1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This is my first book of poetry. I’m sixty-nine years old upon its publication. I’ve published non-fiction previously, but this is my penultimate success--for starters. I’m already working on another one.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or nonfiction?
Well, I came to both poetry and nonfiction and journalism all at the same time. I wrote my first poem when I was around 10 years old and was from then on writing and reading poetry, though journalism and expository prose also held my interest. I went to college to study poetry and then, a semester in grad school, but after college, I got deeply involved in progressive politics and created an earning career for myself as a communications strategist (as opposed to a non-earning career as a poet!) I wasn’t trained as a journalist, but I was intrigued to become one--I am somewhat of a frustrated foreign reporter at heart--and so I began to write opinion pieces and do some straight reporting and feature writing for newspapers from overseas.
Then, from my late thirties to my late fifties, I stopped cold in writing poetry. I filed tons of journalism, was a columnist at a weekly paper for a while and wrote a lot of opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines in the US and UK and Israel, where I frequently travelled. I became an expert on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and have now been writing opinion and reported pieces from and about there since the 1980s. I also began to write about other countries with a progressive lens, like Poland and France.
When I began to write poetry again--when I turned 60--I wrote some poems about places and incidents on which I had reported. It has been fun to figure out the differences in how to describe something in a reported piece versus how to describe something in a poem. Reporting must be factual, but poetry can make up facts by discovering connections that we didn't know were there until beginning to write about them.
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 usually start a poem with a line or sometimes even a word, or a memory. My first drafts sometimes are nothing but notes with brackets that I place there for words to come. I like to go over a poem for several weeks before it is in its final form-at least for that moment.
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?
I’m never working on a book-I work on poems, and then, as with my new book, I look for story arcs to bring them together.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings and talking to people about writing.
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?
Hmm… since I am very active politically, many of my poems reflect that-or reflect the multitude of travel that I do. I hope that the poems will show connections where people may not have considered them.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers should advocate for themselves and their art. If we can gain a voice because people are reading our work, then we should also speak out about our societal concerns-especially at this moment.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I work with editors when I write my journalism and find them to be very helpful. For this poetry book, I had a new experience--Arrowsmith Press hired a copyeditor to go over my manuscript. I loved working with a copyeditor, something I’d never done before for poetry. It was so interesting, making me think hard about every comma and capitalization. I also had a brilliant editor in the Arrowsmith publisher, Askold Melnyczuk, who is also a friend of mine. The book’s title was Askold’s idea—I had another title for the book. He also suggested some re-ordering of the poems that I wouldn’t have thought about, but I think he was correct.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
This isn’t quite advice, but it is words to write by--When I was in college at Sarah Lawrence, I queried a writer teaching there (with whom I didn’t study, but with whom I was friends ), the marvelous Grace Paley, and told her that I was trying to find a an American Jewish female poet who wrote about her experience of being such, and addressed many of the concerns that I had at that time in my life. I wanted to read a poet whose work would inspire me to say, “yes, that’s how I see the world.” Grace’s answer to me was blunt (as she always was). She said, “Jo-Ann, you are looking for your poems, your writing.” I have never forgotten that conversation decades later. Write yourself into the world.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to journalism)? What do you see as the appeal?
It’s easy. My poetry training for sure helped me when I became a journalist. I’m not trained as a journalist, but from the study of poetry writing I learned about how to tell a story, how to be concise and how even one word can have an impact on the entire reported story. Journalism fills one role and poetry another. I’ll frequently report on something or write an opinion column and then take those same thoughts and mold them into a poem. The poem will find a different truth than the journalism and that’s terrific.
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 begin my day by reading at least seven newspapers, although as I’ve gotten older, I’ve allowed myself not to read entire articles and more just peruse headlines. But I read the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, (where I write frequent opinion pieces), LeMonde, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Haaretz newspaper along with a round up that I receive from the Israeli media.
When I am really disciplined, I’ll open my journal and write something--anything--on the blank page. But I am not that disciplined.
I wish I had a routine. I always have a journal ongoing. I’ll carry it around with me all day, put it on my desk in the morning, sleep with it near my bed at night--just in case inspiration strikes. But, too often, I’ll go days without writing in it, even as I’m schlepping it around.
I remember my first poetry workshop in college, taught by the wonderful poet Tom Lux, who told us that we always had to be writing a poem, always had to have something going on the page. I did that when I was younger, but I don’t do it anymore, and I’m not sure that I need to. I find that the best process for me comes in daydreaming or obsessing on one word or one image or thought and then, I take notes in my journal or start a doc in my google drive, or I write a note on my phone.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I return to poets I admire. And sometimes, favorite poems. I’ve also been reading a lot of essays on writing by poets and finding these to be so helpful. These days, Denise Levertov’s essays are inspirational to me because she writes both about process and content, and of course, she was a very political poet, too. My own writing is not as sparse as hers usually is, but I love reading about how she writes, and I aspire to be sparser in my verse.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a lot of dried Eucalyptus in my apartment, so I guess that’s the scent or fragrance I associate with home.
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?
Oh yes. I’m very inspired by music. But, for me music evokes memory-and that is where the inspiration comes in. These days, the artist Wassily Kandinsky inspires me (I chose a print of his for my cover art for my book), because I think that he really speaks to our time where everything feels chaotic and out of control.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
So many writers are important to me--a few come to mind immediately: poets like Muriel Rukeyser, Phil Levine, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Maxine Kumin, Yehuda Amichai, Mahmoud Darwish, Osip Mandelstam, many Polish poets like Wislawa Szymborska and Tadeusz Rozewicz, Octavio Paz; novelists like Marcel Proust (whose writing about memory is so very poetic and mimics the creative poetry writing process) and Lawrence (and his poetry), Iris Murdoch, Elsa Morante. I love reading novelists who create not only a world with their storytelling but a moral world.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have a travel bucket list and since so much of what I write is inspired by travel, I’m intrigued to find out what I would write were I able to travel to places like Japan, South Korea, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine (I’ve been to Lviv just before the war but I want to go deeper into the country). I had always wanted to go to Russia, but I think that will probably stay off of my to do list for the foreseeable future. As you can tell, I’m not exactly a hang out on the beach vacation person!
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 can’t imagine anything else, especially because I’ve found that having abandoned my poetry self for two decades and now having come back to it, I am whole again.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is in my blood. It’s how I understand and explain the world.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I was blown away by Elsa Morante’s book History: a Novel. I found an old used copy online I believe it’s set for a new reissue in the next year or so. I hope so. She was an extraordinarily important novelist, married to a better-known Italian novelist-Alberto Moravia. But this novel, which is nearly 1000 pages, is literally a history of Italy up through the rise of and then defeat of fascism, told through the eyes of a peasant woman in Sicily. It’s a brilliant feminist leftist novel, lyrical and magical also.
The recent Brazilian film I’m Still Here, is brilliant and haunting—especially because it deals with the life of a leftist politician under the Brazilian dictatorship, but also because it feels so genuine, almost like a documentary, even though it is a feature film based on a true story.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Poems for what I hope will be my second book.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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