Jenny Sampirisi Answers the Questions: Why Frogs? Why Girls?

In a recent interview with the Queen's University Journal, Jenny Sampirisi discusses the motivations behind her debut poetry collection, Croak, an experimental "frog meets girl" love saga. For Sampirisi, the connection between frogs and girls seemed self-evident, given that the two are so frequently paired up in popular culture.

The ideas came easily. The difficulty was finding time to write:

The Journal: Why frogs?

Jenny Sampiri: Frogs are intensely symbolic in almost every time and culture. They play a big part in myth and fairy tale as well as being actual creatures in the real world in grave danger of disappearing. They are, in fact, absorbing toxins through their skins and as a result switching genders and physically deforming/morphing.

They’re ripe for poetic discourse, especially one that looks at the deforming and synthesizing of a self.

The Journal: Why girls?

Jenny Sampirisi: Girls and frogs already seemed attached at the hip through fairy tales so it was a very small leap for me to work with the two. Ultimately Croak is a story of the compromises we make in relationships and the many ways we gain and lose aspects of ourselves when we enter into a “love story” with another individual.

The girls in the book are struggling to understand themselves in relation to the frogs and the frogs are doing the same in relation to the girls. They’re all trying to figure out how to be “some other better.” With all my writing, I look to see how this type of emotional confusion can be translated into physical confusion and having frogs and girls perform this given the many compromises already present in the source texts, it made a lot of sense to have this play out between the two.

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