Book Interview: 'Doll Parts,' Julia Herndon
In this interview, Julia Herndon talks about her debut poetry collection, 'Doll Parts,' and shares insights into navigating themes of daughterhood, self-discovery, and reconnecting with one's roots.
Step into the evocative world of poet Julia Herndon's debut collection, Doll Parts, as she delves deep into the themes of daughterhood, self-discovery, and the intricate tapestry of family dynamics.
Through a series of thought-provoking questions, Herndon candidly explores the personal experiences that shaped her poetry, from navigating the competing expectations of her parents in a split household to the visceral exploration of childhood ideals and current realities.
With poignant insights into the creative process behind Doll Parts, Herndon discusses the balance of delicate sentimentality with raw emotion, the influence of her background in Visual Media Arts on her approach to writing, and the profound journey of reconnecting with her roots and sense of self through poetry.
Reflecting on the challenges and unexpected discoveries encountered during the crafting of her debut collection, Herndon offers heartfelt advice to aspiring poets navigating similar themes of identity and family dynamics.
'Doll Parts' explores the struggle of self-distinction under competing expectations. Can you share with us how your personal experiences, particularly growing up as a child of divorce, influenced the themes and narratives in your collection?
My parents had me young and then got divorced young, so I was raised almost exclusively under this split household structure.
My mom and stepdad got together pretty quickly, but my dad adopted the role of eternal bachelor, so in the domestic sense, I was in constant flux of two competing extremes.
But I think because of this sort of single-parent dynamic, I ended up being very close with both of them and very eager to please both of them, to be the daughter that they wanted me to be.
At my dad’s house, I was an extension of him: very tomboy and scrappy, dark and edgy, I wore his clothes, all this type of stuff.
And bits of these did bleed over into the way I was at my mom’s house, but with her I was much more reserved, you know, playing with dolls, watching princess movies, much more feminine.
Thematically and structurally, the divide between feminine and masculine, mother and father, is one that very much influenced Doll Parts.
I wanted to the struggles I had in childhood with identifying which side I wanted to be most dominant in my life, as well as the way I have come to adopt both sides of myself to make my own version of what it means to be a daughter - something dark, something gritty, but also very distinctly delicate and feminine.
The most explicit way that this divide manifests in the collection is through the dual-title that each piece has: the unbracketed title corresponds to something that would be seen in my mother’s house, something traditionally feminine, and the bracketed title refers to how these bits manifested at my father’s house.
With the first piece, “Ribbons and Bows [WALMART BANDANA]”, the ribbons and bows are something that my cousin and I would play with at my mother’s house while bandanas are the hair decoration that were provided to me at my dad’s house.
The collection is described as both delicate and visceral, offering a raw and sentimental interpretation of the speaker's journey. How did you balance these contrasting elements during the writing process, and what effect were you hoping to achieve on your readers?
My main goal when writing poetry is to create something that evokes emotion in the reader and to create something that can conjure the feelings I hold about a given subject.
When working with topics of childhood and nostalgia, a lot of the feelings that come up for me are incredibly tactile, and the best way for me to convey that to readers is through visceral language and metaphor.
Specifically in “Clasped Hands [ACRYLICS]”, I wanted to convey what it felt like to be a little girl in the early 00s when femininity was characterized by everything glittery, pink, low rise, glossy - this sort of Paris Hilton ideal that for me is very vivid and palpable.
I leaned into cacophonous language, sounds that bounce off of each other, and this fast-paced desperation to intake as much of this aesthetic as possible.
But there’s this other side of the coin where all of this was happening when I was five or six, very young, very soft, very much a child, so there was a certain level of fragility that I wanted to keep in the collection.
I tried to incorporate moments of pause and reprieve from what would otherwise be overwhelming, heavy language.
Overall, I wanted the visceral to connect to the speaker and the reader’s emotion while keeping the speaker herself - a younger version of myself - relatively delicate.
Each aspect of the speaker in 'Doll Parts' is assigned a parent, a pose, and an intended use. Could you elaborate on this concept and how it reflects broader themes of identity and self-discovery explored in your poetry?
When I was first thinking about what it meant to be a child and what it meant to be a parent, I kept circling back to this image of myself as a paper doll - this easily customizable cut-out of a girl.
Especially in youth, I feel like a lot of our identity is influenced by our parents, what they want for us, and what they wish they had had for themselves, which in turn characterizes that period with this hunt for autonomy.
Growing up, and even now, I have a hard time seeing myself as something more than just an extension of my parents and of my lineage, and I wanted this image of the paper doll to show the extent to which the presentation of daughterhood is shaped by other hands.
'Doll Parts,' serves as an ode to stolen parts and the people they came from. What significance do these "stolen parts" hold for you personally, and how do they contribute to the overall narrative arc of the collection?
I wrote Doll Parts during a period of extreme introspection, and part of the conceptualization of this “paper doll” metaphor came from the realization that most of the core aspects of my identity are adopted from other people.
In my early childhood, all of my favorites - color, food, dessert - matched either my dad or my cousin, but now this habit of borrowing from those around me has seeped into most aspects of my life; my spiritual beliefs are a strange collage of phrases I’ve stolen from friends, my appearance is constructed in a similar way.
It is strange to think of myself as a collection of other people, but part of that is beautiful. I’m not just myself, but everyone I’ve ever encountered.
While most of the pieces deal with the parts given to me specifically by my parents, the middle poem, “Pinafore [HODGE PODGE ANIMA]”, offers a much more comprehensive catalog, spanning a wide range of relationships and eras of life.
I put it in the middle of the collection and labeled it the core of the paper doll as a way to show how all these other voices have culminated into my singularity.
How has your background in Visual Media Arts influenced your approach to writing poetry, particularly in terms of imagery and visual storytelling within 'Doll Parts'?
Working with a visual medium definitely makes writing a challenge sometimes because I feel a lot of pressure to create these vivid scenes within the pieces.
A lot of my focus shifts to descriptive language, to abstract metaphor - any way for me to conjure a clear picture in the mind of the reader.
This collection is unique, though, in that I made it in tangent with a short experimental film called “Ailm” that explores similar themes of the self, familial perception, and reconnecting with heritage.
Writing these poems while simultaneously working with 16mm film was an eye-opening experience: both mediums greatly impacted the other.
A lot of the things written in first drafts made their way into what I was shooting, and once the film was developed, it reshaped the pieces during the revision process.
I am forever grateful that I had the opportunity to explore these two great loves of my life in such a personal and intimate way and to have them influence each other so evenly.
Poetry can serve as a powerful tool for reconnecting with one's roots and identity. In what ways does your poetry, especially in 'Doll Parts,' reflect your journey of reconnecting with your home, past, and sense of self?
A lot of what I find impactful about poetry comes from its shortness and simplicity.
It strips away all of the fluff and cuts directly to the core of whatever is being discussed.
Most of what I write about refers to the past, to undefined emotions, to things that are generally inarticulate, but the confines of the form really push me to the root of my subject.
I find heritage and childhood, themes that continue to come up for me, to be both beautiful and complicated, and poetry is the only way that I am able to really examine and explore them.
No other form offers such direct access to otherwise elusive topics.
As a young writer, what challenges did you encounter while crafting your debut collection, and how did you overcome them?
I think one of the biggest challenges for me was overcoming this feeling of inexperience.
Writing has always played a big role in my life; I first started doing creative prose writing in elementary school and in high school started to dabble in poetry, but because I chose film as a career, this authorial side of my life was never anything more than a hobby.
Doll Parts came out of my first collegiate writing class, and it was an incredibly daunting experience.
I was one of the only non-writing majors in this poetry theory class, I had never done a writing workshop, and I had bare-bones knowledge of the form, but once I was able to get over the initial nerves of sharing work, it was really impactful to be able to tap into that side of myself.
I needed the outside push and deadline to write and to keep writing, and I think some of my inexperience was beneficial.
Not knowing all of the rules allowed me to stay loose and open to form, language, tone, and rhythm.
'Doll Parts' navigates the complexities of daughterhood and the friction between childhood ideals and current realities. Can you discuss how you approached portraying these themes in your poetry, and whether there were any unexpected insights or discoveries you made about yourself or your experiences during the writing process?
I really wanted to explore these deeper emotions tied to childhood, sentimentality, and fleeting time - at least for me all of these are very wrapped up in my definition of daughterhood.
There were moments of difficulty when trying to balance this childhood version of myself with who I am now; the past is definitely a powerful force for me both in my everyday life and in my writing, but I tried to filter everything through this lens of hindsight.
Like my current self giving voice to something much younger.
Spending so much time in my childhood definitely made me see how much influence my past and the collective past of my family still have over my life.
Nothing exists in a vacuum, not daughters, not parents, not time; they blend together.
What advice would you give to aspiring poets who are also navigating themes of identity, family dynamics, and self-discovery in their writing?
To be gentle with themselves, and to not be afraid when the words don’t come. A lot of the writing process for Doll Parts was just me sitting with myself.
Sometimes you need time to percolate on an idea, and sometimes that idea doesn’t go anywhere, but all of it is important for better understanding the self on those deeper levels.
Family is difficult, childhood is difficult, and being honest about those things takes time and it takes patience.
Don’t be discouraged with the standstills - embrace them.
Is there a specific poem in 'Doll Parts' that you feel connects with you the most, if so, can you share the name of that poem and its page number?
“Pinafore [HODGE PODGE ANIMA]”, pg 6, is definitely the most personal and most comprehensive piece in the collection.
It is a representation of who I am and of the beliefs I’ve carried with me since I was little.
And as we talked about before, it acts as a love letter to everyone who helped put me together.
Finally, what do you hope readers will take away from 'Doll Parts' after experiencing your collection?
I’m not sure if I want to leave readers with any particular thought or message, but I hope the collection leaves them with a feeling.
I hope it offers them a moment of pause, and maybe even inspires their own childhood reflection.
I never want my writing to guide people to one specific idea, but I do want it to leave an emotional mark, so I hope Doll Parts reminds them about what it’s like to be a kid again.
You can buy Doll Parts from Bottlecap Press.
Julia Herndon is currently studying Visual Media Arts at Emerson College where she will be graduating in the fall of 2024.
Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Herndon has always had an overwhelming passion for writing in every form, using poetry specifically as a way to reconnect with her home, her past, and her identity.
Doll Parts is her debut publication.
Below is a short film created by Herndon.
Find Out More About Julia Herndon:
Instagram: @_.lenore._