“Learning from Others to Understand Oneself: An Interview with Chloe Martinez” by Seline Magtoto
On November 3rd, 2022, I sat at my small dining room table with my computer, pen, and paper at hand. Glancing back at our Zoom call, I asked Chloe Martinez, “Who were your role models growing up? Who were your inspirations for writing?” Most people I have interviewed would give me a typical response: Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, Jane Austen, or even close family members. Instead, Martinez answered, “My fourth grade teacher, Ms. Bates.”
Martinez regaled me with the times she had to memorize poetry and recite it to her classmates. Although these poems were beyond her ability to comprehend at the time, Martinez appreciated her teacher’s methods. She emphasized the importance of reading a poem without first understanding it. Not only did this compel her to dissect the meaning of the poem, but memorization allowed Martinez to place herself in someone else’s shoes and briefly take ownership of their words. It allowed her to travel in time and be multiple people at once, finding her own voice in the process.
Currently, Martinez is a scholar of South Asian religions and a poet. She lives in Claremont, CA, with her husband and two daughters. She is the Program Coordinator for the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College, as well as Lecturer in CMC's Department of Religious Studies.
She is also a graduate of Boston University’s Creative Writing MA and the MFA for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Holden Scholar. The author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020), her poems and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, The Common, Waxwing, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize six times, as well as for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. She is a poetry book reviewer for RHINO and one of the organizers of a reading series, The Sprawwl.
Another inspiration for Martinez’s poetry that our interview revealed came during an undergraduate course, Introduction to South Asian Religion. She learned about the 16th-century North Indian female poet, Mirabai, and was in awe that a pre-modern woman was still taught, discussed, and revered. Likewise, Mirabai’s poetry sparked Martinez’ new fascination with South Asian religions, culture, and writing. After studying abroad in India, Martinez wrote about her experiences in Corner Shrine and Ten Thousand Selves.
Similar to her fourth-grade teacher’s approach to memorizing poems, Martinez fully opened herself to South Asian culture. In her writing, she discussed what it meant to be and to study in a place of interest from an outsider’s perspective. She was able to deeply listen to other cultures and see the world from someone else’s shoes. In the process, Martinez strengthened her own voice, and was inspired to embrace the chaos of her multiple identities: a poet, a scholar, a mother, a teacher, a woman, etc. Most of all, whenever she reads the works of others, she thinks, “... Someone made this. There’s hope. Someone made a good thing, I might make a good thing again someday.”
As we came to the end of the interview, I asked her, “Do you learn something about yourself, either in the process or just after you have written a new piece?” Without skipping a beat, Martinez replied, “Always.” She is a firm believer that a good poem requires discovery of the world, your skills, or yourself. Writing is about the expression of ideas and understanding your emotions. In total, learning from others allowed Martinez to understand herself.
Seline Magtoto
Seline Magtoto is currently a third-year undergraduate in Architecture at Woodbury University, Burbank. She has been a member of NOMAS (National Organization of Minority Architect Students) and was Co-Managing Editor of MORIA for Issue 10. She was born in Pampanga, Philippines, but has spent a majority of her life in Los Angeles. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her loved ones, pursuing her passions in the arts, and exploring her city.