ANDY PIASCIK

Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author whose novel In Motion was recently published by Sunshine Publishing. You can find it here: www.sunshinepublishing.org. He can be reached at andypiascik@yahoo.com

What came first—being an activist or being a writer? What have been your main concerns as a writer?

My desire to be a writer came in high school and then within a very short time after that, I became an activist. I think the two things, though very different in some ways, are also closely related. Both grew out of developing a greater awareness of the world as I began to see that the official narrative about class, race, gender, the role the United States plays in the world and any number of other things didn’t jibe with what I was actually seeing around me and experiencing.

The idea behind the journalistic pieces, historical accounts, the novel In Motion and the other fiction I’ve written is to present information that people either haven’t thought much about or to maybe nudge them to examine in a little bit of a different way than previously, with an eye toward challenging hierarchy and illegitimate power.   

Is it possible to unravel and make right—as a writer/historian or as an activist—the longtime falsification of U.S. history?

Yes, I think both activism and all the kinds of writing we’re discussing can and have changed this society and basically every other society for the better. Virtually every change for the good came about because lots of everyday people got together and demanded a better way and worked to make it happen. Go back to the resistance by native peoples to what was in essence an invasion by European settlers, resistance that continues to this day, and trace forward 500-plus years and you see this again and again – the slave revolts, all the waves of women’s activism, the sit-down strikes and on and on. Virtually everything we define as freedom, progress and democracy all flow out of these efforts by everyday people working in tandem, right up to this moment.

Journalists, historians, novelists, writers, artists and cultural workers of all kinds have contributed to these gains. It is perhaps a little more difficult to quantify in the arts, but there’s no question it’s there. And any number of people who fall into those categories have worked to unravel and make right the falsification of U.S. history. It’s a long-term process and there’s always pushback so we cannot let our guard down or relax, as is all too evident today. The encouraging thing is that there are always new people coming forward to carry forward the traditions of both activist resistance and illumination through art. 

Can you tell us a little about your novel In Motion and what inspired it?

In Motion is an attempt to do much as we’ve talked about through the story of a small number of people and their experiences in the Summer of 1976. Specifically, it’s the story of two young people on the verge of starting college who become lovers while they are also moving from having some understanding of injustice to acting together with others to do something about problems they see around them. It’s drawn from a combination of personal experiences and historical changes of that time. For example, the story is set in an industrial city when owners were closing factories and the lives of huge numbers of people were being thrown into turmoil as a result – what’s commonly and incorrectly called de-industrialization. Capital flight is actually a better term, although even that doesn’t begin to capture the devastation it caused. It raged through working class cities in the 1970s and continues to this day.

The story also looks at the tensions between blacks and the police. Much like today, that conflict plays itself out as an occupation army on one hand and the resistance of people striving for better control of their collective lives on the other.

The women’s movement is also a big influence in the book, both as it played out in the larger society and how it impacted individual women and men in relationships. The official narrative about the 1970s, especially the deeper into the decade you go, is that it was a period of self-absorption and pulling back from the radicalism of the 1960s. In reality, aspects of that radicalism got stronger in the 1970s and the women’s movement is maybe the most prominent example. And with the book set in the Summer of 1976, the action takes place against the backdrop of the over-the-top celebrations of the Bicentennial that people of a certain age will undoubtedly recall. The official view was that we should use the Bicentennial to heal from Vietnam and Watergate and forget about the democratic upsurges of the preceding 15 years that were already being framed for history in a negative light. The upsurges may have diminished overall by 1976 but they did continue in different forms and that’s part of what I try to bring out in the book while also getting into a little of how the personal is the political.  

How does it relate to what you’ve done before as a writer?

In Motion closely parallels both my other fiction as well as the journalistic and historical writing I do. I’m drawn to fiction and novels because it can be a rich way to explore the many things we’ve been discussing in a variety of different ways and from different perspectives. Fiction, for example, allows the author to delve people’s inner worlds and psychology in a way that wouldn’t really be appropriate or even all that interesting in, say, a journalistic article. In In Motion, the young woman and young man who are the main characters grapple together with the changes they’re going through along with social changes around them, sometimes in ways that cause friction and sometimes in ways that bring them closer. He’s a man in a patriarchal society, for example, and she finds herself having to call him out for some of his actions and attitudes while trying to balance that with the fact that she also has very strong feelings for him.   

I think it’s safe to say that most all of us have been and are inspired by a wide spectrum of writers, historians, journalists and artists. The more they speak a common language of the desire for human liberation and the better they do it, the more uplifting their work is. People can be inspired equally by Noam Chomsky and John Coltrane and in much the same way because both articulate the quest for freedom as well as anyone ever has.

ANDY PIASCIK

XANATH CARAZA

Xánath Caraza is a traveler, educator, poet and short story writer. She is a columnist of La Bloga, Smithsonian Latino Center, Periódico de Poesía and Revista Zona de Ocio. Her books are Lágrima roja, Sin preámbulos / Without Preamble, Le sillabe del vento, Donde la luz es violeta / Where the Light is Violet, Tinta negra / Black Ink, Ocelocíhuatl, Sílabas de viento / Syllables of Wind, Noche de colibríes, Corazón pintado, Conjuro, her short story collection, Lo que trae la marea / What the Tide Brings. Her second short story collection, Pulsación, is in progress.

You are “una pintora de palabras,” (painter of words) in that there is color everywhere in your poetry, and sensuality. Can you describe the fusion of art and language in your poetry? To what do you attribute that impulse?

As a poet, I use words to describe my surroundings.  Why not invite my readers to be with me or to make them understand what I capture in my stanzas?  In order to accomplish this, I have to describe what I see or feel.  I am sure many of us poets paint with words; others sing with words or cry out for justice with verses.

What role does “place” play in your work as writer and poet? Please elaborate.

Between worlds, I have always lived. As a child in Mexico my borders were linguistic and social. At an early age, I was aware of this. My mother grew up bilingually between Spanish and Nahualt, the language of the Mexica (Aztecs).  I was also aware of the drastic division of social class in Mexico at an early age. Currently, I live between the U.S. and Mexico, and, again, I am a border crosser, linguistically, physically and emotionally; therefore, place has been always inherent in my work. For instance, Sílabas de viento / Syllables of Wind / Le Sillabe del vento is one of my recent books of poetry, published in three languages—Spanish, English and Italian, and it is entirely a reflection on place, México, Spain, Croatia and beyond. What’s more, my book of poetry Donde la luz es violeta / Where the Light is Violet is full of the light and colors of Italy. This book I wrote in 2015 during a writer’s residence that I had the opportunity to do in Italy that same year.

Can you discuss how culture and gender come into play in your writing?

Women’s voices have always been present in my work. As a female poet, I pay attention to what other women experience and weave those sounds into my poetry or narrative as a manner to validate our diverse perspectives of seeing the world. Frequently, these voices come through their own culture. As mentioned, I live between the U.S. and Mexico and, within each of these countries, a myriad of cultures has co-existed for centuries. From these cultures and beyond, I want women’s voices to be recognized and interacted with in a public sphere. For example, the title story of my short story collection, Lo que trae la marea / What the Tide Brings, presents the voice of a young Afromestiza/African Mexican woman and the challenges she faces in her daily life. In addition, my book of poetry Lágrima roja is a lyrical document of a personal concern I have for femicides.  

Are the voices of Latin American poets and writers who are women being heard more these days? What are your thoughts on this?

More female poets and writers are being published in Latin America, I think. We still need more to balance the percentage of female published authors, but definitely the numbers have increased.  Hopefully, readers are engaging with published female poets and writers. 

What are you working on now? What do you hope to accomplish, artistically speaking, in the near future? 

I have an upcoming book of poetry, Sin preámbulos / Without Preamble, translated by Sandra Kingery, being published by Spartan Press. It will be released by the end of this year.  I am also working on a couple of books that I will be happy to share about as soon as they are finished. 

                                                 XANATH CARAZA

PABLO F. MEDINA

Cuban-born Pablo Medina is the author of 16 books, among them the poetry collections The Island Kingdom, The Man Who Wrote on Water, Calle Habana, Points of Balance/Puntos de Apoyo; the novels Cubop City Blues, The Cigar Roller, The Return of Felix Nogara, and Marks of Birth; and the memoir Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood. In 2015 he published a collection of translations from the Spanish of Virgilio Piñera titled The Weight of the Island, and in 2008 he translated (with Mark Statman) García Lorca's Poet in New York, which John Ashbery called "the definitive version of Lorca's masterpiece." Forthcoming is a new English version of Alejo Carpentier's novel The Kingdom of This World and Soledades, a collection of his poetry in Spanish. Medina’s work has appeared in various languages and in magazines and periodicals throughout the world. Winner of many awards for his work, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Cintas Foundation, the state arts councils of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and others, Medina is professor of fiction, poetry, and translation at Emerson College in Boston.

In Cubop City,  the narrator describes being surrounded by women as a child, women who nurture and make a fuss over him. As a writer, do you consider yourself a feminist? Does such categorization enter into your considerations? Has being a Cuban in exile enhanced or diminished your understanding of what it means to be a woman in Cuba? And is this something you think about consciously—inside and outside the context of your writing?

As a writer I consider myself a human-ist. That is to say, I consider it my responsibility to understand the human animal, no matter its shape, age, color, or sexual orientation. Since I am a human being, my first responsibility is to understand myself in relation to others, and that includes the female of the species.

Does that make me a feminist? I don’t know!

Being a Cuban in exile has indeed helped me to understand what it means to be a Cuban woman. But it is my sister, with whom I have a very close relationship, who has opened my eyes to what it means to be a woman. Recently retired, she was a professional who raised four boys pretty much on her own, despite what seemed to me, overwhelming obstacles. In her struggles to reconcile motherhood and profession, I saw the struggles women face on a daily basis. That she was successful as both mother and administrator speaks not only to her courage, determination and love, but the courage, determination and love of all women who embark on those paths. My own struggles to raise my son—I was a single father—were crucial in allowing me to see what many women encounter constantly.

What is the role of jazz in your poetry and writing in general? What kind of jazz moves you most?

I love music and I love jazz, perhaps because of is improvisatory nature, its development despite the difficulties many of its practitioners faced—racism, poverty, disdain—and its vitality, which I think springs from the effort of the musician to overcome, and if not overcome, reconcile him/herself with those limits. The best jazz is charged with spiritualism, charged with duende, to borrow a term used in flamenco—another type of music I love.

I have to admit that Latin jazz moves me the most. It brings together two directions or rivers, if you will, of a tradition that goes back to Africa and has been enriched by European tendencies. When the African and European musical cultures came together, sparks flew, and new ways of engaging the world came about.

Latin jazz is the end of racism!

Please describe the difference, if there is any for you, between writing in Spanish and writing in English. Internally speaking, has there been any kind of fusion, or do Cuba and the U.S. remain separate worlds for you?

Spanish is my mother tongue. English is my step-mother tongue. I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that my emotions are embedded in Spanish, while my intellect drives me in English. I have spent my writing life trying to bring the two together, and so far (thank God!) I have failed at it. But I always try—with apologies to Samuel Beckett—to fail better.

PABLO F. MEDINA

JOHN YAMRUS

Since 1970 John Yamrus has published 25 volumes of poetry and 2 novels. He has also had more than 1,800 poems published in print magazines around the world. Selections of his poetry have been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Swedish, French, Japanese, Italian, Romanian, Albanian and Bengali. His poetry is taught in a number of colleges and universities. As Real As Rain (Epic Rites Press, 84pp) is his newest book. His website is: http://www.johnyamrus.com and his books can be found on Amazon.com.

You were quoted very recently in a review of As Real As Rain, your latest collection of poetry published by Epic Rites Press, as saying that your audience “isn’t sitting at table 4 at the reading in the coffee house; it’s in the back, cooking the food or waiting to clear the table.” Can you say more about that and how it relates to your own background? Where did the impetus come from to write to that segment?

i didn’t write it. i felt it. i feel it. it’s always been a part of what i am and who i am. from the very beginning of my life as a writer, i’ve always had a big dislike for people who treated poetry like it was something special, and by contact, so were they. it’s that sense of elitism that’s killed poetry. it’s that same elitism that eventually gave rise to guys like Ginsberg and Bukowski, who sensed very deeply that poetry is at its best when it kneels in the gutter and looks up at the stars. 

shoot, maybe that’s why i can never think of myself as a poet...the word...the very THOUGHT of the word...takes me back to being 17, when everyone around me in my little group of aspiring writers, thought and talked of themselves as being poets and therefore special and different from everyone else. 

i never wanted that.

i’m a coal miner’s son. i still remember my grandfather talking about the mules who spent their entire lives underground at the mines. i grew up with iron-on patches on my knees. we never had a new car. how could somebody who grew up like that ever want to be a poet? to feel elite? i just wanted to lay out in the grass at night and feel i was part of a whole.

How would you describe As Real As Rain, in terms of its being a collaboration? You’ve written nearly 30 books. Have others been collaborative efforts? What makes this one unique?

this one really IS unique.  i never collaborated before. what Janne and i did with this book was built up over time. it took a lot of time to establish the mutual trust that had us doing a book of this size and scope and really laying everything on the line. 

it didn’t start out as something we planned. we first worked together on my book Alchemy. it’s a big book...it clocks in at right around 200 pages. huge, for a book of all new poems. at the suggestion of my publisher, Wolf Carstens (and don’t get me started, i could talk about that guy forever...this IS, after all, my 9^th book with Epic Rites Press...by far the longest and most productive association i’ve EVER had in my 47 years as a working writer)...at Wolf’s suggestion we asked Janne to do some illustrations for Alchemy. he ended up doing 8. and they worked. right from the get-go i could see that he brought something to the mix that added a little extra twist to the poems. real attitude.

    

eventually, we did a full book of poems together...Burn. it was published in Sweden with limited distribution and not a lot of people got to see it.

   

then, going on three years ago (and this is a long story, but put up with me, okay?), i did a reading in Edmonton, Canada, that started it all. it was a wild night. with the beer and tequila...the shouts and the hoots. people talked.

people who weren’t there that night, heard about it...and they talked.

    

time passed and i put out two more books...Alchemy and I Admit Nothing...but, every now and then someone would ask about that night and what went on and what it was like to be there. so, we came up with this idea...me and Wolf...we re-created pretty much every poem i read that night...in the order that i read them...and we challenged Janne to come up with stuff that gave the feeling of what it was like to be in that room. everybody has some nights in their life that kinda shine a little bit brighter than the others. that was one of them for me.

fortunately, Janne (with his art) was able to bring just the right amount of crazy...and smooth and sublime.

is this book poetry? i don’t really know. i hope not. what i DO hope is that you don’t need a magic key to help you figure it out. i do hope that maybe you can read a page in the couple of seconds that you get while you’re waiting to clear the table or cook the food.

How do you view the poetry scene today? And how do you see yourself in relation to it?

the poetry scene today? if you look at the numbers, it’s very active. it’s filled with iambs and dactyls and rhyme. it’s filled with a hundred thousand Bukowski clones and wannabe’s. it’s filled with any number of people who call themselves poets and wrap themselves up in the image and dream and have absolutely no clue whatsoever, and wouldn’t know real poetry if it snuck up behind them and bit them in the ass.

i think the biggest thing about them (and there are always certain exceptions) is that they’re afraid to fail. they’re afraid to take chances. they write what they already know is thought of as poetry. it’s safe. they’re poets. it makes them feel good. and it’s a monumental waste of time.

will i write another book like As Real As Rain? no. been there. done that. 

i’d be bored.

i’m 66 years old. i don’t have time to be a poet. i can’t do the same thing over and over again. i gotta try something new. so...how do i see myself in relation to the current poetry scene?  i don’t. i’m just passing through.

                                                             JOHN YAMRUS

                                                             Pencil sketch by Henry Denander