...she spilled her food and rolled in it or held
dark conversations with the clouds...
-- From "Mary"
GF: The hundreds of people who've stumbled over that capitalised S in the middle of your name want to know: who named you?
JV: I suspect those folks are not from Utah. Here, random capital letters in the middle of first names are legion. But seriously, the explanation is actually a lot less exotic and interesting than you might imagine. As I understand it, the name JoSelle came from two places. Apparently, my mother had a friend who had a friend with the same name. Mom thought it was pretty, and my father agreed. The other story is that they favored it because it consisted entirely of letters found in each of their names. Both are true, according to my mother.
But the capital S. Mom knew that people would probably have a hard time pronouncing the name, so the random big letter had the same purpose Hooked on Phonics did: to show folks how to pronounce it. The correct pronunciation is Joe-SELL. Literally like the name "Joe" and the word "Sell." Her intentions were pure, but things didn't work as she hoped. People regularly say my name in any of the following ways: "Ja-zell" (very popular in Utah), "Tris-sell" (also popular in Utah, but typically among twelve to fourteen-year-olds, for some reason I am at a loss to discover), "Jo-Zell" (the most common mispronunciation), "Giselle" (like the ballet), "Jill" by almost anyone who has encountered my name on an answering machine message, "Still?" by hard-of-hearing secretaries, and the best for last, "Gazelle." Yes, just like the beastie.
My parents: making unusual names popular before Harry Potter. The name they picked for a boy was even stranger, to me.
GF: Speaking of Harry Potter -- we hear you're quite the fan, and that you've even begun organizing a collection of essays about the books. So, as a tribute to all the interviews that have come before, and because inquiring minds want to know -- if you were a Harry Potter character, who would you be, and why?
JV: Oh, yes, the essays! I need to get back to that. Any publishers reading this: wouldn't you just love to do a book about race, class and gender in Rowling's work? Please? There are cookies in it for you, and interesting papers which are ... well, a lot like cookies in that they are good!
But, seriously, now. Are you sure you want an answer to the real question? It's going to sound incredibly dorky. I thought about this a bit, and I'd have to say I'd want to be Mad-Eye Moody. He's been one of my favorite characters since we first me the real him in Order of the Phoenix, and he doesn't get enough love from the fans. He's supremely intelligent (you'd have to be to round up dangerous wizards), practical, loyal to a fault and actually quite grounded, despite being a bit paranoid - thanks to the rigors of his job. Along with that - and this isn't really said very much in any fannish or scholarly circles to which I am privy - he's also a very positive portrayal of a disabled person. He's missing a leg, an eye and most of his nose, but Rowling never makes an issue of this. She never shows him to be weaker than other Aurors, and never shows other characters treating him with that insulting mixture of pity and terror that is the halmark of ableism. In fact, his magic eye makes him a far more effective Auror - talk about a concrete example of a 'cybernetic' character not being treated as tragic or Other!
Oh, yes. And he's also really wity when he wants to be. Yes. I would definitely want to be Moody. I really hope that Rowling doesn't kill him off in Deathly Hallows.
GF: You mention "ableism" -- could you expand on that a bit more? Do you feel that characters with disabilities crop up in your own work? What, in fact, would you consider as part of the gamut of 'disability'?
JV: I would be happy to! For me - and I speak only for me, since I'm hardly the empress of disabled people, and many would not classify me as disabled - ableism is essentially discrimination against those who have disabilities. For me, it goes beyond simple discrimination, though. It's the idea that those of us whose bodies and minds are unable to perform some function (such as walking for a paraplegic, or handling serotonin correctly for a depressive) are inferior, that the non-disabled body is superior and somehow "whole." It is one of the more insidious of isms because it gets, I think, far less attention than it ought. Also because many of us with disabilities (particularly those whose disabilities are invisible, like mine) have internalized this idea and therefore don't protest it.
For me, disability is ... a problematic word, first of all. I say this because some people do not consider themselves to be disabled, some prefer terms like "differently abled," and some so-called disabilities are really just human variations that society has yet to understand and fully accept - just as left-handedness was once considered a disability. I would submit just as autism is now considered a disability, too, but that's an entirely different argument! I use it only because of its popularity, just as I use terms like "mental illness" - more on that in a moment! But I define it broadly. If one has a condition acquired either through birth or accident that makes it significantly difficult for one to function daily, I see that as disability. I make no distinction between physical and 'mental' disabilities, either. Diseases like depression, schizophrenia and generalized anxiety disorder and acquired conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder create just as much difficulty and pain as anything physical, and they often have physical side effects, too. Depressives, for example, often suffer from migraines and muscle pain, and the depression often exacerbates other diseases - even things as "simple" as colds and the flu. Plus, the mind is part of the body, so the American tendency to treat it as some nebulous, non-physical thing is really bizarre and insulting to me.
I find ableism childish and disgusting (particularly that leveled against the mentally ill) not just because it's prejudicial, but because it is limiting. Ableism not only refuses to admit that people with disabilities are fully human, it also pathologizes and tragedizes us. There is no need to do this, especially because what seem like disabilities often come with unintended benefits. For example, my depression is a soul and body-crushing illness that I would not wish on anyone. At the same time, I think it has given me an insight into human suffering that I would not have found otherwise. If you asked this question to someone with Asperger's syndrome (one so-called disability), for example, they would probably have many more eloquent things to say than I have on this subject. Keep in mind, though, that this is just one disabled person's opinion, and many would disagree with me.
I deal with disability quite frequently in my work, but I tend to stick with what I know, which would be disabilities seated in the mind, like depression. A lot of my poems come from the experience of someone with depression, even if the characters themselves aren't depressed or suicidal. I think you can see this in poems like "Elise" and "Handless Came the Maiden" for sure. It's even more prominent in some of my forthcoming work. I have written a so-far unpublished memoir in poetry about my experience with this illness as well.
GF: "Elise" and "Handless Came the Maiden" both appeared in our Winter 2007 issue, and we wanted them to bookend it for a reason; while they both treated problematic father/daughter relationships, they did so in such different and complementary ways that we just had to showcase them together. We also notice that a lot of your work deals with fathers, daughters, and all the thorny strangeness in between; care to comment?
JV: At the risk of over-explaining myself and my work, yes; father/daughter relationships were always difficult for me to read about as a child and as a teenager. I certainly could not write about them with any degree of success until my early 20s, which really isn't that long ago. I suppose the reasons for my inability were the most obvious ones: living primarily with my mother and having a very stormy relationship with my father, whose divorce from my mother was final long before my first birthday. I saw him for a relatively brief period of time only, and then typically only on summer vacations and when he was able to visit, as he lived on the other side of the country. He was definitely a strange, thorny presence in my life - a father and not-father, a parent from afar. He was brilliant and charming, yes, but he was just as often critical and fierce, even terrifying. He could be abusive in one of the worst ways imaginable: innocently, not knowing that what he did caused pain, or that the pain he caused me was harmful. I both admired and feared him, but mostly feared.
They say that such relationships often improve when the child becomes an adult. I wouldn't know first hand, though. Just when we began to get better at truly communicating and bonding, he committed suicide six days before my 17th birthday. I think it pretty much goes without saying that loss has had an indelible impact on the trajectory of my life and my writing -- I'd have to be made of steel and wire for it not to have, really. In a way, writing about the love, hate, envy and fear, and everything else, between daughters and fathers is my ongoing attempt to understand what my father and I shared, and the many things we could have become. I do hope, however, that it's more than that. I hope that I'm doing something with poems like "Elise" and "Handless Came the Maiden" that reaches out to other daughters and fathers - and indeed, to mothers, sons, brothers, sisters, grandparents or anyone else. Along with being wonderful and joyous, human relationships are notoriously messy, painful and cruel, no matter what package they come in, after all.
I know this is a hopelessly Campbellian explaination. But then, I cry every time Luke takes off Darth Vader's mask in Return of the Jedi, so ...
GF: If you'll forgive just a little more prodding with the Personal-Stick, did your father have a hand in introducing you to poetry, fairytales and/or folklore? Or did you come by those on your own?
JV: My father really had more of a hand in introducing me to history and science, to World War II and his parents' history serving in the Dutch Resistance. He actually rather disapproved of me reading as much as I did, and would confiscate my books at times until I went out, played with other kids, and "made friends" as he called it. Though how you could really make a friend by playing with random kids you met at your step-brother's softball game (and who you would probably not see again after returning to Utah at summer vacation's end), I've yet to understand. He thought my interest in books as a child was excessive and stunted my social growth.
Although my mother introduced me to all sorts of literature and let me read whatever I wished at any age, she never particularly stressed folklore, fairy tales or myth more than any other kind of book. I just simply took an interest in them as a very young child, and a stronger interest after reading Lloyd Alexander's excellent Prydain Chronicles -- books that he based on a number of Celtic myths and legends, according to his Afterwords. To some degree, I got really interested in folklore at a considerably "older" age than a lot of writers who write about them these days: I remember loving the D'Aulaires' Greek Myths at age eight, for example, but I didn't pick up the Norse book until age 13. I didn't read Bernard Evslin's imaginative re-structurings of stories about Greek, Norse and Celtic monsters until age 12 or so. So while I had the tools to discover these old, verbal tradition stories, discovering them was largely my own decision.
If you will permit me a tangent here, I'd also like to say that my interest in folklore and my interest in classic literature that you also see reflected in some of my poems -- Moliere in "Elise," for example, as well as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Boccacio, John Webster and all the brilliant Jacobean and Carolovingian playwrights who came after him -- sprang from a similar place and a similar need. These playwrights and writers drew upon pre-existing literary traditions and old stories. Moliere could not have written The Miser or Tartuffe without the commedia, which sprung from peasant folklore and mummings; Shakespeare could not have written King Lear or Othello without Holinshed's Chronicles or Cithio's stories, respectively. Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" would not be remembered as one of the stand outs in The Canterbury Tales without Arthurian legend. Reading as widely as I did in childhood, I soon came to realize that the canon of what is considered essential literature and drama (particularly drama, since it really is a folk art) had their roots in folklore, fairy tale and myth. I thought, even at that young age, that I would ignore this trend in my own writing at my peril.
GF: Your writing is so often beautifully suspended between myth and experience. We have a chicken and egg question for you: when you write, is it the fairytales themselves that suggest ways for you to subvert them and read between their lines? Or do you see and experience situations that correspond to fairytales, and go from there?
JV: You know, it really differs from poem to poem. That said, the majority of the time I read a fairy tale or story that seems to lend itself to what I have observed about, say, parent/child relationships, mortality, or dysfunctional human relationships (my three favorite themes) -- really, what fairy tale doesn't focus on at least one of these? Sometimes, I also notice a fairy tale that seems to circumvent an important question about life. There is a lovely story in an Andrew Lang book, for example, which is all about a prince who escapes death. As much as I love fairy tales where impossible things always happen, those trickster tales always make me step back and say, "Oh, really?" I always have such fun pulling them apart!
GF: Where do you go to read poetry? Do you have a place to sit, do you prefer to be like the Romantics and head to the nearest nature (with your laptop)?
JV: Oh heavens, no! I'm far too disorganized to imitate the Romantics, even though I'm surrounded on all sides by Utah's gorgeous and unequaled landscape. I usually read poetry snuggled up in bed or in my favorite easy chair at my grandmother's house. I usually write poetry in either of those locations, too -- that is, when I'm not writing on the train to work or in the middle of a busy airport. You'd be surprised how many poems have been written in those locations. Some have even appeared in Goblin Fruit!
GF: What do you want to be when you "grow up"?
JV: Well, now. I hope I'm still doing the same things I'm doing today -- writing poetry and books, editing newspapers, and creating necklaces and bracelets. I would hope, however, that I get to write more essays and books about literary history, though.
GF:Creating necklaces and bracelets, you say? Could you tell us more about that?
JV: I'm not entirely sure how it started, actually. About a month ago, I just had the sudden urge to create a few necklaces as a sort of a "breather" from my usual hectic writing schedule. I'd just spent all of May flitting from convention to convention, and working hard at my day job, and beading seemed like something that would be a good break. I can't seem to stop myself now, though. For me, necklace design has become something of an outgrowth for my writing. Many of my necklaces also take their inspiration from folklore and fairy tale, theatre and, of course, my own writing. I've currently designed necklaces for all five of the main characters in my novella The Tale of the Miller's Daughter. There will be necklaces to accompany the release of my second novel, Owl Skin, and a forthcoming poetry book called Death Masks, which is sort of a modern danse macabre. I'm not sure if what I do is any good, since I'm mostly self-taught. But I do know that what I'm doing is an example of interstitial art.
Oh. And, generally, I prefer to design necklaces, if only because I don't wear a lot of bracelets.
GF: Do you read comic books? If so, what's your favourite one?
JV: Absolutely! In fact, they're some of my favorite things to read. I really enjoy Bill Willingham's Fables. He's a good friend and a brilliant writer. Although I've fallen behind in my reading, I also really enjoy Y: The Last Man. It's a very inventive and altogether smart take on a familiar trope in feminist SF. You know, men die and the entire world is now populated by women. I highly recommend it, despite the fact that a lot of feminists don't seem to like it very much.
GF: What do you do when you're online?
JV: Oh, I'm very boring. I mainly just write emails, visit a few websites like livejournal and talk to a couple people. When I get DSL at long last, my answer will probably change. I foresee more visits to YouTube in my future, for one thing! Of course, Harry Potter fansites are also of interest.
GF: How often do you feel the need to revise your poetry, once a poem's been written?
JV: It sounds incredibly lame to say this twice in an interview, I know, but, again, it depends on the poem. Sometimes a poem is exactly what I want it to be after the first draft. Sometimes, I go back and read it again before sending it off and realize that something is missing. Then it's done on the second or third draft. In very rare cases, a poem can take years to perfect in which it sits on the shelf for a long time. One such poem, "Bruising the Pomegranates," was begun in 2004 and got its final face lift in December 2006. I admit that is a rarity, but it does happen, particularly with mid-length poems, for some reason.
GF: Have you ever wanted to dye your hair another color?
JV: Oh, all the time! But I've only done it once. When I was 21 I got red highlights put in. I wish I had the money, ambition and audacity to put green highlights in now, but when you get a job and join the working world, such things become impossible. Besides, my hair is so dark that it has to be bleached before any color change. And when the color fades, it looks nasty! So no, I doubt I'll ever go through with a dye job again, even a few highlights.
GF: Well, the problem with interviewing someone as talented and awesome as yourself is knowing when and where to stop -- and we certainly don't! So, in conclusion, we'd like to place the onus on you: what would you have liked to have been asked in this interview, and what would have answered?
JV: Oh my! Keep complementing me like that, and I'm sure I'll have trouble fitting my swollen head through doors! I think you did a thorough job with this interview, but it would have been fun to talk about music, a little. Especially since we wandered into the interstitial in art when we spoke of bead work. Music has always inspired me to write, and I usually have a CD playing while I write. Although I'll listen to just about anything -- including rap and country, which most people say they detest -- I have a standard roster of bands and/or artists to whom I listen when I put finger to keyboard. Some perennial favorites from my eclectic library are Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (don't now how I feel about his new project Grinderman yet), Delirium, Sarah McLaughlin, Loreena McKennitt, Tom Waits, Dr. Steel, S.J. Tucker, Enigma, The Dresden Dolls, The Decemberists, The Medieval Babes/Miranda Sex Garden, Pink Floyd and Oingo Boingo, to name only a few. Although I like just about every genre out there (as you can probably see from this list), it takes a special kind of music to make it to my writing play list - a kind with lyrics that melt into my internal landscape because they match my thoughts and my writing style almost perfectly. Not every musician fits well with this. In fact, some of my favorite singers and bands don't fit at all, and cannot be listened to when I write because they distract me. Johnny Cash, as much as I love him, is a good example of a musician who has to be listened to when I'm not writing.
Some writer I met at a con -- sadly, I forget whom -- once said that all writers were hucksters in some form or another. In the spirit of that opinion, I would like to close by hawking my latest chap book, The Minotaur's Last Letter to His Mother. This contains 19 of my best poems published between 2005 and 2007, and a few new things. It's a beautiful book from Ash Phoenix Books, an excellent publisher of young and upcoming poets. It's also an extremely limited edition. Of the 30 copies printed, only about 15 are still available. Anyone interested in buying a copy should email me at upstart.crow at gmail dot com. It's only $10.50 including shipping and handling, and I'll even scribble my name on the title page. How neat is that?
There are lots more poetry collections coming out from me in 2007 and 2008, including one from Sam's Dot. So interested people should just keep an eye on my blog and my Web site for updates. I will be nice now, and spare you the used-car saleswoman pitch and its accompanying fireworks and bling.
