Valerie Duff


Valerie Duff has held fellowships from the VCCA and Writers’ Room of Boston. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, POETRY, Ploughshares, The Common, Great River Review, and elsewhere. Her second book, Aquamarine, was published by Lily Poetry Review Press in October 2023. Her previous volume, To the New World (Salmon Poetry, 2010), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize from Queens University, Belfast. She is a writer working in Alumni Relations & Resource Development (ARRD) at Harvard Kennedy School.

She studied poetry at Boston University and Trinity College, Dublin.  

Kristina Marie Darling:  Your new book, Aquamarine, just launched from Lily Poetry Review Books.  What would you like readers to know before they delve into the work itself?  

VD: I actually gave some newer friends a trigger warning when they bought my book since so much of it deals with my experience having breast cancer. They didn’t know about that part of my life, and I felt like it wasn’t fair to throw them into the deep end of the pool like that without warning. Since the book was written, I’ve seen a number of exceptional books that take on breast cancer and its treatment (Katie FarrisFelicia Zamora, etc), and while I’ll never be thankful for my connection to this subject, I’m glad to see so much amazing poetry coming out of a much-too-common and truly horrible experience. I hope that my poems also show my tremendous respect and gratitude for the people helping those with cancer–of any kind. For all my readers, whether cancer survivors or those with no connection to the disease, my wish is that the poems will resonate or move them in some way. 

I also would like readers to know more about my cover artist, Kikki Ghezzi. I got to know Kikki in 2018 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts when we used to walk together around the grounds after our communal dinner. I visited her studio once and saw photos of this exhibit, set in Cornwall, and I knew then that I wanted her work to be the cover of a future book. Over time, I realized how perfect a match her image is–“the process of enveloping a Cornish house nestled under a cliff beside the sea”–with these poems: an old abandoned house (echoes of my parents’ house, my children now grown, my own body) transformed. Kikki’s artist’s note about the project is in the back of the book, and I love its interplay with the poems.

KMD:  One of the elements of craft in Aquamarine that I most admire is how the sections are crafted. Each section has its own hook and its own narrative arc.  What advice do you have for poets who are currently working on sequencing and structuring a poetry manuscript?  

VD: The funny thing is, I asked two poet/editor friends for help when I got to the point of organizing my manuscript–and they both made wildly different suggestions, taking the book in opposite directions. I could see the method each chose and went largely with one, but with the other in the back of my mind at all times. I added my own finishing touches because I wasn’t happy with the first and final poems as I incorporated their suggestions. To others working on a manuscript I would say, find one or two people you truly trust and get that feedback, even if it goes against your initial vision for the book–they’ll see things you never even considered. But there’s no one right way to do things. Don’t be afraid to stand up for your own ideas about the way the poems fit together–but when someone makes a suggestion, try to hear what they’re hearing and understand the poems talking to each other as they do. I would say give it a lot of distance before you try to order or reorder. You need to step back from the book far enough to see the whole thing.

KMD:  I also admire the way the poetic line exists in tension with the sentence in many of your poems.  The line breaks are as often charged and meaningful as the words themselves.  What poets were most formative to your thinking about lineation?

VD: Thank you! That’s lovely to hear. When I studied with Lucie Brock-Broido decades ago, we always talked about the muscular line. I think the muscularity is always most tested at the end of the line. William Carlos Williams‘s poems have always guided my thinking about line breaks. More recently Roger Reeves and Andrea Cohen are an influence. Thomas Hardy is on my mind when I think about how a sentence might wend its way through a stanza, and Heather Treseler is my new favorite poet to watch around this maneuver. And every now and then I find a new poet, like Nell Prince, using form in a way that makes me think long and hard about how I might choose to use meter or rhyme to get the most out of my free verse poetry.

KMD:  You have held residencies and fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Writers Room of Boston.  Can you speak to the value of residencies for your creative work?  

VD: Extremely valuable. The bulk of Aquamarine was started during a two week residency at the VCCA (and then the pandemic gave me all the time in the world to revise). Many of the poems revolve around my father’s death in 2009 and the sale of my childhood home in 2014–I grew up a short 15 minute drive away from the VCCA, and the proximity to childhood drove a lot of what I wrote about. My father is buried in Charlottesville and that sparked another series of poems after a short day trip there.

Some poems in Aquamarine also were written during my year as a fellow at the Writers Room of Boston. The Writers Room offered space in downtown Boston–this was long before my family’s 2020 attic renovation, when I literally had no room of my own, so I trekked down there to share a space with other writers. It was always so cozy and private (even when others were in the space), the views were incredible, and I wrote more in one year than I had in the preceding three. It’s hard for me to disengage from my worklife and homelife in the day to day to make that space for poetry–it happens, but infrequently, so residences are a gift, and I’ve been fortunate.

KMD:  In addition to your accolades as a a poet, you are a coach at Hillside Writing.  What has teaching opened up within your creative practice?  

VD: Over the last two years as I’ve returned to full-time work (giving up my freelance career of the last eighteen years), I’ve slowly moved out of my role at Hillside. It was so meaningful–working alongside this group of practicing writers! At Hillside I coached high school students writing the Common App essay, and I got to work with the student writers to unearth the best material of their short lives largely through conversation. Even though I’ve spent many years as an editor (working on paper), I do think this approach is one of the best around–because I was not only the best reader but best listener for the student. When they said something truly detailed and wonderful, I’d say, “that’s so good–let’s write that down!” and then we’d work together to help them find the way to work their best, most specific, words into the essay. Sometimes it changed the direction of their piece entirely–for the better. 

So, I think I taught not only the high school students to find their most authentic and interesting stories through revision but also taught myself how to let go and move through memory, finding the good bits. 

KMD:  What are you currently working on?  What can readers look forward to?  

VD: I always love to write book reviews–they keep me going while I’m not writing my own poetry–and I try to keep my hand in. However, I’m working on bits and pieces of poems now (while hoping there’s a residency in the near future to bring everything together and revise). Once I’m through my new-job-transition and kids-into-college-transition, I hope to get the third book well underway.