12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jacqueline Valencia

Jacqueline Valencia is a Toronto-based poet and critic. Jacqueline is a senior literary editor of The Rusty Toque and a CWILA board member. Her debut collection There's No Escape Out Of Time will be out with Insomniac Press Spring 2016.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I think it was 2008 when I decided to gather up some of the poems I'd written for the past few years and self-publish a chapbook with them. I called it Tristise. I'd say it changed my life because before then I'd sporadically submitted poems, but the rejection got to me and then I suffered many years of writer's block. The time came where I felt like I needed to shake myself into action.

I'd say it changed my life because I haven't stopped writing and/or submitting every day since then. It's been a long road to getting my work out there in publications, but it's been worth it. My new book, There's No Escape Out Of Time (Insomniac Press, 2016) will be my first full poetry collection. It's comparable to Tristise because it is back towards feeling rather than technique, but it feels more raw because I'm writing about very confessional stuff in it.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Most of the women in my mother's family write or have written poetry. My grandmother Ruby is constantly reciting new things whenever I visit her. As in, "Grandma! We're just watching television. Can we just watch the show without you praising how miraculous the sky look in it right now? Geez."

I'm kidding. I don't stop her because she is my grandmother after all.

My mother's greatest gift to me has been a library card. My first trip was to the library-mobile and I took out a Raggedy Ann and Andy book and a  book interpretation of Disney's Alice In Wonderland. My mom's English was still a bit rusty so she'd read a bit of it and expand upon it by retelling parts of the movie. Eventually she had me read the whole to her and I remember one night writing some of my thoughts down on how I wanted to be Alice. They were in point form, but from that I created my first poem without knowing it. School rhymes and songs always stuck with me and I'd write them down and make my own versions.

Fiction feels like an extension of that though. I'm still trying to parse what the difference is between poetry and fiction in my writing.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I procrastinate a lot. I drink too much coffee. Also, I probably drink too much, but I don't think it helps. Booze, while not a muter of truths, it isn't a motivator.

I actually have several things due right now. They'll get done, I swear.

The only time I really put my foot down is when I have deadline or when inspiration takes me over. I find my greatest strengths for pushing myself are when I'm working through a crisis or need to react out loud in some way. I'm a horrible editor of my own work. I have no patience with myself.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Usually an event or something I've seen provokes a poem in me. It will also ferment for a while in my mind before I set it down to paper and when I do, it's in my moleskine without any context whatsoever.

I work from smaller ideas and build a book, poem, or essay from there. I once wrote a poem about erotic clowning just because I wrote "There was a clown and a lobster. Erotic?" Don't ask. I don't even know. Pass the coffee.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I used to hate readings, but for some reason or another my readings have taken on a stand up comedian format. Sometimes I introduce props. Andy Kaufman is huge influence on me when it comes to public speaking in any way. His ability to take an audience somewhere completely unexpected is something I hope to cultivate and acquire. I guess, it has to do with the defense mechanism whereupon I'd rather self-deprecate than elucidate anything to do with the poem itself.

I currently looking for a good mime routine to bring to my repertoire.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I struggle with the idea that language is unique to everyone, that colours look different to everyone, therefore there aren't enough words out there to describe the universal experience of every day. That and the fact that I'm using and thinking in a language by my ancestor's colonizers is a huge concern for me. I rarely think in Spanish and even Spanish is a colonizing language to the people my parents' came from.

Right now I'm trying to learn some of the methods the people in my parents' family have used language and what was there evolution with the Spanish language and how my brain processes Spanish versus English.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The role of the writer is to report. No matter what a writer writes about, they are journalist of sorts first and foremost. You can be a reporter of your own ideas and your own expressions, but even our minds are foreign to us. Using language is like have a universal translator like in Star Trek. We don't know exactly how it works, but we use oral and written language everyday as if it was a part of us since birth. Was it? Where did the rest of our expressions go when we started writing? What are our hands doing? What are our faces doing?

Oral and written language are translators of the inner workings of brain. The current job of the writer is to strip it to the basics and figure out how the hell we can get to the root of those inner workings.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love every editor I've ever worked with. I wish book publishers or journal publishers would put the name of the editor on the front of the book or on the article beside the author's. They're part of a collective voice in how we transmit our voices to the world.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Liz Worth once said to me, "Write your truth. Write it now and don't edit it until it's done." I know it sounds cliché, but it works. Liz is a good friends and one of the most important writers in Toronto, if not the world, that I read and listen to.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I love writing about film and books. I love finding connections because if you meditate on two things long enough, you'll find everything connects somehow. Everything is always influencing everything else, especially in art. Poetry is no different than critical prose because it's a commentary on expression or on situations. You can separate a work from an analysis of it, but you can not keep poetry from being ingested and analyzed. That's what it's there for.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I used to have no writing routine, but lately I've setting aside time in the day. I've felt it necessary for novel writing.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Conceptual writing or rewriting texts. They could be anything, like a receipt, a piece of mail, a book (hi James Joyce), or a poem. From there I'll find myself cutting it up or using a word or phrase and I get unblocked that way. Experimental writing moves me to create something if my mind is blank.

Of course, I find conceptual writing to be like any other type of writing, and in the right and now, it is very necessary for experimentation to be a part of a poet's work. Even with the continual controversies in poetry with lyric versus conceptual, it's all experimental. It's how you use it to decolonize or reveal truths that is important.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Blue Power laundry bar soap. My mom used to scrub stuff before putting it in the laundry and the scent is huge in the outdoor laundry patios in Colombia. I keep a bar in the bathroom for stains and such.

And petrichor. I learned that word the other day. Petrichor is the smell of earth after rain. It reminds me of love for some reason and there's not greater home than love.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Music influences my writing a lot. My dad used to be a dj and after that I became a dj and I play music constantly at home. Nature inspires me as well during my runs or cycling. Riding or running through Leslie Spit at 6am to watch the sunrise over the lake is probably one of the greatest things someone in Toronto can do to get inspired.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
James Joyce is huge, but I talk and write about him all the time. As well as, Anne Sexton and Mary Shelley. Science fiction fantasy has been an escape for me in the past, but it's only recently I've tried my hand at writing it. Robert E. Howard's Conan The Barbarian series and Larry Niven's Ringworld series have both been high up there for me in terms of importance. Oh and comic books. Too many to list.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Complete the novel I'm currently writing and getting it published. Climb Mount Everest, which I would never attempt to do because I have kids and can't die. I love watching documentaries or films on Everest climbers. I might go to the base camp one day though. I'd also like to do indoor skydiving because I've always wanted to fly to Superman or surf like the Silver Surfer.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
a) A spy.

b) An international spy.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Reading. I've been writing in my journal since I was a kid because of reading and don't know how to think in anything, but words.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I've felt speechless about Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts for a while now. When I finished reading it I was just so impressed I couldn't find the words to say how good it was. There's reading-writing modes: either you read something so good you want to write an essay on it, or you read something so good, and wonder if there's someone else who has read it so you could just rejoice in the afterglow of it.

As for film, there are lot of films that I've thought were pretty good this year, but nothing that has blown me away. I think the latest has been Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa. It's a short animated film that hit me right in the gut. I mean, Kaufman has a way of articulating the embarrassing parts of our psyche, especially as a depressive. Some of us live entire worlds inside our brains and Kaufman captures that sense of disconnect and isolation like very few directors out there. The fact that the film animated gets forgotten and even in the middle of the most despairing moments in the film, there is a tiny sense of hope to grab onto.

I love when artists hold no bars back when it comes to the black dog. Kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight, as the Bruce Cockburn song goes.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm putting together the Toronto Poetry Talks: Racism and Sexism in the Craft (http://torontopoetrytalks.wordpress.com) and I'm writing my first novel set in Toronto. It's a fantasy occult feminist future of sorts.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

The Rusty Toque interview with Jon Paul Fiorentino

I interviewed Montreal writer Jon Paul Fiorentino recently on his new collection of short stories, I'm Not Scared of You or Anything (Anvil, 2014), newly posted online at The Rusty Toque.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kathryn Mockler

Kathryn Mockler is a writer and filmmaker. She is the author of The Saddest Place on Earth (DC Books, 2012) and Onion Man (Tightrope Books, 2011). Currently, she is the Toronto editor of Joyland: a hub for short fiction and the publisher and co-editor of the online literary and arts journal The Rusty Toque. She teaches creative writing at Western University.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

It changed my life in the sense that it forced me to get more involved in the literary community than I had been previously. Although I started writing poetry many years ago, I’ve spent a great deal of my writing life as a screenwriter. I started writing my first book of poetry, Onion Man, about fifteen years before it was published, and it was a project I picked away at over the years. So when it was accepted for publication, I realized that I needed to get more involved—read more poetry, go to more readings.

How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Onion Man is a semi-autobiographical series of narrative poems set in London, Ontario in the 1980s about an eighteen-year-old girl who works in a corning canning factory with her boyfriend. She’s questioning the world around her and her values.

My second poetry book, The Saddest Place on Earth, is quite different in tone. The poems are more absurd and not linked to each other in a narrative sense but by tone. These poems were initially a response to a series of bleak and absurd paintings that my husband, David Poolman, was working on called Start as You Will Go On. Around the same time (2003 to 2004), in the early days of the Iraq War, I was pretty obsessed with the war and how the media was portraying it. Of course this was all before the discovery that there were actually no “weapons of mass destruction” and that the war was predicated on what we now know to be false intelligence. In the later poems, my critique centres around the Harper government’s assault on the environment. However the issues are dealt with indirectly and usually with some form of humour.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Once when I working at the factory that my first book is based on, for no reason, I just wrote a poem in the middle of my shift on a cigarette pack. This was before I wrote anything or identified as a writer or even knew what a poem was. The poem just came at me and had to be written down. I think it might have had something to do with being in a trance-like state, standing on the Brite stack watching cans go by for hours. I remember thinking—that was weird, I just wrote a poem. I want to find that poem. I wonder if it’s any good.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

This depends in which genre I’m writing. Screenplays take a lot of planning, drafting and rewriting. I think I enjoy poetry becomes it comes to me and I don’t have to go looking for it. I edit my poems quite a bit, but the process is more satisfying in the short term.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you?

An image or a line sparks an idea, and I have to stop what I’m doing to write the poem down like I did that time in the factory. Sometimes this is inconvenient, especially if I’m busy or trying to sleep, but I know if I don’t follow the poem, it will get away from me.

Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

For Onion Man I knew the poems were going to be part of a larger narrative, and in a way it feels like a poem novel to me, so I approached it more the way I do fiction or a screenplay. For the poems in my second book The Saddest Place on Earth, I knew they were similar in tone and just kept adding more and more until I realized I had enough for a book. But I wasn’t thinking of them as a book while I was writing them.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I learn a great deal about my writing by doing live readings, so it can be a helpful part of the creative process. There’s a series in Toronto called Draft where I read a couple of years ago, and the whole point is for writers to read from a work-in-progress which can really inform you on what’s working and what’s not. I’m not a huge fan of reading my own work, but I do like the feeling in the moment just before the reading is over.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I’m not trying to answer questions, but rather I’m trying to ask questions usually through absurdity and humour. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we act like this?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?


I’m interested in politics and the environment and that informs everything I do in my writing life. I think it’s everyone’s role (not just writers) to be concerned about the world that they live in and what’s going to be left for the next generation. I'm particularly concerned with how our current government is undermining that future—our environment, our health care system.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I like working with an editor. I’m used to it because in screenwriting, you often get feedback from a variety of people. I’ve learned to develop thick skin and an ability to push back. The push back has to be because it’s in the best interest of the work and not because your ego is bruised. And it takes a long time to know the difference between the two.

With my second book of poetry, I had a great editorial experience with Jason Camlot from DC Books. He was pretty ruthless—but in a good way. It was an intense period of cutting, editing, and writing new stuff. One week I wrote ten poems. I wish I could do that every week.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I just attended the AWP conference in Seattle this year, and I saw Chris Abani read with Chang Rae Lee. Abani talked about his process (and I’m paraphrasing here) and how he writes everywhere—in airports, when he’s waiting in line, etc. For him writing isn’t about setting up the right conditions—the perfect space, the right mood. Basically if you’re a writer, you just write wherever you are. I think that’s great advice.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to film)? What do you see as the appeal?

I don’t really see myself as one particular type of writer. I’ve always written in diverse genres, and often adapt my work from one genre to another. A short film I wrote called Skinheads was based on poem from my book The Saddest Place on Earth, and my husband and I have made a series of videos, The Reluctant Narrator, from some of those poems as well. I find an editing process always happens along the way which makes the work in each new form a little different.

The actual writing in different genres is not difficult for me, but the labels can feel strange. Working in film for many years and pretty much seeing myself as a screenwriter or fiction writer, it felt strange to be referred to as a poet after the publication of my first poetry book. Not that there’s anything wrong with being called a poet, but for me the label just felt weird.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

One of the reasons I enjoy being a writer is that I don’t like a routine. I don’t like doing the same thing every day.

Once a poem or a story or essay captures me, I just work on it like crazy. I wrote an essay for Lemon Hound last summer, and it just took over my life for a coupe of weeks. I had planned to write something else, but that project took hold and I went with it.

Sometimes though I have long breaks in between projects. The breaks are part of my process, and I’ve learned not to get panicked by them. If something isn’t going well then I work on something. I always have some kind of a project going.

The other thing that’s part of my process is napping. Seriously. I used to wonder why every time I sat down to write, I needed a nap until I realized that I come with the best stuff when I’m in that half-awake, half-asleep place that I can only get to with a nap. I think this is the reason I like writing on trains too.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I either read writers in the genre I’m trying to write or I eavesdrop.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Curry and cigarettes and Barbie dolls. Whenever I think of my childhood home I have this memory of playing Barbies with my best friend Eleni. My mother was cooking curry in the other room and smoking, and I guess one of us said that Barbie was giving Ken a blow job, and my mother heard and came running into the room and said—how do you know what that is?

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Definitely visual art and music. My husband is a visual artist and his work has been an influence, but also being exposed to a lot of art has also been an important influence on the way I look at the world.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Kurt Vonnegut for his humour and his scathing view of humanity.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write a play. I think I’m actually a playwright, but I’ve never written a play. My poems are often plays and my screenplays are very dialogue driven. But I’ve never made the leap.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I probably would have done something involving activism and the environment.

But I can’t picture myself doing anything else quite honestly. I can’t stand discomfort, so I’m not one of those people who can toil away at a job I hate for years on end. The closest I came to that was when I taught composition at a community college for three years. I was very miserable and often would say over drinks with friends—the English teacher wants to kill herself. I was kidding and not kidding.

When a student from that college asked me how I knew I wanted to be an English teacher, I was horrified and said—but I'm not an English teacher! I quit shortly after that conversation and studied at the Canadian Film Centre. I still teach of course—I have to make a living, but I teach creative writing and I love it. It’s whole different job when you’re teaching students who are interested in what they are learning and when you’re interested in what you are teaching.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?


I was taking English at Concordia and I heard that if you did an English and Creative Writing major then you didn’t have to do an English honors thesis. So I took creative writing and loved it and it changed the whole direction of my life. But basically I started because I was lazy.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?


I’m doing Jonathan Ball and Ryan Fitzpatrick’s #95Books challenge in which the goal is to be as well read as George W. Bush by reading 95 books each year. I’m off to a slow start but hope to pick it up in the summer. Some good books that I’ve read this year have been I Love Dick by Chris Kraus and Sarajevo Blues by Semezdin Mehmedinović. The great thing about this challenge, which I know I won’t be able to live up to and I’m fine with that, is that I’m reading books that have been on my shelf for years that I’ve meant to read but have not gotten around to. So having this goal is forcing me to finish more books.

The Panic in Needle Park is an Al Pacino film from the 70s that I recently watched. It’s bleak but good.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’ve gone back to an old screenplay that I could never get right and now I feel like I’m ready to fix it. It’s a bullying story set in the 80s before helicopter parenting. I’m always working on poems too.

[Kathryn Mockler reads in Ottawa on Saturday, March 29, 2014 with Stephen Brockwell and Souvankham Thammavongsa as part of the fourth annual VERSeFest]

12 or 20 (second series) questions;