Going back to what you said about some images being akin to visual poem sorts, you recently posted some pictures on facebook of dead baby birds in the process of decay. (Similar to Small Doom Menagerie in the Wunderkammer issue, which  is one photo from a series http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/july11/page16.html) I found it interesting that you referred to them as 'dead poem birds' and it made me think about decomposition of the flesh as a reversal of the composition of poetry. Do you think poetry can be 'found' (the way objects of interest can be found) and does there exist a form of poetry without words?

I don't think poetry can be "found" by picking up a rock or a dead bird off the ground and simply calling it poetry and that's IT - but I do think poetry/art can be unexpectedly yet significantly inspired by such findings.  For me, something about the visual imagery of bird fetuses and the thoughts then provoked in my mind can stimulate poetry/art.  Same with other sorts of small things that many people would overlook and/or would find unworthy of much consideration and/or would find grossly unappealing.  The tendency to ignore things like that makes me wonder WHY.  Is it because of being easily grossed out? Is it because small odd things are inconsequential to the mainstream?  Is it because of fear of death, fear of demise, fear of being crushed by something larger, fear of non-existence? I'm also interested in living baby birds too - opening their mouths wide and trusting.

My most recent dead bird fetus find did end up working its way into a new poem of mine, "Love Can Be a Chokecherry", based on believing in love and then your love being crushed and abused and treated like dirt, like you're unworthy of your own life, like "tiny fetuses stuck on concrete, dripping beaks,/ants crawling in and out of the cracked necks. // Now they deserve to be hung from a tree / like rotten chokecherries.  Like broken ornaments".

It also crossed my mind to affix the dead fetal bird parts onto a collage art/painting, but as of right now, I'm not sure how to taxidermy or remove the stench without putting the creatures in some sort of formaldehyde jar.

SuW: Included in this issue of Sein und Werden is a poem you co-wrote with Robert Cole (Churning Codex Portal), and a new collection (also co-written with Cole) will be available through Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Have you worked with any other poets or artists and do you have any more collaborative projects on the horizon? If you could choose one person, poet or otherwise, historical or contemporary, to collaborate with who would it be?

JC: I have worked on a few other collaborative poems with a few other poets, but overall it's hard for me to meld and fuse my creative flow with others and it doesn't end up resulting in poems we both feel strongly about. Even if I really enjoy someone's individual creative work, that doesn't mean our styles are going to affix well with each other.

Thus the recent collaborative poems by me and Robert Cole were the exception rather than the norm for me, as far as creative collaboration goes. Our writing approach fused together spectacularly, so we might have another fusion mix ahead of us - but as of right now, I'm not sure what my collaboratory horizon holds.

Similarly, there are lots of poets and artists I quite like, but since it's hard to know in advance if someone else's writing/art dynamics will interestingly mix with mine, I don't know who my ideal collaborator would be.  My collaboration with Robert launched after HE contacted ME. At first, I had no idea who he was, but said I'd be willing to give it a whirl if we both liked each other's poetry.  We shared some poems, liked each other's stuff, so we dove in.

I'm not as willing to dive right into romantic relationships or physical contact as I used to be, but I'm often willing to say yes to high energy, sexually charged writing/art contact. On that note, instead of stating a name, I'll say that my ideal collaborator would be a high energy, high drive, alive, emotional, verbally based, sexually charged, expressive, stimulated/stimulating man. 

SuW: Blood Pudding Press is now in its 7th year and the chapbooks you produce are as beautiful as ever. Why did you create the press in the first place, and was it always your intention to make each chapbook a unique work of art? 

SuW: Since I last interviewed you for the Duende issue, a lot has happened in your life. How would you describe the impact this has had on your writing?

JC: I looked at the archives to remind myself of the time frame of that Deunde issue and it was April 2006, seven years ago. At that time, I was in my early 30s, involved with the man I married later that year, and starting to become more well published in poetry land. Also, it was near the end of that year that I started my own small poetry-based print press, Blood Pudding Press.

A lot HAS changed since then. When I was 37, I had an unexpected health issue, a Carotid Artery Dissection, that caused that area to bleed out by 99%, which lead to a stroke, which resulted in some brain loss and a small version of Aphasia.  Exactly one year after that, I got divorced.  Now I'm 40, technically disabled and golly does time speed race, and it doesn't help matters that my reading skills are considerably slower than they used to be.

I still have my passion for poetry though, still have a strong creative flow, have gotten more into the visual art realm too, since my brain is more visual than it used to be. Blood Pudding Press still exists and recently published its third poetry chapbook of 2013 ("Sister, Blood and Bone" by Paula Cary, May 2013) and I also run a blog style online literary magazine called Thirteen Myna Birds.

As for my own poetic content, I don't think it has drastically changed, but I think my poetry style is a bit less story-like than it used to be. Overall my poems tend to be shorter, more concise, and a bit more abstract.

Yes regarding the processing AND spurting things out visually - but as far as your second question, it's closer to the other way around. My poem words don't pop out of my head as images - but images pop out of my head a lot more than they used to - and when I create art-based images (like painting/collage art fusions), they sometimes strike me as akin to visual poem sorts.

After I create a visual art piece, I sometimes entitle it based on a pre-existing poem, almost as though it is an image related to that poem. For example, one of the mini painting/collage art snippets I very recently created was then entitled "doll crematorium". AFTER that title spurted out, I then realized that it derived from post-stroke poems of mine. I've used the word 'crematorium' in quite a few poems, but here's a few lines from the poem this tiny painting best seems to fit, called Deadly Doll Head Dissection -   "A dolly crematorium, an almost life less doll. A doll scatterbrained, a doll agitating until it barfs up more awful doll head gobbledygook.  A spitting and hacking doll. Spinning, falling and flailing inside the doll vomitorium.  A dark doll somnambulating and throwing up."

The same poem also seems to relate to another small painting/collage created the same night and called "padded hurl".  Here are a few more lines from Deadly Doll Head Dissection - "A doll hurling jerky truffles, a doll unfurling quirky squiggles.  A scary doll giggles then explodes like a dollcano. Bloody shimmering doll.  Hotly whirring doll.  Rising up doll head."

I remember when I was working on writing Deadly Doll Head Dissection, I felt that it probably was not going to make much sense to anyone, content-wise (and it might be perceived as absurdly gross borderline silly) - but whether or not others understand its content, I know what it means to me.  It's about brain loss, breakage, losing my appeal to any standard sensibilities.

Another painting/collage art of mine, called FRIGHT WIGS HANG was named using one of the first phrases in an older poem of mine called "Backstage"- "Fright wigs hang from shiny hooks /in the dressing room. Our real hair/ is a pink buzz, stiff/ the way certain kinds of cake frosting/ respond to certain kinds of beaters". I wasn't thinking of that poem WHILE painting, but after I finished the painting, the poem entered my head and seemed to fit.  Since my recent poetry AND my visual art both strike me as expressionistic in a rather abstract sort of way, this sort of brain wave fusion makes sense to me.