Speaker 1 00:02
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 00:19
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and in today's programme we're bringing you some highlights from an interview that we did in April 2023 with Aranza Garcia.
Speaker 2 00:37
Aranza is a spoken word poet, sociology student and Peruvian -Australian member of the Latin American community in Adelaide. In 2023 she was the runner -up in the SummerSlam competition Run by Spoken Word SA.
Speaker 2 00:54
We're revisiting our conversation with Aranza today because next week we'll be bringing you a new conversation with her in which we talk about her work and how her reflections on poetry have progressed over the past year since we last caught up.
Speaker 2 01:11
Aranza came to Australia from Peru when she was two years old, so grew up surrounded by two languages, Spanish and English, both of which are spoken in a diverse range of cultural contexts around the world.
Speaker 2 01:26
Aranza's connection to these languages and cultures is reflected strongly in her poetry and we asked her about the languages spoken in Peru and the relationship they have to the cultures of that
Speaker 3 01:39
Well, the most prominent language spoken is the official language, which is Spanish. As is most cases for South and Central America, bar Brazil. This is, of course, due to the extensive history with Spanish colonization across the continent, beginning around the 1500s.
Speaker 3 01:57
However, currently in most rural areas in Peru, we begin hearing variations of Quechua and Aymara, which is native languages of the region, like most native languages. Its use was largely lost during the periods of colonization and forced assimilation.
Speaker 3 02:16
However, there have been recent movement to reconnect with our cultural roots, actually, which is beautiful. That's happening right now. You know, to revive these not quite dead languages in the more populous regions.
Speaker 2 02:32
Aransa grew up in Australia as a young bilingual person, very skilled in mediating between languages and cultures, which is such an important resource in our country. We asked Aransa what it was like on an everyday basis as she was growing up, when she would use Spanish, when she would use English, and when she would use both languages.
Speaker 3 02:56
Yeah, my parents came here when I was very young and so was my brother and so it was extremely important to use Spanish in the home. We know lots of Latino families here and for a lot of them the case is that the parents speak Spanish to their children and the children respond in English.
Speaker 3 03:12
So it was very important to my parents to keep that language strong within our household so they put a sort of no English ban in the home. So we would come from school and it helped certainly that they themselves didn't know English that well at the time.
Speaker 3 03:27
They came here with very minimal English knowledge and so we had to speak Spanish to them and through that we really maintained that language which is a beautiful skill that I'm very grateful to have.
Speaker 3 03:39
However, due to speaking English in school and learning more formally English rather than Spanish, I think over the years my English has surpassed my Spanish a little bit more. So I'm definitely wanting to reconnect with my Spanish roots, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 03:55
I think I've also developed a bit of a, I think what they call it, Spanglish in Spanish where I code Swish a lot in order to use English words in my Spanish language as well to explain more complex issues which is something that while lovely that's a skill that I have is something that I'm wanting to tamper down a little bit as well.
Speaker 2 04:14
During our conversation, Aransa told us that her mother was the person who first taught her about poetry. The first reading that we'll hear is a poem that Aransa dedicated to her mother. Mum's Accent is a very powerful poem that tells us so much about how people who bring a diversity of language influences into their English can often find that their voices are not heard or are interrupted so that the richness of understanding and of life experience that they bring can sometimes be positioned by others as a deficit rather than the strength that it actually is.
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It's a really moving poem and in a lovely touch the first time that Aransa's mother heard it was when Aransa read the poem on air on our program. Here is Mum's Accent.
Speaker 3 05:11
Every conversation with my mother begins with a preface of sorry, my English is not good. In order to speak, she must first apologize, apologize for taking too much space, too much time to speak, too much errors between her words, she's just too much.
Speaker 3 05:31
Every conversation with my mother is like crawling through a trench, hands, bloody and knees scabbed, avoiding flying missiles with punctuation marks and bullets with correct verb tenses, watching as they make craters in her paragraphs where arguments used to be.
Speaker 3 05:50
And yet every conversation with my mother is also like watching lead turn into gold. Like King Midas touch everything she touches is enough to write fables about she is the first woman to teach me poetry, to teach me how to take language by the throat and to make it howl, make it sing a tune of fight and struggle and understand me.
Speaker 3 06:15
But then someone rose her eyes, someone tilts their head, someone interrupts her, finishes her sentence, steals her voice, adds on an amendment of sorry. Or can you repeat that I wasn't paying attention to you in the first place?
Speaker 3 06:33
And so every conversation with my mother is also ends in either a trailed off sentence or a question mark, her heavy accent weighs down her words, making them plummet to earth before they ever have the chance to take flight.
Speaker 3 06:48
Her promises of love scatter across the floors and I'm left to crawl in her trenches to pick them up. And so let me tell you what every conversation with my mother is like. Let me turn out my pockets and hand you these shards of love and promises I've picked up.
Speaker 3 07:04
Let me show you why she is not too much. Mommy tells me of a country where she used to be a poet, a quiet soul in a crowded classroom writing love letters to strangers. Mommy tells me how much I remind her of herself, remind her why she is here and not there.
Speaker 3 07:22
Mommy tells me that although she cannot understand half of the words that I say, she will always cry for my passion. Mommy tells me that she loves me in more than two languages. Mommy tells me she loves me with her kisses and her food and her tears and her willingness to be wrong in a language that is not hers to conquer.
Speaker 3 07:41
And if only you stopped interrupting her, you would actually get to hear this too. As I say this, I realize that yes, maybe every conversation with my mommy feels too much. But it's not because of her accent, but because of how much love she pours out of each word.
Speaker 3 08:02
And for once, I wish I wasn't the only one there to hear her song. I wish she would stop prefacing her existence with a sorry.
Speaker 2 08:12
We asked her answer to tell us about the ways in which she thinks of her mother as a poet.
Speaker 3 08:19
Well, when I actually, you know, say that my mother is a poet or that she taught me poetry, I don't quite mean that in the literal sense. To be honest with you, she was never much of a writer in the first place.
Speaker 3 08:29
She tells me that she finds writing a bit too vulnerable for her. But I've always believed that she has the soul of a writer. Sometimes these days, I lie next to her in bed and she just, you know, talks my ear off.
Speaker 3 08:47
She loves talking about work and her friends and childhood stories. She loves revisiting the past in that sense. And when she speaks, it's like poetry to me. It's really quite beautiful how she often phrases things or uses metaphors.
Speaker 3 08:59
And I always tell her, you should become a writer. You should write a novel. You should write poems. And she's like, no, that's for you, not for me. Yeah, so I'm never more inspired than when I'm listening to her.
Speaker 3 09:10
And she laughs every time that I show her something that I've written because a lot of the times she is my muse. And so I make a lot of references and mentions to earn my poetry. I think it's just, I find a lot of beauty in the strength of a mother, a single mother coming here in a country that doesn't quite understand her and living the way that she does.
Speaker 3 09:30
I find a lot of strength and beauty in that, which is often, as you've just heard, reflected in my poetry. As for me specifically, poetry has actually only really been a recent love. I think how quickly I fall in love with it is a good indication of how important it is to me, though.
Speaker 3 09:46
I began writing, like most people in high school, probably for an assignment. And actually, I was told by a teacher that my poetry isn't quite as literary, you could say. I wasn't that big of a fan of using very flowery language, which is what I think made my transition to spoken poetry a lot easier because I found it much better to use more forceful, powerful, statements as opposed to more flowery language.
Speaker 3 10:13
So I think that's how I became a bit of a more spoken poet as opposed to just a normal poet.
Speaker 2 10:22
On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation programme Emerging Writers. Today, we're listening to highlights from our conversation in April last year with spoken word poet Arancia Garcia.
Speaker 2 10:38
Arancia's connection to the Indigenous as well as Spanish -speaking cultures in Peru is reflected strongly in her poetry, which speaks with clarity and courage about questions of identity, as we'll hear in this next reading a brown princess.
Speaker 3 10:58
1. You are playing princesses on the playground with your preteen friends. You want to be Belle. Want to fall in love with an emotionally stunted man who could twirl you around in a big yellow gown and you almost reached that high before.
Speaker 3 11:12
High -pitched voices quickly shut that down. Drown out your voice and say, you can't be Belle. Cannot be her pale heroic self. You cannot have her white skin. You are a brown girl and as a brown girl you have two choices.
Speaker 3 11:28
Pocahontas or Jasmine. And although they gave you a pretty limited choice, you still can't answer. Mouth stuck on words you know you can't say. Words that would show them just how brown you really are.
Speaker 3 11:42
Make them notice this wolf dressed in sheep's clothing. So you shut up before they take out their shotgun before they decide they don't want to play with a brown princess anymore. You let go of Belle and choose Jasmine.
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2. You are playing a quiet mouse in a crowded classroom. You've been playing this game since your playground days of having to be background noise. Wanting to be white noise. Wanting your skin to be so pale.
Speaker 3 12:09
It's translucent enough to blend into every wool you crowd against. Letting another brown girl just disappear. And you think you almost succeeded but then your new teacher calls out your name and it sounds ugly in her mouth.
Speaker 3 12:26
Warped by her colonizer tongue until every letter sounds like the shotgun bullets you used to swallow. Like a choice between Pocahontas and Jasmine but never Belle. A brown kind of heartbeat pounds against your chest and you want to correct her but you're scared of sounding too Jasmine.
Speaker 3 12:45
2. Brown so you nod like the quiet mouse you are and pray they never have reason to say your brown name again. 3. You are playing white girlfriend in a quiet relationship. You keep your hair straight.
Speaker 3 13:00
Keep your mouth tamed. Keep your mustache trimmed. You cover your skin in summer just in case you get darker and show it off in winter for his wandering hands. He tells you that you are beautiful. And you wonder if it's because you're trying so hard to be Belle.
Speaker 3 13:17
If when he looks at you he's watching how his love colonizes your body of a lago kind of heartbeat it pounds against your ribcage like a tattoo machine covering your brown skin with white ink like an inverted oil spill.
Speaker 3 13:31
And you tell yourself it's okay because you've finally gotten your playground princess pre -teen dream with this emotionally sunted white man believing that you can almost be so white girlfriend. So silent and mouse like he might just like you enough to stay.
Speaker 3 13:48
He never calls you by your real name. Only babe or sweetheart or princess and you start to forget how beautiful a brown name can be. 4. It wasn't enough. He doesn't stay. And now you're left through the white husk of who you used to be and a name that just doesn't fit right anymore.
Speaker 3 14:10
5. Your mother tells you she can feel you disappearing. You wonder if you've achieved what your ten year old self always wanted to be. Wonder if you now possess the power to blend into any wool to become anyone or maybe even one day if you're ambitious enough become no one.
Speaker 3 14:31
And yet for someone who's achieved all they ever wanted you also wonder why it still doesn't feel like enough. You wonder why you can still hear high pitched voices, your name in a colonized language, his confessions on your tongue, a werewolf howling in your chest and the bullet still trying to hit it.
Speaker 3 14:53
You wonder why your mother looks at you in grief and not pity. Wonder why you were only ever given the choice between Pocahontas or Jasmine. Wonder how you possibly let another brown girl just disappear.
Speaker 2 15:11
It's a beautiful poem, which speaks to us of the courage it takes to face down the challenges of other people's perceptions and expectations and choose who you want to be. When her answer was in her mid -teens, she became involved in spoken word poetry events.
Speaker 2 15:29
As we've said on this program before, for many people it would be quite nerve -wracking to start performing poetry in public, so we asked her answer how she prepares for a performance and how she manages any feelings of nervousness.
Speaker 3 15:46
And look, preparing to go in front of a microphone for everybody is going to be different. Personally, I don't like practicing. I find it that the more times that I practice sometimes, the more times that I go over a poem, the more I mess it up and get nervous.
Speaker 3 16:00
Sometimes I literally write it, leave it in the notes for a week or two, do some final edits at the very end, and then read it on stage for the first time. I know some people obsess over it and they love to practice in front of a mirror again and again and again.
Speaker 3 16:12
I think my biggest tips for someone who does my get on stage is to just do it. The only way that I got over the fear is to get over the fear of feeling fear, like the fear of having to mess up. I think messing up isn't actually, you know, world ending and everybody does it.
Speaker 3 16:29
It is incredibly easy to be vulnerable when everybody in a room is the poet and knows exactly what you're feeling in front of the mic. So yeah, I think people should just do it and get over that fear of, like I said, feeling fear.
Speaker 2 16:45
We also asked her answer to share with us how she goes about writing her poems.
Speaker 3 16:52
It's very much when it comes to me, and that tends to be, yeah, in the middle of the night. I find that most of the time it's in the quiet places, I find that I can't write if things are too busy or too loud around me, or if I try too hard.
Speaker 3 17:05
If I have a time limit, I'm suddenly, you know, head is blank, can't think of anything. What's funny is I actually realize that the most common time that I write is after an open mic, after I go to an open mic and I've listened to all these amazing poets and all these ideas and the way to think about these ideas.
Speaker 3 17:21
I don't have a car, so I take buses and so I'm often waiting, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes for a bus, and that is my favorite time to write, just on the Notes app, and it's just a vomit of ideas and ways of thinking, structures for poems, which later on allows me to, when I'm in a more peaceful space and not, you know, looking around my shoulders, to properly edit and work through.
Speaker 2 17:45
In our conversations with Spoken Word poets on this program, we've explored how the experiences of performing their poetry influence the way they write, and we've also talked about how supportive members of the Spoken Word poetry community are with one another.
Speaker 2 18:04
Here is how our answer responded.
Speaker 3 18:08
Performance is half of your poem. I think that it is incredibly important to engage your audience And often how you do that is through not just acting but your rhythm and your rhyme Rhyme is often used as a great way to sort of engage the audience into what you're saying and what you're wanting to tell them I think a lot of the time when I read through my poems.
Speaker 3 18:28
I'm like, oh, this naturally has a rhyme to it I didn't even intend for this to rhyme. I didn't even intend for this to flow this way So I think it's half and then some other times I read something and I'm like, oh, that sounds awkward That sounds weird.
Speaker 3 18:39
So let me changed the amount of syllables in that line or let me cut this in half Let me change this word here So it's it's very much things that just naturally happen and you know happy little accidents And then also that's just the editing process of going through and making sure everything sounds good And yeah, when you go to these open mics Usually there's a host and the host will always say Make sure to speak to your poets afterwards.
Speaker 3 19:03
Tell them what you liked about it Tell them what you thought was a good or interesting or intriguing and you can see it afterwards I've never had so much supportive Comments or even like I said critique that especially when when I was gonna do my finale for the Summer Slam, I had practiced the proving apology in a couple of open mics before that and I asked the audience This is a poem that I'm thinking of doing for a competition.
Speaker 3 19:29
That's coming up Please help me out. Tell me afterwards what you liked what you didn't like What you thought was cool or interesting and afterwards they did they came up to me and they helped me sort of edit and Really focus the poem into what it is now, which forever grateful for
Speaker 2 19:46
Aransa referred just before to her poem A Peruvian Apology, which speaks to the impact of colonisation on identity, on culture and on language, as we'll hear now. Did you know?
Speaker 3 20:02
that Spanish doesn't have a word for sorry. Only perdóname, which means forgive me. It's not an extension of sympathy or regret, but instead a demand of selfish intent. When I was younger, I used to wonder the reason for this, and I think I landed on history.
Speaker 3 20:25
Because when the Spanish conquistadores ravished the bones of my land, licking my ancestors' ashes from their hands, they did not have the words or guts to say sorry. They said, it's easier to demand forgiveness than to ask for permission, and my indigenous land was just too seductive for their hungry eyes.
Speaker 3 20:47
They just couldn't resist sucking every bone dry, and when they left, a strip skeleton, buried in an unmarked grave. All they could do, all they could demand was perdóname. I took everything from you, forgive me.
Speaker 3 21:07
Well, did you know that Spanish doesn't have a word for struggle? Only lucha, which means to fight. And maybe this is why I feel adrenaline fueling my limbs like a steroid shot, eyes twitching, always searching, like I'm an addict to it.
Speaker 3 21:27
I was born with a fight or fight instinct seared into my tongue, and it can't stop fighting for an apology. I know, won't come. Did you know that I don't have the words big enough to paint my grief? Did you know that I'm still trying to find that unmarked grave?
Speaker 3 21:44
Did you know that my Spanish words sometimes feel like invaders in my own mouth? Did you know? Colonization stole my voice in more ways than one. Did you know that when the Spanish cut out my tongue and replaced it with theirs, they took my ability to forgive with it, buried it.
Speaker 3 22:05
Besides the corpses of my ancestors, not to be awakened even in the face of demands like perdóname.
Speaker 2 22:16
Arranso's poem reminds us that there are things that can be said in one language which are not said in the same way in another language, or which take on a different meaning. Her words also invite the listener to think about unresolved historical issues and how these are reflected in the ways that language is, or isn't, used.
Speaker 2 22:40
In this way, her poetry is both a form of truth -telling and a bridge between languages and cultures. The final poem that we'll hear from Arranso connects personal experiences with universal questions.
Speaker 2 22:57
It's titled, What is a Woman?
Speaker 3 23:02
A man sits, smugs, smiles, staining his sad face and asks me, what is a woman? Old man stares like a crowd watching the swing of a guillotine, asking questions he does not actually seek answers to. Old white man knows every definition, knows every which way the word woman is broken down into.
Speaker 3 23:27
Every attempt to compact, condense, and reduce my existence to simplify my purpose into a single sentence and so I ask him, well what's a woman to you? Old white rich man says, a woman, what is a woman, a woman is a man with a womb, a baby maker and a caretaker, an object to question and to ask, what are you to, what is a woman?
Speaker 3 23:54
Not who but what, the remnants of a rib, the creator of sin and the temptress who seduced a mankind to their knees? What is a woman but a head made to take the swing of a guillotine, old white rich, loud man sits back, mouth blackened and teeth rotten from his acidic sick asks me, but what is a woman to you?
Speaker 3 24:19
A woman, what is a woman, when you ask me what a woman is I think of my mother. She is beautiful and she is strong yet she cries ugly tears at butterfly wings, she is a creature of complexities. A woman is contradictions, a paradox of pretty docks perfume intoxicated excitement when your period synced up like it's a secret handshake terrified while leaving hair strands and ubers just in case, cussing and spitting and crudely serpentine she is many and she is all, but she will not be made into another question mark, another eave to blame your sins on another head left defenseless under your define yourself guillotine.
Speaker 2 25:09
On emerging writers today, we've been listening to highlights from our conversation in April last year with spoken word poet Aransa Garcia. Next week, we'll be bringing you our conversation with Aransa on how her work and her reflections on poetry have progressed over the past year.
Speaker 2 25:30
Before we go today, we're delighted to inform our listeners that the work of another previous guest has been shortlisted for an award. In November 2023, we spoke with Dr Shannon Burns about his autobiographical novel Childhood.
Speaker 2 25:47
Shannon's book has been shortlisted in the 2024 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Congratulations, Shannon, and very best wishes. Emerging writers 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 including our full conversation with Aransa Garcia in April 2023.
Speaker 1 26:40
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Speaker 2 26:51
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Speaker 1 26:54
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