Interview With Joanna C. Valente, author of Sexting Ghosts
Genevieve Pfeiffer: In Sexting Ghosts, you explore and interrogate form — particularly the use of negative space and the use of punctuation. How do you see poetic form as a way to representation and a restructuring of daily life?
Joanna C. Valente: Everything exists in a form, humans, animals, poems, movies, music, etc. Nothing is formless, so I really think about ways poems are brought to life but their form, which is a canvas of sorts. What isn’t said is just as important as what is said, which is definitely why I use a lot of negative space in poems. I also use punctuation as a way to breathe, to give a guide to my reader on how to read the poem itself, since it’s also an auditory experience. Often times, we exist in the inbetween spaces of our lives, what wasn’t said, how it was said, the tone, body language. I try to do that with a poem.
GP: Could you talk a little about negative space, what it means to you and how you like to use it?
JCV: I try to use it as a pause, to create tension and suspense, but to also create double meaning within the poem itself. What wasn’t said that is being said without language or words? I also think having a lot of space on the page gives us a way to focus, like a painting. Where does your eye fall when you look at it? How does it feel? It’s a sensory experience, and existing in space is just as important as existing in words and language.
GP: Sexting Ghosts breaks down into three sections: HUMANS; HEAVEN, HELL AKA THE INTERNET; and GODS. I enjoy how humans and gods are juxtaposed, and then held together by HEAVEN, HELL AKA THE INTERNET. Your connection between spirituality and technology is pretty great, and how you’ve blended the spiritual world and the digital world, could you speak more about this is your personal life?
JCV: I feel like this is everything! We’re so in the thick of technology that our lives are dictated by it, just as spirituality and religious beliefs dictates and structures people’s lives, especially culturally. I grew up in a very religious household, so religion and spirituality was always on my mind; I went to religious school for 13 years. While I rejected my family’s religion somewhat informally (I just don’t practice much), I’ve always been obsessed by what we don’t understand, by trying to find meaning, having rituals. And, of course, to be in this digital realm is so strange, and in some ways, brings us closer to ourselves and finding some kind of truth, but also distances ourselves from real connection. It can be a huge distraction, it can create distance in relationships. I struggle with this all the time, especially as the art/lit community is so online-based now, which is tremendously good, but also tremendously complicated. So, for me, finding that spiritual self, that balance of physical and ethereal and technology, is basically what I’m obsessed with. It’s mostly me trying to find intimacy and myself and physicality — and understand family dynamics (which have often been informed by our cultures and our religions).
GP: In a recent essay, you write ‘space became spiritual,’ and I think it is so in Sexting Ghosts. Could you explain a little more about how space is spiritual for you, and how this plays out on the page?
JCV: Where we exist informs how we exist. I live in NYC, for example. I grew up in New York. That space is so chaotic and strange and full of everything, and yet can also so be so incredibly lonely and stressful. I think in that way, space has become a huge part of my poetry. How do we exist in a landscape we didn’t choose? How do we exist in any landscape and space? Especially when that space isn’t welcoming or safe. In trying to find ourselves, physically, emotional, spiritually, etc, we find ourselves on a journey in so many ways. I feel like I go on this journey every few years, although it’s also ironic, because I’ve never moved or lived anywhere else. So I’m always trying to refind myself and my space, in the physical world, and in poems. I’m always trying to write and rewrite space and how I use it. I think, one day, I’ll move somewhere else and have a different journey, which I’m sure will affect my poems in strange, wonderful ways.
GP: Your title, Sexting Ghosts, is incredible. I love it because neither a sext nor a ghost really had a physical body, and yet your book is very settled in the physical. You write about New York City, about food, about bodies; and all this calls about a non-place, a hunger, a loneliness. I think the book continually turns. How do your experiences inform your writing, especially as you write about the nonphysical?
JCV: All of them inform it in all of the ways! I try to be really mindful of my everyday experiences, perhaps to the point of being weird. For instance, I try to eat my meals really slowly, so I can really taste all of the ingredients. I want to be thankful for everything I can experience. I’ve notoriously been the last to finish, ever since I was a kid. My parents always joked about it. I try to be that way in general, really being slow and taking everything in. Perhaps this was a coping mechanism as someone who grew up in a fast-paced environment. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just how I am. But I’ve always been a dreamer too, living inside my head in this little realities I constructed, creating stories. Growing up, my mother would buy a lot of fashion magazines, and I would pour over them for hours, imagining the stories for all the people and models and celebrities. This was before the internet existed in my world, so I relied heavily on being in this dream-reality. I think that sense of imagination has stayed with me, despite all the changes. We all do this, of course, we all live in our own heads. So our minds and imaginations are just as important as the physical world; it’s that combination and meeting that’s always fascinating, because how we let it meld wildly changes how we live.
GP: You work closely with many forms of violence — physical, emotional, spiritual. Misogyny is and has been the backbone of many religions and spiritual movements. Given the lines in your poem “Wife,” “What was the last thing you said to your mother?/ My mother told me I lost faith/ in god after I was raped/ I said, wouldn’t you?” Could you speak about how this violence connects us, and how it enables us to ask questions — as your speaker does?
JCV: I think growing up, as Greek Orthodox, was really intense, and it can be intensely misogynistic. The women in my family tend to be both very independent, but also conventional (as per their times and contexts). I think I was always fascinated by that, especially because I was trying to figure out what to be as I was growing up. So, just seeing these contradictions at work prompted me to ask questions, to try to figure out what it all means. It’s confusing as a kid, and as an adult, to undo social constructs and the structures we’ve been taught. And yet, we also love ritual, we’re creatures of habit. Because of this, I really try to question everything, because we have to. So many of our structures have failed us.
GP: Many of your poems take the form of interviews. What made you choose this form? What other forms did you play with while writing these, or was it instinctive?
JCV: It was instinctive. I think I just was asking the questions I wish we all asked our loved ones, our families, but are too afraid to ask. I mostly just played with the interview format and indentation of lines and white space, because I was trying to dig something out, whatever it was.
GP: How do you currently describe relationship with texting and social media?
JCV: I feel like it’s become part of our psyche and relationships. I look forward to the people I text everyday, those little moments and interactions. Social media is us, it is society now. This is just what it is. That being said, I’ve been actively trying to use all of it less and be more in the present, because I do think the immediacy makes me impatient and less mindful, which I don’t like.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015) Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), and Sexting Ghosts (Unknown Press, 2018). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing By Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017).
They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, and the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.
Some of their writing has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, BUST, Spork Press, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente
