On Love, Social Justice, and Poetry: An Interview with Angela Trudell Vasquez

by Charlotte Gutzmer

In a world fraught with conflict and injustice, Angela Trudell Vasquez grips her pen tightly, writing poems of healing, identity, and love. These magically captivating poems do more than simply warm the heart; they bring people together, fostering a prosperous community like no other.

Angela Trudell Vasquez is a Mexican-American writer and holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Finishing Line Press published her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, in 2019, and recently accepted her fourth collection, My People Redux, for publication. Her poems have appeared in the Yellow Medicine Review, The Slow Down, the Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and elsewhere. She is the current poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin and the first Latina to hold the position. She recently co-edited a poetry anthology entitled Through This Door—Wisconsin in Poems, with current Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Margaret Rozga, and released it through her small press, Art Night Books, in November 2020. With poet Millissa Kingbird, she co-edited the Spring 2019 issue of the journal the Yellow Medicine Review. On July 29th, join her in her CVWG craft talk: “Poetry for the People Workshop”.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Angela about her poetry, her experience as the first Latina poet laureate, and about her upcoming craft talk; read on to learn all about incorporating themes of social justice and love into your writing, about writing poems of witness and share, and more!

Charlotte Gutzmer: The About Place Journal describes your poetry as a medium for “highlighting love and social justice”. How can one incorporate these themes into poetry, and how does the process of writing and publishing these poems affect writers and readers?

Angela Trudell Vasquez: Wow, that's really nice of them. I write what I feel and have been an activist from a young age marching with my parents for farmworkers' rights with Cesar Chavez during the lettuce boycott as a child. We lived in Iowa City at the time, my Dad went to the University of Iowa on the GI Bill and we lived in family student housing with people from all over the world. The smell of curry floated into our open windows. My best friend was from Australia. My parents were founding members of the Chicano House and we spent lots of time there. I think I was born a feminist actually. Social Justice has long been a part of my life. We were a Mexican American family living in Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines, we had politics for breakfast as a family and discussed history and politics, not just partisan, we went deeper. I understood class, socio economics from an early age having a super big family with different levels of education and income. Personally, people need to write about what they are moved to write. What are your deep concerns? Your words? Poetry must come from a deep well of truths, your truths. Everyone has their own story to tell and people are endlessly fascinating to me. Poetry can close the gap between people, foster greater understanding, connection and healing. Poets can not be false. There are two things I will mention when I present in June, poetry of witness and documentary poetics. I come from a long line of literary ancestors who helped shape me into the poet I am today. The more we share our poems the more we learn from each other and the greater human experience for all. 

CG: In addition to your own writing, you also have experience editing with the literary journals Yellow Medicine Review and About Place Journal.  How have your experiences in publishing influenced your perspective of the world around you? 

ATV: I have also edited a few more collections including two zines from my time in Milwaukee, and one most recently with the former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Margaret Rozga, in November 2020 entitled, Through This Door. I also have my own press with my husband, Art Night Books. I find publishing others to be a joy! It does take work. I have learned that when curating a collection it is important to let all the pieces come in before I start reviewing them, so that the pieces can be in conversation with one another. You put a call out to the universe and you get what is floating in the ether. You get exactly what you need. I have also discovered I love having a co-editor like Millissa Kingbird with the Yellow Medicine Review, and Peggy Rozga with Through This Door which along with the other titles came out of Art Night Books. I love talking art and poetry with co-editors and shaping something into being. I enjoy editing my own work and developing good editorial skills in my MFA program. I will say there are so many good writers out there doing their thing without lots of fanfare and it is nice to publish them alongside more well-known writers. I guess I have learned we do not do anything on our own but with the help of others, and I do want to encourage others to write and express themselves. 

CG: In 2020, you were named Madison’s Poet Laureate, and you are the first Latina to hold the role! Could you reflect on your experiences so far in this position? 

ATV: Yes! I am the first Latina in this role and I do not take that lightly. I have had a great time. Later today I will proof the final images for the Bus Lines Poetry Project. I consider myself a literary ambassador, a poet for the people, and I want to connect, only connect in this role and sometimes that means reading my own poems and other times it means expanding people's ideas of poetry by introducing them to someone else's work. The city of Madison has been very welcoming. I love working with Karin Wolf who is my main contact at the city. I love bringing other poets and their poems to read poems at the City Council meetings. I have lost track of how many poetry contests I have judged and how many virtual readings I have done at this point. I do know how many I have done in person. I look forward to being more in the community and working with more young people. Poetry is having its day right now! In addition to what I do locally, I am active on the national and regional scene. Being the Madison Poet Laureate is my dream come true! I have been writing since the age of 7, and really it has been unbelievable for me. I feel most fortunate.

CG: Your craft talk will feature an exercise where participants “write their own poems of witness and share.” Could you speak on the importance of writing these types of poems?

ATV: Yes, absolutely. I am among other things a poet of place, space and time. I learned the term "Poetry of Witness" from the amazing poet who I adore Carolyn Forche, and I credit her book, The Country Between Us, as shaping me as a young poet in my twenties. Her work was also part of my thesis, this book, among many of her others. I like to write contemporary poems about the people around me, the times we are in and what I observe and see in the world. I can write a poem about anything; but sometimes I choose to write from the point of view of the witness, and/or create or sculpt on the page what I see, observe and suss out from the world around me. I write when traveling and before the pandemic that meant poems from travels in the US and outside. It can be a serious topic or it can be something else too.  Like my poems from Isla Mujeres. Or poems from this past weekend, poems from my first niece's wedding, the first to call me, name me "Titi." There were so many beautiful moments I have been writing them down, glimmers, and there is also this absence of those we miss like the young groom's father and his grandmother. With fierce love comes this sadness, coupled with coming together after the pandemic. We have to keep laughing or we will be crying moments, what people said, how they danced with the photographer, the moment we lost track of the rings, the way the young people looked, the bridal party walking down the aisle magnificent and pure in their love for the couple getting married. Meanwhile somewhere else there are people being bombed, losing what we all hold precious, our lives, our beloveds, our lives. This is all true. We, the people come and go but "Art Speaks" across the ages. You can time travel in poems. I have touched on this before in many other poems...

CG: In your upcoming craft talk, you will be sharing your poetic influences, including Carolyn Forché, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Eduardo Galeano, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Arthur Sze, among others. What can we learn from studying the work of other authors, and what is one poetic technique that you have picked up from these writers? 

ATV: This is going to be so exciting for me! There is much to learn from other poets and to enjoy. Think about how much you enjoy standing in front of a piece of art at the Art Institute of Chicago or at the Chazen in Madison, or the Art Museum in Milwaukee, just writing down the names sparks my brain thinking of all the art I have seen and admired being alive. Good art inspires more art I find. There are poems I can never get enough of in this world and poems I am just stumbling on. I have almost passed out at a reading of a colleague or mentor at IAIA. Reading, listening to writing, these are wonderful gifts of humanity. If you want to be an artist/writer I think it is important to study others and not limit it to literary arts by any means. Arthur Sze's notion of every line being a poem is something I greatly admire!

CG: In the description for your upcoming craft talk, you also state that “poets and poems are central to the global movement towards peace and justice”. How can poetry be used as a force for positive societal change? 

ATV: Point of view, empathy, someone else's story, one they have shared with you can be very effective as a tool for creating a more just and peaceful world. The more we know about each other the less we can dehumanize each other, or allow others to do it to large groups of people. Story telling, sharing of words and stories, and poems can only help the equation. Poems are meant to be heard and are rooted in an oral tradition which by definition creates community. Art has traditionally been used for many different causes; it can certainly work for today's concerns as well. I think about how music, songs from the civil rights movement are just as poignant and relative today as they were when they initially played on the radio. I think of Picasso's Guernica and what it felt like to stand under it and witness what he depicted on the canvas for everyone to see and remember.

So what are you waiting for? Register today for Angela Trudell Vasquez’s craft talk to learn how you, too, can take the next steps towards writing poetry that can help bring people together instead of tearing them apart.

The Comfort Of A Poem: Reflections on Mary Oliver’s “Mysteries, Yes”

Angela Hugunin

I write near the window, in the stillness that only accompanies early mornings. Today, it’s so dark it could be dusk. Fog clings stubbornly to the pine trees in the yard, and my eye settles on our youngest maple. It’s nothing like its predecessors: two towering ashes who stood, stoic and strong, until a sickness stripped them of strength. The baby maple’s trunk is wrapped in some sort of plastic casing, a plaster cast. The tree isn’t beautiful yet; in fact, it looks rather battered. But it’s growing.

A band of tulips is beginning to poke through a patch of mulch. Just last week, it snowed. The tulips didn’t seem to notice or care.

Sometime in the three weeks since I unexpectedly returned to my family home, the grass darkened its hue. It’s no longer a burnt shade of beige, but a deepening lime. By summer it will be the color of emeralds.

When did I last look at these things? I’ve missed so many of these simple miracles by trying to figure other things out. I’ve buried my head in questions that don’t yet have answers, only to emerge stumbling and unsatisfied. Perhaps now isn’t the time for certainty. Perhaps that’s OK.

My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, explores this paradox of living in her poem, “Mysteries, Yes.” I first discovered it after my aunt gave me a massive collection of Oliver’s work. I was drawn to this poem in particular from the get-go. In it, Oliver explores the enigmatic beauty of the world around us. She celebrates the fact that life is difficult to pin down. When I first read the poem a few years ago, I was already far from a fan of uncertainty. Yet I could sense that Oliver was onto something.

How often do I move too quickly to take in the countless “mysteries too marvelous to be understood” in my own life? I’ve gotten comfortable taking the steady growth of my houseplants for granted. I never look at a full plate of food and contemplate the wonder it is that someone had to plant the original seeds, harvest the crop, ship it, and prepare it, and that the result of all that labor can bring me energy. Rarely do I grasp how remarkable it is that art offers consolation through all sorts of human emotion or, as Oliver puts it, “How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.”

I’ve lost count of how many times poems have settled my internal storms. They’ve let me sit with my sadness, ponder it, and almost befriend it. They’ve humbled me by giving me a window into the pain of others. They’ve restrained me from assuming I can grasp things with utmost certainty; they’ve reminded me that this world is far from static.

“From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.”

From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.

Perhaps this is the time to take an extra slow sip from a piping mug of coffee, to let the steam melt into the waiting face and to savor the way that dark substance can invigorate the body. Perhaps this is the time to gaze at squirrels in the yard, those lucky rodents who don’t seem to realize—or care—that we’ve changed, those chipper squirrels whose routines continue with full gusto despite everything else. Perhaps this is the time to sit with someone you’ve grown accustomed to seeing each day, to stare at their familiar face under familiar light and look for the unfamiliar things that made you love them in the first place.

This is a time when one of the few things we’re certain about is how little certainty there is. We can scramble to find answers and do what we can to act in the midst of these swirling questions and trials, but this can also be a time to pause. Somehow, in the middle of all these current messes, there are still pleasant—even delightful—mysteries to be found. There are friends to check in on (from a distance), there’s astonishment to be shared. There are poems to be read. There is hope to be found, embraced, passed along.

The heavy blanket of fog in the yard has lightened so that it’s no more than a sheet. The baby maple, still alone, stretches up from its cast. Next year, it may be crowned with leaves, and someday, it will give us shade, like the ones who came before it. Somehow, in the midst of everything, it grows stronger each day.

Angela Hugunin is a writer in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and an intern for the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild.

Looking Past The Noise: Poetry As An “Act of Attention” with Kimberly Blaeser

credit: Justin Patchin Photography

by Angela Hugunin

 We live in a noisy world. Threats of illness and uncertainty loom ahead, especially in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. Distractions threaten to pull us away from what matters most, and what happens outside threatens to drown out what we experience beneath the surface. As writers, we’re sometimes left wondering how to make sense of all the chaos around us.

Kimberly Blaeser is aware of these distractions, yet as a poet, she regularly probes what lies beyond in search of what is deeper and more true. She has a breadth of experience in this realm; she has published four books of poetry: Trailing You, which won the first book award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, Apprenticed to Justice, and most recently, Copper Yearning. In addition to her writing, Kimberly is a professor at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. She served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2015-2016. Of Anishinaabe ancestry, Kimberly is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. She grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota and worked as a journalist before earning her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.  

 I had the honor of speaking with Kimberly, this year’s poet-in-residence for The Priory Writers’ Retreat, which will take place from June 25-28.  Applications are now open for Kimberly’s workshop, “Poetry of Spirit and Witness.”

 Angela Hugunin: You recently released a moving book of poems, Copper Yearning. I’ve taken a long time to finish just because I’ve wanted to savor each and every poem! In the book, you explore individual and collective memory, as well as the experiences that linger with us. What is our responsibility as witnesses and writers?

 Kimberly Blaeser: In a world filled with surface, with distractions, we must learn to look past all that “noise.” I understand poetry as an “act of attention.” We cannot embody our world in writing, unless we first see clearly—witness fully. I believe part of that “seeing” involves recognizing the intricate relationships at work in the world, replacing the static picture postcards—the surface—with a deeper vision.  

 On a practical level, as writers we touch the tangible with our language—the jagged edges of broken glass, broken lives; spring kilting into blossom; whispered night litanies just now as coronavirus raises fears. To make experience intelligible, we first pull our readers into it imaginatively. Our responsibility cannot be mere reporting or analysis. Some readers may believe us, but they won’t truly understand our subject unless we allow them to “experience experience.” We must pass them sticky, bruised, solemn, turquoise reality—the truth braided into complexity.

AH: One of my favorite elements of Copper Yearning is the way you illustrate beautiful yet sometimes broken connections between people and place, humans and animals, and history and future. These subjects aren’t always easy to make tangible. How do you ground some of these profound subjects in your writing?

KB: I coax myself to allow the subjects their messiness. The relationships between humans and animals, for example, involves the alpha longings and complexities of interspecies belonging. Humans are animals.  They have survived partly because of their animal instincts. Yet, humans fear their own “animal nature”—and they fear losing it. We tell ourselves origin myths that link us with nonhuman creatures, write popular fictions about beings half human/half wolf, and value our “kinship” with wild creatures. Yet we have hunted species to their extinction.  These statements barely begin to trace the complexity of the human/animal relationship. If we remember no relationship has a simple through line, our tracing of the interconnections can then invoke both the beautiful and the broken in the same piece. This intermingling will inch toward a truth our readers may find more memorable than an easy, straightforward representation. 

AH: I had the pleasure of hearing you speak and share some of your work at a Chippewa Valley Writers Guild event last fall. Hearing words you’ve written from you in the flesh brought them to life for me and left me covered in goosebumps. For the Priory Writers’ Retreat, participants have the benefit of being there in person. What can in-person connection bring to writing?

KB: In a random conversation with someone I met last week, we discovered we had both been present at Woodland Pattern book center for a particular spell-binding performance by a Japanese poet. When my son was in utero, he began “dancing” at a Joy Harjo performance.  Poetry is by its nature musical; nothing can replace hearing it performed aloud. Priory writers will have the chance to experience both the song of poetry and dramatic prose performances.

But creating in a community setting has other advantages as well.  You have the time already set aside for writing intensively (living and sleeping with your writing, writing and revising and not cooking!) You will have the pleasure of exchanges with other people who value the power and beauty of language, who understand your preoccupations with image, the “right” word, allusion, even punctuation. Writers benefit from workshops on particular aspects of writing, and from discussions about individual works—your own and others. Instructors or other workshop members may model for you some aspect of the craft, inspire you to return to your own work with more vigor, or pull the veil back on some of the “business” aspects of writing and publishing.

AH: Your workshop for this retreat is titled “Poetry of Spirit and Witness.” For you, how are spirit and witness connected?

KB: Witness, the way I think of it, is both to see and to speak or “bear witness.”  The word "spirit" likewise brings together various ideas—everything from the soul to a notion of vigor. For me, the two terms come together in a kind of poetry that speaks truth,  that hearkens after understanding or enlightenment. Carolyn Forché talks about “poetry of witness” as a poetry “invested in the social.” Perhaps in my own practice the lens through which I refract experience involves justice.  The process includes vision and the Latin spiritus as in breath to speak.  But I also bring to it the sense of [being] inspired or soul and, therefore, a stance of an ethical and searching accounting.

 That sounds very hoity-toity.  On the most simple level, for me poetry of spirit and witness arise out of experiences that resonate and “mean” in a way beyond the ordinary moments. Oddly, that does not suggest they might not actually arise out of ordinary moments—an encounter with a pine marten, hearing a fiddle song, etc.. These poems might take as subject anything from war to lighting a cigarette, but what sets them apart is the significance embedded in the experience and the revealing of that deep understanding through the narrative details, language play, metaphors, and other tools of the poem.

AH: We’re approaching the application deadline for this retreat, and energy is already building! What are you most excited to share at the coming retreat? What are you hoping to see?

KB: Sometimes we need to be led to break open our own experiences. I use various exercises that help writers recognize and unearth the richness of their life encounters. I like to spend the time in a writing retreat to allow participants to create drafts of new work there on the spot, but also in helping them create a “bank” from which they can draw once they leave the workshop. I also try in various ways to harness the energy of working with other writers by creating scenarios that encourage cross-pollination.

Among the things I hope for: Writers getting nitty-gritty feedback AND getting wilder “what-if” feedback that might push their work out of their comfort zone. Writers making connections that will continue beyond the retreat itself. 

AH: I know many of us readers are always eager to gather more books to read in the future (or right now!). We’re down to a few months before the retreat, so now is a perfect time for some of us to keep stretching ourselves in reading and writing. What have you enjoyed reading lately?

KB: I recently finished Carolyn Forché’s memoir What You Have Heard Is True, an amazingly powerful story of her experience in El Salvador, a book both lyrical and brutal. I followed that with the novel The Tilted World co-written by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. Against the backdrop of the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and prohibition, the novel tells a story of relationships that kept me reading way past my bedtime!  Now I am embarking on reading Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem—can’t go wrong there.

“Unlawful Assembly,” a picto-poem from Kim

AH: What makes this retreat a must-attend for writers, even those who aren’t sure they’re “qualified” to write poetry? What would you say to writers who are on the fence about applying?

KB: I would say, “Be fearless, come write with me!” Or I would say there are as many ways of writing poetry as there are poets. We, none of us, ever feel “arrived” as poets.  I do think we learn to have more fun as we go along, so there is no better time to jump into the fun than right now. If you have a moment or several that are asking to be written about, if you have witnessed something that changed you,  if you can’t find a way to say that unsayable thing that haunts you, this might be the workshop for you.

Join Kimberly Blaeser, Nickolas Butler, Tessa Fontaine, and Peter Geye at this year’s Priory Writers’ Retreat, from June 25-28 in Eau Claire. Click here for more information about the workshops and here to apply. We look forward to writing with you this summer!

Want a few more resources? Click here to hear Kim read, here for a new poem in collaboration wth the New York Philharmonic,



Looking To Art And Community For Hope: A Conversation With Poet Angela Voras-Hills

by Angela Hugunin

For Angela Voras-Hills, community—whether in person or through books—is essential. An accomplished poet and wearer of multiple hats, Voras-Hills finds community to be valuable to the artistic process and life itself. Currently, she is organizing the Midwest Poetry Festival. This year, she released her debut poetry collection, Louder Birds , which was chosen by Traci Brimhall for the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online, New Ohio Review,  Memorious, Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, and Best New Poets, among other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded grants from The Sustainable Arts Foundation and Key West Literary Seminar, as well as a fellowship from Writers' Room of Boston.

I recently had the pleasure of sharing an Angela-Angela chat with Voras-Hills. She shared insight into her inspirations, her outlook on the current state of the environment, the planet’s relevance to creativity, and the wonders of community. Voras-Hills was originally scheduled to be at an event celebrating National Poetry Month and Earth Day in April along with poets Kathryn Nuernberger and Claire Wahmanholm. However, the event has since been canceled in an effort to limit the potential spread of COVID-19. Nevertheless, Voras-Hills is an important voice for these times. Her work is honest and thought-provoking, and her responses to the following questions brought me hope in the midst of uncertain times. Through her wise responses, Voras-Hills offers meaningful encouragement, sharing insight and reading suggestions perfect for social distancing.

Angela Hugunin: You have multiple important roles, including poet, community organizer, and mother. What connections have you found between art and ecology? With that, what role do you see poets playing in sustainability?

Angela Voras-Hills: Poets have always looked to nature for answers. I mean, people have always looked to nature for answers (I’m thinking augury, astrology, bestiaries, etc.) and to understand life. Artists spend a lot of time observing the world, so it makes sense that we try to make sense of it while it shifts around us. Whether blatantly or not, I think most artists are ecologists to some extent.

As poets, I think we keep conversations about sustainability and the natural world moving forward. We call attention to the way things are changing, we create and depict potential futures based on the present, and we reimagine the past for guidance. While some people are reluctant to hear scientific data about how the natural world is changing, reading a book or poem in which the reader identifies themselves in this changing world can potentially help them understand their role and what is at stake. The more artists can connect with people, the more willing (I hope) people will be to see themselves as part of the world around them.

AH: As we approach National Poetry Month, I’d love to hear about which poets have most inspired you!

 AVH: My first loves were Wislawa Szymborska, Louise Gluck, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and Linda Gregg. And then Jane Hirshfield, Laura Kasischke, Ada Limon. I mean, this list could go on for so long (and it would consist primarily of female poets), but these are the poets I turn to when I forget why poetry matters and how good it can be.

AH: Earth Day always brings a renewed energy to the environmental movement, yet lately, it feels like a lot of the news we’ve gotten about the planet has been discouraging. Last month, the Clean Water Act was weakened, stripping previously protected waterways of that protection. In the midst of this sort of news, where do you turn for hope?

AVH: Ugh. Hope can be so hard. Honestly, because I have kids, and because I had them in the face of this knowledge, I have to hold onto the silliest things. In my poem “Never Eat a Polar Bear’s Liver,” I say “I find hope in tending/red worms digesting scraps in a bin/beneath my sink.” It’s crazy, the little things I will do for hope. Composting. Recycling. Until there is big change, I’m not sure how much any of these small things really matter, but it is something I can do, and that’s better than doing nothing? And, to be real, the work of poets and writers and artists—knowing that I’m not alone in my hopefulness—that helps tremendously. 

AH: A lot of times, poetry is thought of as a solitary pursuit, yet I see you’re also a passionate community organizer and the founder of Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison (which sounds like it could be an awesome cousin of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild!). How have you seen creativity and community work in tandem, either through that organization or elsewhere?

AVH: YES! Community is my favorite! Before I found community, I was an avid journaler, an angsty, solitary scrawler of nonsense, and also a teenage mom. Being alone for so long is hard, and it’s nice to know there are other people out there thinking things you are thinking and doing things you want to do. And organizations that bring literature into the community/invite the community into literature make people see that writing and thinking and art are for everyone. Having a space where we can all exchange ideas and collaborate, where we are learning and creating together, really changes the shape of and conversation throughout a community. These are spaces that connect people who may not otherwise ever meet each other, and isn’t that so great? I’m looking forward to getting to know more of the people involved with the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. Hooray, community!

 (That said, I think you can find community in books if that is who you are. But if you are not the kind of person who wants to Emily Dickinson their way through life, it’s so good to know other writers and readers.)

AH: You have a new poetry book out and I am intrigued just from the title, Louder Birds. Critics are already praising your ability to weave together Midwestern character with some of life’s biggest questions. Can you tell us a bit about what these poems collectively explore?

AVH: It’s funny, because a lot of people ask, “What is your book about?” and I never really have a great answer—it is decidedly not a “project book.” The book is definitely Midwestern. I was thinking a lot about home and what it means to be home (I started it while living in Boston), to come from a place. There is a lot of snow. There is a lot of blood. I spent so much of my childhood on my grandparents' farm and at my other grandparents' bar/resort, and this feeds a lot of the poems. During the time I was writing, my grandmother had Alzheimer’s, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, my 8-year-old became a teenager, I had a baby. There is a lot of life existing alongside death. I'm into taxidermy. I'm terrified by climate change. A friend once said my poems are "the domestic gone feral," which I like. The collection is bleak, but I think hopeful, and maybe an argument for living, for seeing this mess through.

AH: Can you give us a sneak peek of what you hoped to share at the event?

 AVH: Sure! This was originally published in the Spring 2017 issue of Arkansas International.

Controlled Burn

The doe ran into the road, flipped

over our hood and dragged her back legs

across the highway into woods. The same day,

they were killing a man in Oklahoma

who wouldn’t die, they were deciding

when to try again, and men in masks

and bright orange suits set fire to the marsh—

the burning flesh of milkweed and switchgrass.

We are told to be fruitful. We are told

to rejoice. The next day, a hospital bed

is set up in the front room of the farmhouse

whose roof might collapse at any minute. As though

the heavens are aware of the weight

of a minute, as though each minute

responds solely to the sky. It’s illegal

to follow an injured deer

into woods with a gun,

but is it ok to tell a child about heaven

if you don’t believe it exists? Yes,

sing the chorus frogs,

who’d burrowed into the heart

of the marsh to escape the flames.

No, hisses the body

of a vole squashed flat,

perfectly filling

a crack in the blacktop.

AH: What are some words of wisdom you’d give to the aspiring poets out there?

AVH: I’ll yell again about community here, because finding people to support you feels so good. And read, read, read, read, read. Anything that speaks to you.

Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold: 10 Questions With Dorothy Chan

Rebecca Mennecke 

For Dorothy Chan, the newest assistant professor of English at UW-Eau Claire, writing is a non-stop process; she writes as often as she can. Her reading from her recent collection of poetry, Revenge of the Asian Woman, will be a highlight of the Chippewa Valley Book Festival at 6PM at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library on Oct. 23.

In anticipation of her latest book, we thought we’d familiarize ourselves with her previous book, Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold. Described by poet David Kirby as “steam punk on steroids… plutonium-powered and neon-lit,” Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold explores themes like feminism, Asian culture, food, and sexuality in a fresh way. 

I had the opportunity to chat with Chan about some of the themes she has explored in her writing since the very beginning. 

Rebecca Mennecke: What inspires you to write a poem? 

Dorothy Chan: Lots of things but mostly food, sex, fantasy, fetish popular culture, and Asian American identity. Oh, and power. I think it's important to surround yourself with interesting people. That way, you're always inspired. Sometimes, one of my close friends will say something funny, and the next thing you know, I'm typing up notes on my iPhone. At certain points of the year, I'll have over 200 notes on my phone just from things I overhear, fantasies I have, dreams from the night before, etc. It's the poet's job to always remain awake, alert, ready to take in new ideas.

RM: How on Earth do you title a poem (or a book) that explores so many different elements? Specifically, I’m super interested in your poem “Ode to Psychics, Hookers, Shark Bone, and Free Iced Tea.” How did you decide on the titles that appear in the final version of your book?
DC: This is what I tell my students: aim for titles that are five words or more. Excess. Create full titles that tell stories – that are full of dimension. Back in my MFA, my poetry uncle, Alberto Ríos taught me that "The best line of the poem is the one that I am reading. And that does not exclude the title."

RM: How do titles and the poems themselves work together to create meaning in your work?
DC: Titles should tell stories in themselves. When you open a book of poetry, I think it's important to first fall in love with the titles. Look down the page at the table of contents. Make observations. And then of course, once you read the poems themselves, more meaning is created and observed.

RM: Feminism. Asian culture. Food. Sexuality. How do you weave and intertwine each topic so seamlessly?
DC: I believe all these topics are naturally connected. Intersectional feminism is the way I live my life. It's the way I structure my classes and choose my reading lists. And intersectional feminism is of course linked to sex positivity, along with culture. Food is also this common language for the world. I'll leave this open-ended, but I think you can tell a lot about a person based on the food they eat, the food they prepare, the food they order, and the food they try.

RM: You write a lot about food! It makes me hungry just reading your work. What’s your go-to writing snack?
DC: And Rebecca, you win the award for best interview question of all time! I love Pocky, Koala's March, jalapeño chips, and salt and vinegar chips. If I had all the money in the world, I'd be eating Jean Philippe pastries and macarons while writing. I also love green tea and iced black coffee.

RM: In Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold, you explore some complex relationships with your parents and your family. How do you recommend writers explore complex relationships with people who are important to them through the writing process?

DC: I'm bad, but I'd say don't worry about it.  I find that many times, young writers worry too much about writing about a family member, especially a parent. Again, don't worry about it. Your feelings are valid. 

RM: You write a good number of sonnets in this book. How did you come to like this type of poem? Was there a specific poem or poet that inspired you to use this form?
DC: I could go on and on about the sonnet for days, but I believe the sonnet is the perfect form. Think about it: fourteen lines, ten syllables per line – it's really the amuse-bouche of poetry – it's that palate teaser that makes you want more and more, makes you go on and on. I fell in love with the sonnet during my undergraduate at Cornell. There, I worked closely with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. In Lyrae's classes, we not only wrote sonnets, but we also wrote sonnet crowns (7 sonnets in a row). Then, over the years, I experimented with this form, from my chapbook Chinatown Sonnets, to what I like to call my specialty – the triple sonnet.

RM: You also break up your poems in this book into three sections.  How did you decide the different sections?
DC: A triptych is just so romantic. It reminds me of the years I studied art history. When writing a book of poems, I think about the overarching narrative, along with the speaker's development.

RM: In your poem, “My Mother the Writer,” you talk about how your mom is a writer too. You also dedicate this book to her! How did your mom help shape your writing?
DC: She's always been undyingly supportive of my career as a writer.

RM: What writers or writings have inspired you?
DC: A lot! I will first say my mentors, Norman Dubie, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Alice Fulton, and Alberto Ríos. I'm currently reviewing Rae Gouirand's The History of Art and Lee Ann Roripaugh'sTsunami vs the Fukushima 50 – these are two gorgeous collections. Of course, I'm currently reading my poetry sister, Taneum Bambrick's debut, Vantage, which won the APR/Honickman Prize. I love everything in the Spork Press catalog. I love Richard Siken's poetry. I've been recommending the novella, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata to everyone I know, since the summer. And, I'm excited for E.J. Koh's forthcoming memoir, The Magical Language of Others, along with my Spring 2020 course reading lists, which include Vantage, along with Mess and Mess and by Douglas Kearney, Tender Data by Monica McClure, Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy, and Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir by T Kira Madden.

RM: You also have strong female and Asian representation in your poetry. What impact do you hope your perspective has on future writers?
DC: Always practice and preach intersectional feminism. 

Be sure to hear Dorothy read from her latest work from 6pm-7pm on Wednesday, Oct. 23