Author Q&A with Marina Cooper

Marina Cooper is an Asian American poet and fiction writer based in the D.C. area. Though she wrote “Uncountable” as a high school teacher, she is now pursuing an MA in English at Georgetown University. She also holds a BA in English from Princeton University. Her writing has previously appeared in Apparition Lit and Hey Alma. Her poem, “Uncountable,” is featured in Issue #17.

Tell us about yourself.

When I was little, I feel like people knew me as someone who “did art.” I loved to draw and paint, and through summer camps, classes, and a visual arts program in high school, I’ve had the opportunity to try glassblowing, batik, woodworking, ceramics, sewing, knitting, and more. But somewhere along the way, a shift occurred where I realized that when I have wanted to express myself or wrestle with ideas, I don’t turn to visual art but to writing. I still engage with many of these crafts, but the motivations feel more practical: to create clothing for myself or as gifts for loved ones, to paint something nice for my apartment. This has made me hesitant to call myself an artist, but given me confidence to say I’m a writer. While fiction is my primary love, I find myself turning to poetry in moments of strong emotion (though it doesn’t always translate into polished work). I mostly write on my laptop or phone, so my main physical notebook still has drafts from 2016; it’s fun to look back on them and see that in many ways I’ve grown a lot, but the themes and issues I’m interested in have held steady.

How long have you been a teacher? Do you remember a time before gun violence assaulted schools? How has gun violence changed students and teachers?

The 2023-24 academic year was my first year as a high school English teacher; before that, I’d done a few semesters of supervised student-teaching and other classroom observations. I’m now in graduate school, but I’ve been able to continue to work with students as a TA for a freshmen undergraduate writing course.

My first memory of a lockdown drill is from when I was in first grade. I can also recall the moment of silence we held at a school assembly after the Virginia Tech shooting, which would have been when I was in second grade, in 2007. I was fortunate to never experience any threats of violence while I was a student, and the lockdown drills that stick out in my memory were marked by humorous incidents; I didn’t take them that seriously. However, the students and teachers I’ve encountered since then are much more anxious about the possibility of violence. Once during a lockdown drill, a boy asked my cooperating/mentor teacher if she’d take a bullet for the class in a real emergency. His tone was nonchalant, and though he may not have meant it seriously, the very question betrays the disturbing way gun violence remains prevalent enough that such a choice is even fathomable.

How are teachers trained to manage a classroom during a crisis?

We were all required to complete two video module trainings on active shooter responses; we also had lockdown drills throughout the school year. During a drill, it was my job to lock the door, pull down all the blinds, turn off the lights, and make sure the students stayed silent and “hidden.” The biggest point the trainings stressed was the importance of being prepared so you can perform these tasks automatically under pressure.

Are students desensitized to intruder drills the way we once became desensitized to tornado or fire drills? Why or why not?

I think it depends on the student. Some of them treat it like a joke or are excited to have a break from class (since we have to stop all activities during the drill). Some of them have expressed beliefs that the precautions we take wouldn’t save them in a real crisis, which does feel different—I haven’t heard similar doubts about the way we conduct fire or tornado drills, for example, but students often end up discussing shootings during lockdown drills (even when they’re meant to be silent). So I think there’s a level of desensitization, but also there’s real anxiety.

Tell us about the time of your life when you wrote “Uncountable.”

Although this poem references school violence, it was born most directly out of the anxiety I felt while covering classes as a substitute teacher. In my own classes, I knew all my students’ names and faces and had built up a rapport with them; as a substitute, I rarely had a preexisting relationship with the kids in the room and found myself counting them constantly to make sure that, in case of emergency, I would be able to account for where everyone was. It doesn’t sound that difficult, but various factors made it more complicated than it should have been. The differences between substituting and teaching my own classes left me with this mix of alienation, frustration, and stress that poured out one day into “Uncountable.”

Does one of the jakes scuttling along the ceiling in “Uncountable” symbolize the feeling of the anxious kids “crawling up the walls during the drills?” If not, what was your intention with that image?

That wasn’t what I was thinking of when I wrote it, but it’s a great reading of that line! A lot of my imagery throughout the poem was based in my attempt to capture the surreality of being in a high school—partly on a personal level, but also on a societal level where we live in a world that has us seriously discussing whether making students have clear backpacks or preventing parents from coming into the building to drop off their child’s lunch will keep us safe from violence. With that specific image of Jake on the ceiling, I was thinking about how some students withdraw or refuse to engage the way we ask them to, and yet, it’s hard to blame them if you think about all the things going on in their worlds and in the world at large.

What inspired you to go back for your MA in English?

My teaching position was only one year long, so I knew once it ended that would be the perfect time to go back to school. I’d hoped an MA would offer greater career flexibility, and working full time also made me realize how much I missed being part of a university community and getting to study English as a primary focus.

What is your favorite book to assign to students? Why?

This is a bit of a side-step answer since I haven’t gotten the chance to teach the entire book so I can’t say if it’s my favorite, but I’ve really liked working with excerpts from The Odyssey. Lots of students have read the Percy Jackson books so there are opportunities to connect to pre-existing interest, and elements from the story are constantly alluded to in other media or adapted into exciting new forms (shout out to Jorge Rivera-Herrans’s Epic: The Musical). I’ve especially liked using The Odyssey to teach diction analysis by comparing the approaches different translators have taken with the opening passage, and talking about translation also gives students the chance to reflect on their own backgrounds if they’re studying world languages in school or speak other languages at home. Translation also opens the door to talking about the choices we make to communicate verbally and all the factors that influence those choices, which is a huge part of what I think English is about.

What do you think of when you hear, “The Good Life?”

My immediate thought was a song I listened to in middle school, “The Good Life” by Three Days Grace. (The band is classified as rock, and it made me feel very mature to have a song on my iPod that wasn’t from a TV or Broadway soundtrack and wasn’t my parents’ music). More seriously, though, it makes me think of the Danish concept of hygge—just feelings of coziness and comfort. I mean physical comfort, like wrapping myself up in a blanket to write or knit with a cup of hot chocolate or a London Fog nearby, but also the comfort of being close to friends and family, of being part of a community, of feeling at peace.

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Thank you, Marina, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with Georgetown, writing, and all future endeavors.