Speaker 1 00:02
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 00:18
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kay Cooper and in today's program we continue our conversation with spoken word poet Arantza Garcia. We spoke with Aransa last week about how her poetry, writing and performing has changed over the past year since we first spoke with her in April 2023 and we'll begin today with Aransa performing another of her poems.
Thank you so much Aransa and welcome to the program.
Speaker 3 00:53
Thank you, Kate. This next poem is, God is on Speed Dial.
My family isn't religious, but we have rosaries hanging in the bathroom and in the car. My family isn't religious, but I was baptised. My family isn't religious, but my parents were married in a church. And my family isn't religious, but I did have a short acting career playing baby Jesus in our family nativity plays. So like, I wouldn't say that my family is religious, but maybe, maybe they just love too hard sometimes and fear so much all the time to the point they're willing to do anything and everything for the children's steady heartbeat. They pray to a God they do not believe in just in case they're wrong. They buy wooden bedside tables just so they always have something nearby to knock. We eat 12 grapes on New Years to wish for a better year and make every wish silent in case speaking them out loud is daring the universe to prove us wrong.
My family isn't religious, but if we were, God would be on speed dial. Guardian angels would be hired as bouncers to our house. Every prayer would be a promise. Everywhere are you text a holy passage and our love would carve out a church in our chest so that every heartbeat turns our blood into holy water and our hugs into first communions. I say that my family isn't religious, but this morning I woke up to the smell of my mother's food and we ate together. A sunlight streamed in through opened curtains while we laughed and talked and complained and loved and I thought surely, surely I have already seen heaven. Thank you. Bye.
Speaker 2 02:40
That's beautiful. When have you talked about your mother? It's always with so much love and warmth. It's a fabulous relationship that you've got and it clearly has shaped your relationship to poetry. You said when we met you last year that it was your mother who introduced you first of all to poetry. So you've been writing now for over a year. What's the feedback that you get from your mother about your poetry?
Speaker 3 03:08
Oh, she loves it. She loves it and she laughs every time I do another mention of her in my poetry. I would say both of my parents are very supportive. My dad extremely so as well. He doesn't always get to see me perform but he lets me know that he watches all of my videos on the train every morning going to work. So I think both of them are extremely supportive. My mother, every performance I do, she tries to get to always with her camera recording me even if the videos are very bad quality and she's always, you know, wobbling.
Yeah, I'm very grateful that both of my parents have been able to be so supportive of me and of my poetry. And yeah, they were the ones that introduced me to it in the first place.
The next poem that I'm gonna do is actually a response to the first poem they ever showed me called My Spanish by Melissa Lozado Oliva, who is a Latino poet living in America. She's still one of my favorite poets to this day and one day they called me into their room. I had just recently been talking to them about my Spanish and feeling disconnected with it and then they're like, look at this video that we found on Facebook and they showed it to me and it was instant love. I fell in love with spoken poetry and with the poem and how it made me feel and how it made me relate to that experience of feeling uncomfortable with your Spanish. So yeah, both of them extremely supportive and my mother definitely so.
When I first started writing my poetry, I used to perform them just for her before I did it to the audience. And I found out very quickly that I shouldn't do that because we would both just end up crying. She would cry and then I would cry because she was crying and it was just not a good practice, let's say. So nowadays, I just try to get, if she isn't able to come to a recording, to a performance, sorry, I try to get someone else to record it so that she can see it afterwards as well.
Speaker 2 05:07
That's great. Let's hear your next poem.
Speaker 3 05:11
Mm-hmm. So this is an ode to my Spanish tongue after Melissa Lozado-Liva.
You were my first kiss. I flirted with you for most of my life. My tongues wrapped itself around Castellano and Inglés until the dictionary became our love letters and Google Translate became the vowels we read at the altar. When we were kids, you loved to run away from me. Made me chase you across classrooms and first friends and tests and phone calls to family members I do not remember. You made me chase you until my lungs were ready to collapse in on themselves as easily as a house of cards, until there were tears in my eyes and inadequacy in my heart until I wish I never met you in the first place. And then I hear my abuela say, Te amo y hita yama me mas and suddenly I know I would run ten more marathons if it means understanding that kind of love.
Nowadays, you've stopped running. I've learned how to fit you better between my teeth, how to hide you when necessary and how to show you off during job interviews. Don't get me wrong, you still trip me up sometimes. Make me forget words I learned from picture books at age six, making me look like an absolute idiot, embarrassing me in ways that are surely indicative of a toxic relationship and yet I can't help but want to keep you here. To show you off to my future children, to love and nourish you until I cannot tell the difference between my two tongues only that I've learned to love in more ways than one.
Speaker 2 06:43
As I listen to you speak about the Spanish language and its relationship to your use, not only of Spanish but also of English and how those languages connect inside you. I think about conversations I've had again on this program but also beyond about translation and how that influences the way we see language and one of the things that I learned fairly early on I think is that I would always be learning Spanish that I was never going to arrive at that place of right. Now I know all of it because we don't do that with any language for start.
There are new words that come into language, even words like internet, an obvious word, we use it all the time now. When I was growing up we didn't have that word so languages by their very nature do change but our relationship does and when we have more than one language how we shape it is influenced by what we read, what we hear. So although you said earlier that you're not so confident with your Spanish compared to your English it will grow and develop and there's a real joy in always learning. I find I do a bit of translating and I find I think about words differently when I'm say trying to fit something into a poem that's got to have the rhythm.
How am I going to make this work and you can mold words a little bit only get away with so much molding language before you change the meaning beyond recognition but you can have that fun. So I think if you think about language as an interactive relationship then you can turn it around from I don't know this to I'm going to find out about this and it just changes the way you feel about language.
Speaker 3 08:44
And I feel like, I think it doesn't help in my case that in English I am a poet, so words are something very important to me. Reading is very important to me. So for me not to be able to grasp my Spanish in the same way, it would frustrate me a lot. I remember a few years ago, in an effort to try to better my Spanish a little bit more, I would sit with my mom and we would read some books in Spanish. As a way to sort of practice it and if there were any words that I didn't know, I would just be able to ask her. But I remember getting so frustrated because I was such a slow reader in comparison to English, which like makes sense because I never learned how to read in Spanish. I was purely just making the connections in the moment.
But I would get so frustrated and my mom would be like, it's fine, you'll get better, you'll learn, it's just practice. And it's a practice that I haven't continued, but I definitely should, I think over the years. It's definitely gotten better because when I speak in Spanish, if I don't know a word, it's kind of like what you said. I try to just find my way around it to get to that same point. If anything, it makes me a lot more creative with my words, with the vocabulary that I do have in trying to say something. I went to Peru just last year and went for three weeks. So it was a little bit of a trip and I found by the end of it, I was already so much better in speaking than at the beginning of it. It's something that, like you said, I'm going to have to learn for the rest of my life, but hopefully get better at as I grow as well.
Speaker 2 10:18
And also, there are different things that you can do in one language that you wouldn't do in another. So maybe writing and performing poetry will always be something that you do in English. But then there might be other things that you do in Spanish. So there are particular types of books, for example, that I read only in Spanish. They don't grab me in English, but particular genres that really grab me in Spanish. Some writing that I've done, I only do in Spanish. When I try to think about it in English, it doesn't have the same effect, I reckon. Maybe I think it sounds better in Spanish and I'm hiding something, I don't know.
But there are different things that you can do. And again, when I let go of trying to do it all in both, I found it easier to then find what works in one, what works in the other.
Speaker 3 11:12
Yeah, no, 100%.
Speaker 2 11:15
Last week you mentioned about a spoken word poetry event at the Art Gallery of South Australia and of course you're also a visual artist. Would you tell us about when you first started as a visual artist and what you're doing with those skills?
Speaker 3 11:33
Yeah, so I began painting when I was 10 years old. I remember when I was, at the time I had gone to my mother, I was like crying because my brother had been doing like all these extracurricular activities and I was like, mom, I want something for myself. Like, I just feel like I'm so boring and she did some thinking and she put me in this little Hondorf studio up in the hills. And that's where sort of I started my artistic journey. I fell in love with it almost immediately, did acrylic painting for a while and then I got into oils and I fell in love even faster with them. Over time, I've since sort of, I guess, specialised almost in oil portraits. That's been my go -to when it comes to my art and something very special to me that I continued studied since then, did obviously my subjects in high school and everything as well, which became a lot of artistic journeys to be honest.
Since I started painting, not only did I begin writing but I also began my interests in photography and in theater and in film and in just so many artistic avenues. I think it showed me how many different ways you can express a story at the end of the day. Sometimes when I have like a very specific idea or story that I want to share, I have to like sit down and be like, okay, what is the best form for this to be told? Oftentimes that is spoken poetry but sometimes it's art, sometimes it's photography, sometimes it's just like a short story.
So yeah, I have a very special relationship with my art. Unfortunately, I haven't done as much art these days. A lot of my time is made up of just my spoken poetry and my university but my work, I work at like a pain and sip and so that's sort of been my, like how I use my time to express myself as well in my work. So that's been very nice, not only being able to obviously like paint myself but being able to teach the beauty of painting to a class, you know, a couple of times a week. Fantastic.
Speaker 2 13:48
On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program Emerging Writers. Our guest today is spoken word poet Arantza Garcia. You mentioned before about your studies, your studying sociology.
Speaker 3 14:04
Yep, still studying sociology, I'm in my second year now, absolutely loving it. I'm fortunate enough that the specific degree that I'm doing allows me to do a lot of electives as well, so it's really keeping my interest and yes, I think it's something that is, as most of the things in my life, still informing my poetry as well, being able to study all of these theories and ideas and people within the world of sociology and the study of society and culture, like I was often reflected in my poetry as well.
Speaker 2 14:34
So with that and with your poetry writing and your art teaching, how do you manage your time?
Speaker 3 14:42
I don't often times. I'm, my, fortunately my work, it is very much after hours, so it doesn't impact my class time, so it's like I'm doing my classes in the morning, like my university classes in the morning, and then my painting classes at night, and then my poetry is wherever, there's some gaps that I can just sort of fill in. There are like every, I mean Adelaide has a very beautiful poetry community and events happening every single month, so I sort of make it a promise to myself to get to around two or three of them every single month, and that forces me to keep going with my poetry.
Some of my other ventures or hobbies and everything have sort of had to fall back a little bit just because I don't have the time to do them, but I didn't want that same thing to happen to my poetry, so I make sure that there are these, you know, key events that I go to every single month that forces me not only to listen to poetry, but also write it as well, and then with the rest of my time, yeah, I'm working and I'm studying, and fortunately I'm someone that really likes the busy life, so I don't really mind having to do something every single day almost.
Speaker 2 15:50
You mentioned the spoken word community just before and we spoke last year as we've done during other interviews on this program about how supportive that community is. So would you tell us reflecting back on the last year what difference being part of that community has made to you, the kind of feedback that you get and how it's helped to strengthen your identity as a poet?
Speaker 3 16:15
It really has. I remember last year, when we did this interview, I was still very early in my poetry journey and I had just been meeting so many new people and going, experiencing so many new sort of relationships and events and experiences. It was a really beautiful time. Nowadays, I am much more settled in the community. I have some really good friends there and some people that I'm always really excited to listen to again. It's been just a really beautiful community to be a part of and they really push me constantly to continue my poetry. They are the reason as to why I now have an Instagram account for my poetry was because they just kept being like, Aron, so we want to hear your poems again. We want to hear you perform them again. So it was peer pressured into that one.
You couldn't find a better or a more supportive community, honestly. The beautiful thing as well is that especially this year, and I'm hoping in the future as well, is a lot of these people are full time artists and so they've been doing like bigger events and performances during the fringe and outside of the fringe as well. So a lot of collaborations are happening and a lot of behind the scenes events that are sort of like moving around and it's really beautiful that not only are we supporting each other in our art, but actually taking that step further and collaborating and creating some beautiful artwork at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 17:41
And we've talked also with other guests on this program about working across art disciplines. So you've got your strengths in poetry and performance poetry and also in visual arts. Have you thought down the track, no pressure, about putting on an exhibition that draws both your visual and your spoken word creative skills?
Speaker 3 18:05
Oh, I would absolutely love to do that. That's something that's been on my mind for a very long time, probably since I began my poetry because it's obviously my two sort of biggest hobbies and to be able to mix them together I think could make an even more powerful performance. I remember one of the very first events that I did actually by myself was a friend of a friend asked me to do some poetry at her photography exhibition as part of like the Sala festival and I did it at the time. That was the first time I was doing anything outside of an open mic. I was so nervous but it was such a beautiful experience to be able to talk to the exhibition, not only the audience.
I mean that's what I did most recently as well at the Art Gallery of South Australia is that it was five poets and we were asked to do a response to the opening of their exhibition in her sanctum and to be able to write specifically to an artwork was so incredibly inspiring. It's an amazing prompt that you can sort of keep going with, and so yeah in my future it's just a matter of you know getting the funds and the supplies and the space for it but I would absolutely love to do a merging of the two, create some artworks and some some poetry together.
Speaker 2 19:15
That would be fantastic. And of course, SALAF is the South Australian Living Arts Festival that occurs every year during the month of August. So we look forward to seeing you in a future SALAF with your own work. So your life's very busy with your study, with your poetry, with teaching your art. Do you have downtime? And if you do have downtime, what does that look like?
Speaker 3 19:41
I do have a bit of downtime, downtime for me tends to be at like 2 or 3 a.m. And honestly, it's reading, reading, watching videos, catching up on a series or movies after being so busy during the week, just taking a few hours to myself and me and my friends like to call this rotting, like just rotting in the bed and just like not doing anything, not talking to anyone, like that to me is the perfect downtime. Besides that, I think it's, yeah, because I've sort of made my hobbies into not work necessarily, but something that I have to regularly push myself to do as opposed to just a purely relaxing outlet, it means that I've had to sort of find other spaces and activities to do in order to completely sort of relax my brain a little bit.
Speaker 2 20:30
So the things that require discipline and the things that don't, basically. Basically, yeah. Aransa, would you perform another of your poems for us, please?
Speaker 3 20:40
Of course! So, this next poem is called Recipe Book.
My mother doesn't have a recipe book. When she cooks, it's as if she's preparing for the last supper, which is to say she too offers her body in the bread we break at the dinner table.
My mother doesn't have a recipe book, but is still able to craft miracles, atop plastic counters like the miracle, of feeding your family with an empty fridge, the miracle, of bringing a man to his knees with nothing but a wooden spoon, the miracle, of speaking a love's confession without a single word uttered, and she tells me that this, these miracles passed down from mother to daughter cannot be written down in anything except a DNA strand. Culture is not an ingredient you can just buy at a grocery store, and the heritage in our hands just don't fit on a spice rack.
My mother doesn't have a recipe book, in the same way that the universe will never just open its mouth and tell us how it was created. Instead, we must find its origins in the mythology we create out of its constellation's skin, and let me tell you that my mother's rice has never tasted so much like stars. Sometimes, I think I can even taste my mother's sacrifice in how much spice she pours into a boiling pot, taste my mother's loss in how many placemats she takes away from the dinner table, taste my mother's love in the way she waits for me to take a second bite before she can take her first, and my mother doesn't have a recipe book because she was born with the weight of Eve's apple in the pit of her stomach and found that this, this is the only way she knows how to beg for forgiveness, is the only language that came easily to her.
My mother doesn't have a recipe book, so when I ask her how much oil I should pour into the pan she laughs, holds me to her chest, tells me to listen to her heartbeat, and to pour that oil until I can no longer hear her pulse.
Speaker 2 22:41
That's incredible. Again that's so beautiful like all of the poems that you write that are about your mother.
Speaker 3 22:49
Thank you.
Speaker 2 22:50
What it tells us is that there are different types of recipes or different ways of communicating and conveying recipes. I know that a lot of people say that their mothers and grandmothers won't share a recipe with them, but say, Watch how I do it. And that's really what you're saying as well. It's watch how I do it, but also feel how I do it, get the feeling right.
Speaker 3 23:18
Yeah I think it's really interesting because I mean obviously I think every child probably think that their mother has the best cooking in the world and I do as well and I was really surprised to learn like in a conversation with my mother she's like I actually never cooked when I was younger and she never cooked in Peru like we always had my grandmother or it's very common in Peru to have someone else come in and cook for you and she only she was forced to learn when she got here at 33 years old that's when she first started cooking and it was through I mean the love for her children that she was forced to sort of learn how to cook and she's since become you know one of the best that I know in my life and because...
But I think because of that as a result she doesn't really have recipe books and things like that I have made her promise though because I am a really bad cook in the kitchen I have made her promise that as a whenever I eventually move out as a housewarming gift she is going to be forced to write all of her recipes into a book and then give that to me when I move out so she will be writing a recipe book eventually.
Speaker 2 24:20
That's lovely... and you mentioned your grandmother in Peru before and you also told us that you did go to Peru last year for three weeks. What was that like?
Speaker 3 24:30
Oh it was beautiful. Because it's only fairly recently in the last few years that I've really come into myself and started expressing myself and getting my own sort of activities and opinions and thoughts almost. When I was younger I was always a really shy kid and someone who sort of just always followed along. And so I went back to Peru last year when I was just turned 19. But before that, the last time I had gone to Peru was when I think when I was like 12 years old. So it was quite a big gap in between. So it was really interesting to go back see all of my family because we're the only ones that live here in Australia and sort of catch up. And it was almost like they were meeting like a different person.
So it was really beautiful. And I had gone at the time with a specific purpose and intent to connect back to my culture, to connect back to my history and sort of find out as much as I can, find pictures and get stories for my grandparents and things like that. And so I did that and it was a really, really beautiful experience for me. I'm hoping to go back next year again. Hopefully there won't be like an eight year gap between my visits anymore. Yeah, it was really beautiful.
Speaker 2 25:43
That's lovely. And Arantza, I hope that we can have you back on the program in another year or so and we can find out and we can listen to more of your poetry. It's been lovely to catch up with you and that would be beautiful. Thank you so much. I guest on Emerging Writers today was spoken word poet Arantza Garcia.
This program is produced in our Adelaide studios and can be heard at the same time each week here on Vision Australia Radio, VA Radio on digital, online at varadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts where you can catch up on earlier episodes. Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org for more.
Speaker 2 26:53
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