VALENCIA ROBIN
Ridiculous Light
Age: Over fifty. Residence: Charlottesville, Virginia. Book: Ridiculous Light (Persea Books, April 2019), winner of the 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, a collection that spans the arc of a life, from the poet’s childhood in Milwaukee to the personal and social experiences that shaped an adulthood marked by joy and tumult. Agent: None. Editor: Gabriel Fried.
ICAME to writing through a love of story. Unfortunately I never associated story with poetry until later in life. It’s a common complaint, but not once during high school did I read a poem that spoke to me, that I wished I could write. Later, in my twenties, many poets seemed to privilege theory over story. Thus, after writing two novels, a screenplay, and dozens of short stories—all bad—I stopped writing and turned to the painting I’d been pursuing as a hobby.
Of course I’m saying all of this as if being a novelist, an abstract painter, or a poet were perfectly normal pursuits for a Black girl whose life began in Milwaukee’s public housing. Frankly, for me to think about being an artist or writer would’ve been akin to something out of Star Trek. To my mother’s credit she always told me I’d go to college, and yet I had no idea what that would look like. Becoming a professional, my sole goal, felt even more mysterious and scary. But one step leads to the next. I majored in journalism, got married, moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, and was thrilled to land a job as a public relations writer at the local hospital.
Though I spent years wanting to go to art school, I was a fortysomething divorced library manager by the time I summoned the courage to apply; I was also the primary caregiver for both my mother and her mother. And if you need a proverbial kick in the pants, a reminder that life is indeed short, there’s nothing like having the two strongest people you know become dependent overnight.
Art school gave me all the time and community I’d hoped for; to make a living afterward I cofounded a gallery at the University of Michigan. During lunch I often found myself reading the Poetry Foundation website. The truth is, I’m not happy unless I’m making something, so if I couldn’t bring my paintings to work, the next best thing became—to my surprise—reading and eventually writing poems. Wanting feedback, I took an online class with Major Jackson. That was it; everything about writing and talking about poetry made me happy. Just as important, I learned that my poems could move people, that I was part of poetry’s lyric-narrative tradition. I eventually applied to six fully-funded creative writing programs and was accepted by the University of Virginia. Did I worry about leaving my job, my life? Of course, and yet I knew my best chance of becoming a published poet was by studying with other poets. Just the initial terror of taking a poem to Gregory Orr’s or Rita Dove’s office hours made me work harder. And being plugged into a supportive community is no small thing; that I could go to Lisa Russ Spaar for advice about teaching and publishing, that Jeffery Renard Allen would connect me with the wider poetry community, that Debra Nystrom would get me my first workshop gig. And despite the age difference, my classmates and I talked poetry inside and outside of the classroom, developed friendships that feel lifelong.
I found my publisher, Persea Books, after winning the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Gabe Fried, my editor, made the editing process pretty painless. Of course one of the benefits of being a single Black woman over fifty who quits her job to study poetry is that I was pretty clear about my priorities. So by the time Gabe saw the book, the number of revisions was probably in the billions. A friend recently asked if I ever imagined Ridiculous Light would do so well— that it would be reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times— that it would be taught in a graduate seminar. All I knew was that I had some stories to tell and that they turned out to be poems.