by Catherine Hartup
Angie Trudell Vasquez is a poet, performer, and activist based in Madison. Originally from Iowa, where she earned a BA from Drake University, she went on to earn an MFA in creative writing in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. In addition to a 2013 Voices Award from Planned Parenthood and being named the featured poet for the Latina Monologues in Milwaukee from 2009 to 2011, Vasquez’s writing has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal, as well as forthcoming work in RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts & Humanities and East on Central.
Join us on Saturday, November 16th, at 7:00 pm to hear Vasquez, along with other acclaimed local poets, read from their new books!
Q: How did you come to writing poetry? What initially drew you to it?
A: I started seriously writing at the age of 7. My fraternal grandmother, Juana Tovar Vasquez, who we spent time with in the summer, bought me a faux red leather diary at a drugstore. After walking home from "uptown" Newton, Iowa, I began writing daily. I have every journal from the age of 7 to the present. But it was my parents who read to me and my sister nightly that gave me the gift of literature, and it was the children's story Frederick the Mouse that made me want to be a poet. While the other mice were gathering food for the summer, he was thinking big thoughts, and gathering his own stores for the winter. And when the winter came and the food was gone, they asked him about his reserves, and he had them close their eyes and recited poetry that made them full and warm and restored them through words. I still have this book. This was the starting point. I clearly remember picking up a pencil and writing my first lines, and making a commitment to myself to be a writer.
Q: You grew up in Iowa, received your BA from Drake University, have lived, written, and performed in Madison and Milwaukee -- what do you find most unique and interesting about Midwestern poetry and arts communities?
A: I should say that I have an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts and my specialty is Indigenous Poetics. This is a huge influence on my work and how I write now. I was fortunate at Drake to have wonderful professors that pushed me and I focused on poetry there, too. When they nominated me for a Ruth Lilly fellowship as an undergrad, I really did not understand what that meant. I learned, of course, but that was hugely significant to me and my career. I also lived many years in Seattle and was a member of a literary collective, Los Nortenos, and sometimes curated literary art shows and spent time at the Richard Hugo house. I find writers and poets wherever I go.
In regards to the Midwest scene, I spent a decade in Milwaukee, and Woodland Pattern Book Center is a hub for everything related to arts and poetry. They have an art gallery, an amazing bookstore, bring in writers from all over the US and indeed the world. They have an annual poetry marathon and that was my first introduction to the Wisconsin poetry scene. Every five minutes a new poet goes on stage from 10AM to 1AM, and the first year I participated I was blown away by how many writers are here in the Midwest. They draw in people from all over the state. It is a magical place. I was a board member before I stepped down to go back to school. These poets became my friends.
A: Madison has many poets too and from the moment I arrived in Wisconsin I began networking and found myself driving from MKE to Madison for events at the Chazen. The late Susan Elbe, poet extraordinaire, brought me here for a show and I was introduced to many great poets on that night including Kimberly Blaeser for the first time. I met Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman, and Oscar Mireles, and now that I live here in Madison I am part of this scene too. Madison is so lucky to have Rita Mae Reese and ALL for us poets and artists.
What strikes me about poets in the MW is that they are active, and I find myself surrounded by social justice poets, which I love. I serve on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and was one of the people who selected Margaret Rozga for the state poet laureate position. We are active literary citizens! I can't name all the poets who come to mind right now, but I feel like we champion each other and are happy for each other's success. We often collaborate and there are many exciting events to come in 2019 and 2020. I love the literary scene here in the Midwest and count myself lucky to have landed here with so many passionate people. I look forward to what we will create.
Q: How do you find yourself beginning a poem, and how do you know when one is finished? Take us inside your process.
A: Wow, I just answered this question this week at Southwest Minnesota State University! I practice "first thought, best thought" and write free hand, long hand initially. Every poem starts like this for me. I seek that organic connection with my spirit, mind and body. I learned to write fast as a young girl trying to get in my words before my parents would make me turn off the light. I still write like this, like lightning. It is a muscle I have been flexing for a long time. Then I harvest these free writes. Now I think editing is the real writing, inspiration is easy, sculpting the poem takes time and many rewrites and I have my own book of rules I follow. I consider poetry to be a visual art form, and I love spending hours editing, blowing up the space in between, looking for the music, focusing on diction and syntax, counting syllables, using the white space. I interrogate every word. When I was working my my last collection I put it up all over the walls in my study with blue painter's tape, and sat on the floor looking at my though lines and how they worked together. I color coded themes and sounds and really had a great time. Knowing when the poem is done is the hardest thing for me. I have a long, laborious process, but it works for me. I also think a poem is never done until you share it with people. Poems sounds different in my study or dining room table than when I read or perform them. I read everything I wrote aloud throughout my process. I have a cat, an orange tabby, who comes running the minute I open my mouth. I could say much more about what I do, but this is the essence.
Q: Are there any poems or subjects that you feel have preoccupied you as a writer - not necessarily what you tend to write about, but something you feel you haven’t ever been able to articulate exactly how you want to?
A: No, not really. It may take me a few poems to get it right, but I keep working until I am satisfied. I wrote a poem about a miscarriage and I think it took seven poems before I got it right. The poetry book I am working on now is my current obsession. I am working on the history of us humans. So I am reading lots of archeology, anthropology, and science, and whenever there is a new discovery of ancient peoples I am all over it. I love research, poetic theory, learning new words and concepts. I find my preoccupations through my free writes, I find my words, I tap into my inner consciousness, and my pen is faster than my brain, and I am often surprised on what makes its way to the page. I pay attention to my dreams, too. This is important to me as an artist.
Q: Where do you continue to find your inspiration? Are there any other writers that you feel made a significant impact on your own process or development as a poet?
A: I find inspiration everywhere! I was in the hotel earlier this week in Marshall, MN. I was a guest writer for Southwest Minnesota State University. Judy Wilson, editor of the esteemed Yellow Medicine Review, invited me to come out for two days and I gave a reading and met with four different poetry and literature classes. I love teaching! Anyway I was there eating and I overheard the men next to me talking about taking their daughters deer hunting and how they could not pull the trigger. They reflected to each other that their daughters were just going along to please their fathers, not because they wanted to really hunt, and how that was okay. It was bittersweet as their daughters are pulling away, but sweet how they wanted to please their fathers. I try and keep myself open to the world. I look around and observe life everywhere. I am not buried in my phone and not paying attention. I listen and observe people and our natural world, and from there comes my work. I find airport, busses, trains and big crowded places to be vibrant for my art, just as much as I find inspiration in nature and watching our animal and bird friends.
My mentors at IAIA were amazing! I am greatly influenced by my mentors: Sherwin Bitsui, Joan Kane, Santee Frazier. Also Jon Davis, the former MFA Director who selected me to attend the program and changed my life, he taught me so much, and Ken White who I learned the spiraling sound effect from and who I credit for giving me that particular technique. I went to school with some amazing poets and every one of them has made me the poet I am today. I did not get here on my own. It was my solid public education in Des Moines, Iowa, libraries, the teachers I had at the University of Iowa, Drake University, and at the Des Moines Area Community College. It was my friends at Los Nortenos, too, when I lived in Seattle.
Poets who I studied at IAIA are a part of my literary ancestry, too: Arthur Sze, C.D. Wright, Simon Ortiz, Joy Harjo and Carolyn Forche. I have been most fortunate to meet some of my literary heroes and to have learned from them too. This has been essential to me - to just go and listen and learn from them.
Q: This is a two parter - why do you think writing poetry is important in not just our current climate, but for any state of cultural unrest? And what sustains you, personally, to continue writing in recent years?
A: Words carry so much weight, not as much as action, but words in action are significant. Our voices are significant and powerful. We are a country founded on a piece of paper -- pretty words, not necessarily true yet, but they exist and we have been trying to make them true for a long time. Everyone has a story, and we need everyone's voices to be heard. Poetry can do this. I encourage young people to flex their voices and to tell their own story. Representation matters. I am currently focused on documentary poetics. There are many people who do not know history and this hurts us as a people all over the world. I often think what poems can I bring to an event or classroom that can help us heal, teach empathy and understanding. Poetry and art can move us forward. The poem about the Statue of Liberty was commissioned. During the Civil War, poems appeared daily in the papers on both sides. Poems and songs and stories have always been a part of humanity transforming. Think about Picasso's Guernica and what that has taught us… I could go on and on, but I personally feel a responsibility to social justice in my work and I think that is apparent in my work. I think about Victor Jara, Allen Ginsberg, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Cisnero -- these writers continue to have power in our world. Once someone told us at IAIA, that language was our original technology...
I will never stop writing. I want to live a long life. I have many books to write. I would like to die like Gwendolyn Brooks: with a pen in my hand. I live by a quote by Mary Oliver:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild precious life?”
Read Angie's poem "Arboretum"