately, she is drawn to the concept of absolute metamorphosis that these creatures represent. “It wasn’t their beauty, well, maybe it was their beauty from ugliness. How things transmute from darkness and trauma to something light and beautiful and empowered. Every part of the butterfly is dissolved, disintegrated, undone, and then remade. That is fascinating to me,” she stated, as we take our last sips of tea. Jones, herself, may not have wings, but she does have young writers stalking her around Paris. And, of course, she's got plenty of lip balm.
Learn more about the fabulous Mab Jones and read her original work on her website
