Inspired by the tales of his own mysterious life, Professor Jerry Wemple of the English department is having another collection of poetry published titled, We Always Wondered What Became of You”. It is the fourth of his full-length poetry collections that have been published as well as two other shorter poetry collections that are referred to as “chapbooks”.
Wemple was born in an orphanage in Scranton and later adopted by the sister of his birth mother. “However, they conspired to keep the adoption a secret. I found out about it when I was a teenager”, said Wemple. He recalls how his “mother’s family was mostly Pennsylvania German. My birth mother would never tell me who my father was and denied she knew. (My father was African American.) I found out a few years ago that was untrue.”
The title of the collection is a quote stemming from his aunt. Wemple’s father passed away awhile back, and he was unable to ever meet him. Once he was able to connect with some of his father’s family, his father’s sister said, “We always wondered what became of you”, since that side of the family knew of his existence but little else.
Wemple states, “In some ways I feel like I have always been writing this book. My book just before this explores issues of identity and belonging in a more tangible way. I guess they all do. This book does so directly.” He started the writing process of We Always Wondered What Became of You in late 2019. Being surrounded by different “poet friends” and visiting a local poet group who gathered once a month to discuss the group works “helped immensely” throughout his writing journey.
Aside from just writing, Wemple also had to embark on a journey us college goers are all too familiar with: research. Most of his poems, as he states, “are about my family, on both sides, many generations back.” Many of these long-standing generational stories can be found throughout his poems. “For example, I was able to find a ledger from a fourth great grandfather who is listed as a ‘free mulatto’ in the census and information from that ledger made it into a poem,” Wemple tells. He was also able to find that one of his Pennsylvania German ancestors was among some of the first European settlers in this area. He even got to visit this relatives grave in Montour County.
The run-down of the publishing process starts with sending smaller groups of poems to publishers. Once some of those start to be accepted, the author can start building records of publications that can be taken into consideration by full-length book publishers. After there is a complete manuscript, it takes a community of willing readers to carefully examine works and give objective, honest feedback. Finally, the manuscript is ready to be sent out to publishers. Submitting to a substantial number of publishers is crucial, since most get hundreds of submissions a year, but only publish five to ten books. In Wemple’s case, he submitted to “at least twenty”, and was “about six or eight months into this submission process when I found I had a particular press I wanted to work with.”
Even though he hadn’t heard back from this particular publisher for two months, Wemple persisted and even stated that this was, “not an unusual waiting period.” When he contacted them, they were still on the fence with his piece. All the while, Wemple had been constantly revising his work, and even added another entire poem to the end of the collection which changed the tone of the whole book. At last, he received the “yes” he was looking for. He states, “I asked if I could send the revised version. They liked that version better and agreed to publish it.”
“We Always Wondered What Became of You” is being published by Broadstone Books with an official publication date of October 15th, 2023. Wemple will also have a short reading of the book and a book signing at Endless Records or Main Street in Bloomsburg at 5 p.m. on October 20th for anyone interested.
