A Conversation with Benjamin Niespodziany
Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer whose work has appeared in Indiana Review, Fence, Booth, Conduit, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. His writing has been featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. The host of a bi-monthly reading series known as Neon Night Mic, he also recently launched his own indie press known as Piżama Press.
Benjamin’s poems, “Covering Ground” and “The Most Beautiful Song in the World,” can be read in Issue no. 1 of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine.
Madeline: What's been testing your patience these days?
Benjamin: My day job. It’s a fine position, but it’s tough to be creative after I close my work laptop. I wish I had all the time in the world to read and write, but often I just have half of a Saturday or a lazy Sunday. Also: ICE, billionaires, cops, the political landscape, the American hellscape, the usual.
Madeline: What was your earliest relationship to poetry like? How has it grown or warped over time?
Benjamin: I was a bit intimidated and overwhelmed by it as an undergrad. It felt antiquated, traditional, and impossible to crack. It wasn’t until six or seven years after college that I found it out on my own terms, learning about prose poems (my entryway) and surrealist/absurdist modern poets. Since then, I’ve been all in.
Madeline: How often do you write? How do you decide what to submit, and what to keep close to your chest?
Benjamin: I try to write every day, even if it’s a little snippet or scribble on the back of a receipt. Life often gets in the way, so probably 4-5 days a week.
If it’s a poem that continues to confuse me and surprise me and I like how it sounds when I read it out loud, I submit.
If it bores me or doesn’t surprise me (on the line level or the narrative level) then it stays on my desktop or in my inbox.
Madeline: Tell me about the world in which you build your poems—they feel like they all share a neighborhood in the same surrealist dreamscape, with a little pinch that reminds you of reality. How do you channel this world?
Benjamin: I love this! Thank you. I’m often bored of normal life and “reality” so I try to write toward something strange or out of the ordinary. I might see a snake eating a rat on one of my daily walks (true story) which leads to me writing about a snake who talks and a rat whose skeleton grows and grows within the snake, causing the snake to explode. Anything strange or unhinged, and I’m usually interested.
Madeline: Can you describe your approach to writing “Covering Ground” and “The Most Beautiful Song in the World” in particular? Where did each piece start for you?
Benjamin: I have no idea how or where these pieces begin. Often with freewrites. Word vomit which later needs serious editing. I’m working on a manuscript about war and all of the stressors and anxieties I bring to the table of privilege of sitting helplessly from the sidelines. This is my way of protesting and also handling my worries while scrolling the news. The working title is Warbler or maybe War is a Fortune Teller Spending the Night. Fuck war in every way. I wish every bomb would become a dud and every bullet turn to mud. That’s the heaven I dream of.
Madeline: Three things you love about the Chicago literary scene:
Benjamin: How there are half a dozen readings every week.
How there’s a mixture of young DIY zine heads & established academic poets & they often intermingle / intertwine in the very same space.
How (almost always) the ego is left at the door. The warmth and the kindness in this scene is so valuable and needed. It keeps me going.
Madeline: Famous last words (for now)?
Benjamin: Thanks to you for creating this journal and putting so much care into it. Much love to Sabr Tooth.
Fuck ICE.
An exclusive poem Ben wrote for the Issue no. 1 Launch Event at Sleeping Village, Dec. 4, 2025.
