Note: Verve {in} Verse is my new poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and off the page. To kick-off the series, I had the pleasure of speaking with Edward Vidaurre about his role as the Poet Laureate of McAllen, Texas; his work editing the important and necessary Called To Rise: A Youth Anthology; and his poems, especially one of his recent collections, Chicano Blood Transfusion. I was especially touched by the poetic bond he shares with Rodney Gomez, who will follow him as as McAllen’s next Poet Laureate. (Check out Rodney’s poem “Probability of the Sparrow” recently published in Poetry.) Talking with Edward reminded me how much I miss the RGV (Rio Grande Valley), and I’m elated to have one of its most passionate voices represented here. -Rosebud Ben-Oni
Rosebud Ben-Oni: You are currently the Poet Laureate of McAllen, Texas (and a big hola– my mother’s family is scattered across the border from Brownsville to Harlingen and all the way to Chula Vista!) Can you tell us about your role?
Edward Vidaurre: Thank you very much, Rosebud. Funny you mention the different points along the border where your family lives. The role of the McAllen Poet Laureate right now is the poet of the Rio Grande Valley; no other city has adopted the position for their respective cities. So I will travel anywhere I am invited to represent the PL position. Basically, get the written word out, to as many people in the community as possible.
RB: Coming from East L.A., how has the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas influenced your work? Do you ever think about moving back to California?
EV: I always think on going back to California, my mother, brothers and sisters along with extended family live there. But South Texas has been good to me, and this is where I became a poet. Living here has triggered memories and an itch to write. There’s time here for that.
RB: Your most recent book is Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Books, 2016); in the title poem, the speaker opens with “I got shot in the gut/ and now I need/ a Chicano blood transfusion.” I remember my mother’s family in the RGV using a number of terms to describe our identity, and “Chicana,” as my aunts explained it, was a move toward a political self-determined expression of Latin-American identity versus a term like “Hispanic.” In fact, it was a way to get closer to each other that when my mother’s family’s spoke of Chicana/o, it was usually in a collective sense, a means of resistance.
Can you talk about how you use this word in your poem in which the speaker contemplates his circumstances, especially in the lines “I worry about my citizenship/ premise para jalar/needing a haircut on Sundays // I worry about people that drive small cars/ con placas vencidas / con placas behind them?”
EV: It’s exactly that! Where do I fit in? Coming from a Central American mother and a Mexican stepfather that raised us, my mother adopted his culture. Most of my friends were Mexican; in society, we were all Mexican. The one thing that was a struggle was the Mexican/Salvadoran relationship. My mother is an immigrant from there, we cross more than one border to get here. We are abused, murdered, raped, left for dead, robbed, etc– sometimes, before we got to the US/Mexico border. I battled with identity issues because I felt as if I never fit in with one group. In the poem, I’m asking for that blood transfusion from a Chicano, and in the end, I’m no different. So I’m angry at my Mexican brothers, but I love them enough to want to be part of them and worry about them. About being deported, harassed, low on funds for a simple haircut, a work visa, for every time a cop drives up behind them.
RB: Some of the most memorable poems in Chicano Blood Transfusion belong to the “Stray Bullet” sequence scattered throughout the collection; “Stray Bullet #3” really stood out to me: “Corridos play,/ en la cocina/Mamá stirs el caldo// en la sala/ la más chiquita falls into/ her tea set; she serves// blood to her dolls.” Like in the rest of the “Stray Bullet” poems, you’ve managed to convey such haunting imaginary in only a few lines. Can you tell us a bit about the creation of this poem in particular and the sequence in general? Was a there a method in organizing the order the poems would follow in the sequence itself?
EV: These are my desolation pops (Kerouac) called stray bullets. I had been challenging myself to write in different forms, when I sat down and pickled up Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus. So just as he invented the pop, I invented the Stray Bullet Poems for myself. True story on the poem up to where the little girl serves blood to her dolls, but I’m sure somewhere it is true. This was after a friend of mine’s niece got hit with a stray bullet on the leg.
RB: In your recent poem “I Came To South Texas,” the speaker oscillates between the feeling of “what i left behind/ joined me/ except/ I am now seeing birds in all colors and melodies” and running “in boots with skud marks/ toward a wall/ that says/ The U.S.A. is now closed!” How do you as a poet reconvile this tension between struggle and resistance, between the leaving behind and the carrying, in the poem and its journey?
EV: This is one of the first poems I wrote and is actually from my first collection, I Took My Barrio On A Road Trip (Slough Press, 2013) which I’m re-releasing soon with new edits and newly selected poems. Damn! That wall issue is still here huh? There’s a time in each generation where we get tired of the struggle and start marching, resisting, fighting, making our voices heard. This poem was very hard for me to write. I moved away from my mother whom I visited with daily for coffee and chisme. It’s not the same over the phone. So I struggled with that and when I became a writer I adopted a resistance that needs a voice. It’s my duty to tell a story now, resist, respond, there’s no time to grieve. At least that’s how I see it.
RB: You are quite active not only in the poetry communities in Texas, but also editing a poetry anthology geared at featuring the work of elementary, middle and high school students entitled, Called to Rise. What drove you to create this poetry anthology and its theme of “healing and hope”? What kind of work will you feature?
EV: I’m the ultimate poetry groupie. I stay active because I love poets and want to be surrounded by their words. When I was nominated for the position of poet laureate, I was told, “run with it, do what you need to do.” I could continue doing what I was doing, reading events, school visits, and open mics. But I felt the position should be one that makes a difference. The cool things is that the poet laureate that follows me was also announced, and I consider a friend, Rodney Gomez. I said instead of working two years as poet laureate, we can each work four by helping each other out during our respective tenures. So we put together a call for poems for all grade level schools in the Rio Grande Valley, not just McAllen. From it we put together Called To Rise: A Youth Anthology.
When I had the idea of putting together a collection of voices for the first volume of a youth anthology as part of one of my jobs as the City of McAllen’s newly appointed poet laureate, I knew it was going to be special. The Rio Grande Valley in south Texas has been in the scope of the whole nation as the border brother to Mexico. The youth of the RGV are a voice like no other. Yes, we have the same hopes and dreams, worries and opportunities, illness and love, but our hope is sometimes a distant aspiration. Nonetheless, we don’t think it’s unattainable.So we called our youth to rise and tell us in poems.
RB: Who are you reading now? What poets excite you?
EV: I’m reading poetry by women only. Especially new poetry by women. I want to hear their fight and listen. Jasminne Méndez’ Night-Blooming Jas(s)mine, Vanessa Angelica Villareal’s Beast Meridian, and Jo-Reyes Boitel’s manuscript which we will be publishing in 2019 through FlowerSong Books. I think we need to adjust our reading habits at times. When the Black Lives Matter Movement was first making waves, I was listening to Patricia Smith, Reginald Dwayne Betts, and other black poets. I went back to Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Wanda Coleman to name a few. What poets excite me? The ones that are accessible. Juan Felipe Herrera, Luis J. Rodriguez, Patricia Spears Jones, and the first-time poet on the mic.
RB: What’s next for you, Edward? What are you working on now?
EV: I just released Ramona & rumi: Love In The Time of Oligarchy (Hercules Publishing) and putting the finishing touches on Jazzhouse (Prickly Pear Press). I’m shopping a manuscript, When A City Ends and working on more stray bullets in a manuscript that’s in its infancy tentatively titled, Odes, Instructions, & Stray Bullets. I hope I’m not the only one that has random manuscripts in the works. Oh! And a new call coming soon for Volume II of the Called To Rise: A Youth Antholog series.