Craig Santos Perez is native Chamorro from the Pacific Island of Guahan (Guam). He is the co-editor of three anthologies and the author of four books of poetry. He has received the PEN Center USA/Poetry Society of America, American Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. He works as an Associate Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa, where he teaches Pacific literature, eco-poetry, and creative writing.

Cate Lycurgus, Interviews Editor: Risking the obvious, I’d like to begin with the observation that almost all your poems (and collections) have the title “from” something—more broadly “from” unincorporated territory, but then “from” stations of crossing, “from” tidelands, “ginen” organic acts, “ginen” understory, etc. Can you speak some about this particular preposition as a launching place for your work?

Craig Santos Perez: Growing up on Guam, what village and family (clan) you are from are important markers of indigenous identity and genealogy. From indicates roots. But when my family migrated to California when I was 15 years old, from took on other meanings. People would ask me: “Where are you from?” Yet no one had ever heard of Guam or Chamorro people, even though the island is a US territory and my people are US citizens. Guam doesn’t even appear on many maps. From indicates routes. I am from an invisible island.

My book series is titled “from unincorporated territory” because I write about being from Guam. The from also marks the book as an excerpt of a larger work. Each poem carries the “from” because each poem is an excerpt of longer poems. The ongoing excerpt (or the epic-excerpt) embodies my own feelings of living an excerpted existence, of living away from home while still feeling part of my homeland. Each book, every poem, and every breath carries the from and its rootedness and routedness, its belonging and longing.

CL: It’s interesting that you state it as an ‘excerpted’ existence. More and more I find it impossible to separate myself, as a person, as a citizen, as a writer, from history or language or inheritance, and doing so feels dishonest. But to repeatedly harken ‘from’ means we can’t have our solo, singular voice. Throughout your four volumes of “from unincorporated territory,” ([hatcha], [saina], [guama], and [lukao,]) you incorporate such a variety of voices, sources, and textures in your poems: everything from ‘poemaps’ depicting some aspect of Guam’s cartography, to a prose history of the island, primary accounts of colonialism, travel brochures, meditations on the consumption of SPAM, lyrics regarding your daughter’s birth and infancy, intersections of Catholicism and indigenous faith, conversations with and to grandparents and ancestors, scientific studies on invasive snakes, or the extinction of the Micronesian kingfisher—and all this in a mix of Chamorro, English, Spanish, and Japanese! Poets often talk about incorporating a variety of voices or texts, but you weave them all, while maintaining a certain intimacy. What considerations must you make when dovetailing or juxtaposing these complex elements? How do you balance the singular speaker, when there is so much that these collections re-incorporate?

CSP: Yes, I too believe that the self is shaped by and inextricably intertwined with history, culture, genealogy, the environment, languages, politics etc. Additionally, objects like maps, documents, foods, brochures, songs, people, animals also influence identity and memory. Poetry is both a genealogical tattoo and a guerrilla archive.

I try to describe and embody this in my work by employing collage, ethnographic, visual, and documentary techniques. This is combined with lyric, multilingual, and polyphonic narrative devices and structures. My goal is to make visible the seams, fragments, paradoxes, complexities, and indeterminacies of being from an unincorporated territory. My hope is that the reader will gather the materials and harvest their deeper meanings.

I interweave my own intimate subjectivity with larger forces. Moreover I tell the stories of my own family not only to value and memorialize their stories, but also to show that their experiences matter. To me, this personalizes the history and politics. In terms of craft, I usually don’t aim for “balance”; instead, I aim for dynamic and profound juxtapositions.

CL: That’s a pretty radical statement itself—when historically so much poetry (or art more generally) strives for symmetry, pattern, balance, to hear this is not a concern turns the goal upside down. In a form-meets-function kind of way, given an unbalanced and chaotic world, it makes sense to not preference balance. And at the same time a collection has to hold, as a book, as a series of books. That you strive for visible seams seems appropriate, since a seam is both a torn place, a gap or rupture, but also where elements piece together. So much happens at the seams of your books. I think of a section in [guma’] where a poem about the severely endangered Micronesian kingfisher hatched at the national zoo butts up against the next piece, “ginen ta(la)ya,” where the circumstances of Chamorro veterans’ deaths, along with their ages, names, and ranks, are listed, all dovetailed with prose about the speaker’s grandfather and his growing up on Guam as the military first arrived, and descriptions for how to throw a talaya (net). Certain lines reappear in italics: “this cage can be either solid material wire mesh or” or “to pledge allegiance,” and “caged within our disappearance,” “how bullets fragment and ricochet,” “is born and fed and grows and” which repeat—this seems like one sort of thread so—can you talk about the fault-line places in these collections? What binds them, either in terms of form or content? What are the dangers in elements dovetailing too perfectly, or oppositely, of the seams fraying?

CSP: Yes, embodying unincorporation does create many seams and scars, gaps and ruptures. To me, these can become spaces of openness, possibility, and radical connections between different subjects and geographies; between the past, present and future; and between humans, nature, and animals. This “space between” is often theorized in Pacific epistemologies as the “va,” or the generative and creative space that connects all things. Thus, the literary “va” invites readers to weave disparate objects into relation, as you have so insightfully done with the birds, the throw net, the soldiers, and my grandfather—an abundant harvest of signification.

While my poems themselves are asymmetrical and fragmented, I try to hold it all together with structural and thematic elements. All the poems across books have thematic harmony: they are about my home island of Guam, the complexities of my indigenous culture, and the experiences of my family and my people. Another thread, as you point out, is the repeating lines, words, or phrases that act as connective tissue across the poems. I try to create a sense of balance through the alternation of prose and lyric, which counterpoise dense-jungle like rhythms with more water-flowing rhythms. The symmetry in a work comes with the overall organization of the book, in which sections are usually symmetrical and have repeating patterns. This is a way to figuratively weave together the disparate elements, to hold the different poems within the imperfect net of the book.

CL: Even some of the images invoked are symmetrical; I think of the latte stones and military formations above ground and then subaerial roots or sounding lines below. But I was particularly struck by some of the symmetry in [saina], where the sections alternate Chamorro, Spanish, Japanese, and English, and how even as the poems widen they do mirror in places, or cycle back. Can you speak some about the distinction between symmetry and repetition? As transformation, or trap in the forward-backward motion of your work?

CSP: My work is deeply influenced by Chamorro aesthetics in particular, and indigenous aesthetics in general, in which much art, architecture, weaving, tattooing, etc., employ symmetrical and repeating patterns. The same is true for many indigenous oral narratives. At the same time, there are also moments of variation within the repeating patterns.

Another important aspect of indigenous storytelling is the idea that time is cyclical, spiral, and interwoven, as opposed to linear. So I try to create structures and patterns that suggest cycles. Because the past and future exists in the present, and the present is shaped by the past and the future, I also try to write poems in which time is interwoven. So writing and reading moves both forwards and backwards across sentences and generations.

In native orality, stories are repeated and told multiple times to different audiences. But each time the story is told, it changes. Across my books, I have retold certain stories in different ways. Partly because I have changed as time has passed, or because more of the story has been told to me since the time of the last telling.

CL: I think it actually takes time, and space, for meaningful resonances to echo. Many writers fear writing the same poem over and over, but I’m fascinated by the idea that that might be the goal—to write the same poem newly, since we are not who we were not so long ago. The best teachers do this, too—can say things again differently, for different students, moments, purposes. Your poems teach so much, both about the past and how to move forward, so I want to ask what you’ve learned across the writing of these four volumes?

CSP: When I was a student, I studied the “long poem” and the book series, such as HD’s Trilogy, Pound’s Cantos, Eliot’s Four Quartets, Olson’s Maximus Poems, Williams’ Paterson, Cha’s Dictee, etc. I was also studying poetry series that continued across books, like Duncan’s “Passages” and Mackey’s “Songs of the Andoumboulou.” During the past twelve years writing my first four volumes of this life work, I have learned many lessons.

For one, I have learned to continuously explore different poetic techniques and devices so that each book has its own internal variations and that each book is different from the others. I want each book to be its own unique island but also to be part of the same archipelago. Another important lesson I have learned is that it is important to weave free verse and prose, as well as the lyric voice and archival sources, in ways that create a dynamic reading experience. Lastly, I will say that I have learned the importance of including various tones and emotions, including nostalgia, humor, anger, irony, satire, love, sadness, longing, joy, and gratitude.

CL: I think I experienced all of these over the course of your collections (and maybe within each, too!) For example, just tracing some of the prose poems regarding SPAM, we can find: “Guam is considered the SPAM capital of the world. On average each Chamorro consumes 16 tins of SPAM each year…also popular in Hawaiʻi, the Philippines, Okinawa, and South Korea (and all places with a history of US military presence). In fact, SPAM may have been responsible for Hitler’s defeat; the Allies would have starved without SPAM…rub the entire block of SPAM, along with the accompanying gelatinous goo, onto your wood furniture…Plus, you’ll have enough left over to use as your own personal lubricant (a true Pacific dinner date.)…the name itself stands for Specially Processed Army Meal, Salted Pork And More, Super Pink Artificial Meat, Snake Possum And Mongoose, or Some People Are Missing. My uncle is the reining Guam SPAM king…I will never forget the two-pound SPAM bust of George Washington he made for Liberation Day…”

I wish I could include them all here, but suffice it to say the pieces are funny and then I catch myself and stop laughing. Because I’m learning, and it’s dire, too. And then some images, like the SPAM-A-LOT can the speaker will never open, or the case that comes with a car purchase, or the smell of canned meat patties, white rice, chili and onion and eggs—they are so memorable, so visceral. I almost crave that breakfast I’ve never had! There’s a longing to return to what I never experienced, or maybe what never was. How do you see nostalgia in particular as functioning in your forward-backward looking work? I’m particularly interested because so much eco-poetry and political poetry, even, assumes some ideal and departure from it. How would you classify your own poetry? Or can you?

CSP: Thanks for spamming this interview! Food is a theme through which so many emotions mix and ferment.

Nostalgia is an emotional undercurrent that runs throughout my work because the past is always present. However, it is not the kind of nostalgia that assumes an ideal past. Instead, it is a nostalgia that longs for connections and belongings that existed in the past. For me personally, this has most to do with missing living in my homeland and missing my relatives and friends who we left when my family migrated. I also deeply long for the past when more of my family lived together in one place, when we could all gather on a daily basis.

Much of my eco-poetry is engaged with “solastalgia,” which refers to a nostalgia for a place that is being environmentally degraded. So it’s not about desiring an ideal nature, but instead a mourning and desire to protect our lands and water from further desecration. In terms of my political poetry, I think it is more so grounded in witness, protest, and resistance. What this work desires is not a past ideal political situation, but instead it longs and advocates for a decolonized, sovereign, and indigenous future.

CL: The past is always present. What an important thing to remember, and also that nostalgia exists in both of those tenses. I’m especially curious about the future tense of nostalgia—a longing for what has yet to be. Since nostalgia is such a shape-shifter emotion; so quickly becoming sorrow or joy, anger or comfort, paralysis or inspiration, I love when poets shift into that generative mode. I’m thinking Ross Gay; Brenda Hillman, a master at this; and your work, too. In [lukao] a series of pieces relate speak of your unborn daughter’s growth, for example:

ginen understory

~

(third trimester, january 27, 2014)

the wind billows our bedroom
curtain like the vowels

in hiroshima, enewetak, mororua
// the branches of our unborn

daughter’s respiratory tree
are just beginning to radiate \\

[we] lather in coconut oil,
spoon tight like the vowels

in nagasaki, trinity, bikini // the sky
breaks into a thousand suns

\\ rain clouds baptize guam
in strontium-90 fallout,

circa 1954 // what cancers remain
buried in pacific bodies like unexploded

ordinances \\ what downwind toxins
will [neni] inhale when her lungs

first expand // what wars of light
will irradiate when she first opens

her sublime eyes

which looks to the sublime in the full shadow of history, under its cloud and with explosions at the line-break level and yet—the final lines of almost all of these pieces end with a certain challenge, or demand answers we can only provide by changing the way we move through the world. Future nostalgia seems active and so I wonder about these pieces, alongside those that swell and gap, mimicking childbirth—do they offer ways to move forward? Can we write toward the world we want?

CSP: What you say about nostalgia as a shape-shifter emotion feels deeply true to me. And I love the work of Gay and Hillman—I actually teach their poetry in my eco-poetry courses.

This poem is from a series titled “understory,” which refers to a layer of vegetation beneath the main canopy of a forest. The poems are about the nine months my wife was pregnant, the day of labor and birth, and the first year of our daughter’s life. Several of the poems are about my concerns as a parent raising a native daughter in a time of climate change, environmental destruction, war, and militarism.

The poem you quote above has several layers. The surface layer is a subtle reference to making love (“spoon tight”) with my wife during her third trimester. The date, January 27th, refers to the day the US detonated its first nuclear detonation in 1951. In the Pacific, nuclearism is a prevalent topic because of all the nuclear testing that occurred in our islands. Guam itself was “downwind” from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. Many Pacific Islanders have died (and continue to suffer from) cancer as a result, and I fear that our children will continue to inherit this toxic legacy. There are other references to nuclear war (“wars of light” and “irradiate”), which have become imminent during the Trump administration and the rising tensions between the US and North Korea, with places like Guam and Hawaiʻi caught in the nuclear crosshairs.

The last line of the poem perhaps addresses your question. The “sublime” is often used to describe nuclear annihilation, which would be as bright as a thousand suns. My poem, however, suggests that my daughter’s eyes are the sublime—the true light. Which is to say, we can write towards articulating what we value most in the world and whom we must care for (those we love, those who are most vulnerable). Of course, looking into my daughter’s eyes is symbolic of looking into and towards the future. Our writing can help us become conscious of how our actions will affect future generations (some say, to look seven generations ahead). Hopefully, then, poetry can inspire us to act more ethically and sustainably. Lastly I hope these poems highlight the power, beauty, and value of our human capacity for creation and birth, as opposed to death and destruction.

CL: Seven generations seems like quite the “va” distance, and yet we might need that generative and creative space to connect us forward. You have so many points of connection in your poetry, and in unconventional ways, like including excerpts from the Drafted Environmental Impact Statement’s public comments forum or the inclusion of Twitter handles in pieces (#yesallwomen, #bringbackourgirls, #unaccompanied, #prayfor___, etc.) Who are the readers with whom you hope to connect, and why is it important to include dialogue within poems themselves? How do you see the way we interact with poems changing as the distances between people both grow larger (through physical distance, or opinion) and smaller (through changing media and technology)?

CSP: In addition to being influenced by the “va,” I am also influenced by ecological thinking, which teaches us that all things are interconnected. I try to embody this in my work as an eco-aesthetics in which we can see connections in unconventional ways. In our digital age, there are virtual connections made via the Internet and social media which I try to weave into my poetry. Dialogue is another way to bring voices that exist across great distances together. Being a Pacific writer, I challenge the stereotype that Pacific islands are distant, isolated, disconnected, and insular places. In fact, our islands are globalized places—Guam itself is a central hub for Internet traffic in the Asia-Pacific region.

I hope that readers interact with my poems by being fully immersed in the specific place-based and indigenous Pacific environments and stories, while at the same time weaving the connections between the Pacific and the world. I also hope that the reader will journey beyond the book to look up some of the websites and hashtags that I include. In my newest book, [lukao], there is a link and QVC code to a website that includes source material, photos, videos and articles for further reading and viewing.

CL: I admire the ways your work reaches beyond collections; since the page is just one place of encounter, it seems poems should transform our ways of thinking and being in the world. If/when you meet a person who has never encountered a poem before, what piece would you first give her?

CSP: I would probably give that poor soul a poem that is free online at the Academy of American Poetry website, which includes audio. It’s an accessible narrative poem in solidarity with refugees: “Care.”

CL: And sometimes the best poem is the one we most need, in the moment. Thank you, Craig for your words, for your care.