Julie Swarstad Johnson
Every month, Moon Gallery hosts a meeting with Moon Bound artists — a space for sharing creative practices and insights into their contributions to Moon Bound Book.
We continued the series with Julie Swarstad Johnson, who joined us to discuss her poetry practice and the role of space exploration as a source of inspiration in her work. She shared insights into her contribution to the Moon Bound Book and reflected on her experience participating in the space analogue mission Imagination-1.
Julie shares her journey into writing about space exploration, astronomy, and the night sky. She talks about her experience as a crew member of Imagination 1, a simulated lunar mission with an all-artist crew at Biosphere 2, and walks us through her contribution to the Moon Bound Book — a poem written in the Haibun form, a 17th-century Japanese genre combining prose and haiku.
Julie also discusses her writing practice: she co-edited Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (University of Arizona Press, 2020), an anthology bringing together over 80 poets writing about space exploration from the Sputnik era to imagined human futures, and has a forthcoming poetry collection, Night Letters, from the University of New Mexico Press, due in January 2027.
Julie Swarstad Johnson is a poet, archivist, and librarian who lives in Tucson, Arizona, USA. She is the author of the poetry collection Pennsylvania Furnace (Unicorn Press, 2019), and two poetry chapbooks, most recently Orchard Light (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). With Christopher Cokinos, she co-edited the anthology Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (University of Arizona Press, 2020). She has served as Poet in Residence at Lowell Observatory and Gettysburg National Park. In March 2024, she was a crew member for Imagination 1, a simulated lunar mission with an all-artist crew at the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars at Biosphere 2. She works at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
Photos courtesy: Kai Staats
