PSU Scholarship Stories: Jessamyn D.
Poetic persistence pays off in a big way for Jessamyn Duckwall '23, recipient of the 2022-23 Braley Award
Jessamyn Duckwall remembers the first time they tumbled into the world of Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems. “I was so mystified. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.” Ever since, the poet has found themself reaching to create those first moments of awe and bewilderment in their own writing.
Today Duckwall (they/them, she/her) is a second-year student in the Poetry MFA program and one of two recipients of the 2022 Doris W. Braley Award in Poetry. The Braley Award was established by Warren “Buzz” Braley in honor of his mother who loved, wrote and published poetry. The award is specifically given to one incoming and one returning graduate poetry student who shows ambition, perseverance and promise in their work.
After a period of upheaval—Duckwall dropped out of high school, earned their GED, cared for their dying grandmother and gave birth all before age 19— the Hood River native eventually rekindled their writing practice and once again went in search of that elusive poetic awe they felt as a child. “Poetry has always been the one touchstone I have to expression, processing, and the search for that space of wonder.”
Eventually, they began to ask themself how they could create the space to put poetry at the center of their life. The answer was a return to school—Columbia Gorge Community College, then eventually the BFA and MFA Creative Writing programs at PSU.
Jessamyn Duckwall '23 reads from "Sylvia sings in the garden" from PSU Foundation on Vimeo.
“I don’t fit the mold—fresh out of high school, living in a dorm, on my own for the first time,” they said. “I’m already parenting. Working. I have people who need me.”
But one of the benefits of enrolling at PSU was that they weren’t alone.
Raising a child while developing as an artist requires community, something the PSU Creative Writing Program gives Duckwall in spades. They positively glow while describing the closeness among their fellow writers, people who care about poetry as deeply as they do. People who are generous enough to allow their son to attend weekly workshops if childcare falls through. People who are willing to be mystified by themselves and witness their own unfolding, diverting and meandering. People who are keenly invested in growing alongside them.
Duckwall also notes how many of their classmates are also students returning to school after years away from academia, as well as a surprising number of classmates—1 in 4— who are also raising children while earning a degree.
It’s particularly refreshing to see the University, “making space for young single parents,” Duckwall said. “I am blessed beyond reason to be moving toward something I’m so passionate about while doing the immense labor of being a single mom.”
Maybe this is why Duckwall is such a fitting beneficiary of the Braley Award. Not only is the $5,000 prize intended make a significant difference in an emerging poet’s ability to pursue their craft, but the money is specifically earmarked for non-traditional students, meaning recipients must not have attended school from high school through to a graduate program without interruption.
"Society doesn’t make much room for those intersecting identities,” Duckwall said. “But people from all walks of life deserve to feel like there’s a place for them to pursue a degree. Reading about who Doris Braley was and why her son created this award resonated with me because it is so hard to balance the energy of being a parent and artist."
The focus of Duckwall’s latest work is the experience and messiness of bodies. “The feminized body is fraught. Having the willingness to speak through it and from something deep within it is to reclaim what gets taken, often unwillingly or unconsciously. Part of [writing] is a reclamation and a taking [up] of space that people who have feminized experiences deserve.”
And in an homage to the poetry that first inspired them, Duckwall recently created “Sylvia Sings in the Garden,” a collection of erasure poems (a style in which text from an original poem is selectively obscured and new work is made with the remaining words) made from Sylvia Plath’s journals. The collection, also known as a zine, is Duckwall’s way of interacting with and honoring Plath’s legacy. You can listen to the author read from “Sylvia Sings in the Garden” here.
With the financial support of the Braley Award, and continued camaraderie inside the Creative Writing Program, Duckwall has plenty more mystification, awe and bewilderment to uncover in their final year at PSU and beyond.