Craig Santos Perez, [åmot]

 

bingo is not indigenous to guam
yet here [we] are

in the air-conditioned community center
next to the village catholic church

i help set the bingo cards
& ink daubers on the cafeteria table

you sit in a wheelchair
like an ancient sea turtle

this has been your daily ritual
but the last time played bingo with you

was 25 years ago when i was a teenager
& still lived on island

hasso’ when you won you never shouted
“bingo” too boastfully

when you lost you simply said
“agupa’ tomorrow we’ll be lucky”

here no one punishes you
for speaking chamoru

here no war invades & occupies life
no soldiers force you to bow (“ginen achiote”)

Poet Craig Santos Perez continues to expand his great long poem documenting, examining and declaring his home territory through from unincorporated territory [åmot] (Berkeley CA: Omnidawn Publishing, 2023), the fifth book in his sequence both set as accumulation and ongoing thread, following from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Kaneohe HI: TinFish Press, 2008; updated edition, Omnidawn, 2017), from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn, 2010), from unincorporated territory [guma’] (Omnidawn, 2014) and from unincorporated territory [lukao] (Omnidawn, 2017). He is also the author of Habitat Threshold (Omnidawn, 2020), although I haven’t seen that title, so I’m unaware how that book might fit in the larger structure, if at all. As he described the larger project back in 2014 as part of his ’12 or 20 questions’ interview: “My first book was the first book-length excerpt of an ongoing story about my identity, culture, and family in the context of the history, politics, and ecology of my home(is)land, Guahan (Guam). My newest book is the third installment of the series, and its subject matter focuses more directly on migration and militarization. In form, the newest book explores the poem-essay and the conceptual-collage poem.”

An indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam) currently living and teaching in Mānoa, Hawai‘i, unincorporated territory explores home, colonialism, ecological concerns and family, and where the indigenous culture meets colonial influence, set in a geography that still holds in living memory the stories of occupation by the Spanish, the Americans and the Japanese. An unincorporated territory of the United States, Guam is, much like Puerto Rico, politically disenfranchised, and unable to participate in the United States presidential elections. How can a body, and a population, still be held and yet have no say? “today the military invites [us] / to collect plants & trees / within areas of litekyan / slated to be cleared / for a firing range,” he writes, early on in the collection. The poem continues, a bit further: “if [we] receive their permission / they’ll escort [us] to mark & claim / trees [we] want delivered / after removal // they call this ‘benevolence’ /// yet why / does it feel / like a cruel / reaping [.]”

ginen during your lifetime
for guam’s “greatest generation”

            ~

you survived
violent occupation
& the bloody march
to manenggon
you endured
the wounds of
our island stitched
by barbed wire fences
you said goodbye
to your children
as they donned uniforms
& deployed overseas
you prayed
as cancer diseased
half our relatives
you listened
as english endangered
i fino’ chamoru
& snakes silenced
native birds
o saina
i doubt if [we]
will ever receive
true reparations
or sovereignty over
our own nation
i can’t count
how many more
body bags will arrive
with touch boxes
& folded flags

i don’t know if
all your children
grandchildren
great-grandchildren
& great-great-grandchildren
will ever return
guma’
during your lifetime
to show
the abundance
that you
will be
survived by

As a note from the publisher offers as part of the colophon: “‘Åmot’ is the Chamoru word for ‘medicine,’ and commonly refers to medicinal plants. Traditional healers were know as yo’åmte, and they gathered åmot in the jungle, and recited chants and invocations of taotao’mona, or ancestral spirits, in the healing process. Through experimental and visual poetry, Perez explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of åmot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders [.]” The structure of Perez’s ongoing long poem feels comparable to the late bpNichol’s nine-volume The Martyrology, or even Robert Kroetsch’s “Field Notes,” both set as umbrella projects constructed through accumulated book-length structures, offering each volume as a further brick, a further room, of something far larger and complex. Comparable, too, to Perez is how everything that Nichol and Kroetsch wrote fell into the larger structure of their ongoing projects, except, of course, for those projects that were deliberately set beyond those particular boundaries. A rich and expansive collection of fragments, fractals, family stories and archival material, from unincorporated territory [åmot] holds elegies for the past and present around a land and people still in flux; of occupation and mourning, loss and family, flora and fauna, documenting the visual literacies of an island and its people, examining what erodes and what holds, and what might already be lost. Or, as he writes towards the end of the collection:

remember            our people
                            scattered like stars
                            form new constellations
                            when [we] gather

hasso’                 home is not simply a house
                           village or island

home is              an archipelago of  belonging

 

Collier Nogues, The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground

The road at early dawn is still here—

I am in the future.

                                    I move my hand

                                    to raise its flag

                                    in the yard. The

                                                quietness

on the surface is breaking

bringing about the form of a person

the nation in

his ear. (“A Book of Patriotic Movements”)

American poet Collier Nogues’ second poetry collection, The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground (Chester CT: Drunken Boat, 2015), winner of the 2014 Drunken Boat Poetry Book Contest as judged by Forrest Gander, is a curious reclamation project in a series of recent reclamation projects. One could point to Vancouver poets Jordan Abel, Reneé Sarojini Saklikar and Cecily Nicholson as comparable examples of poets utilizing varying degrees of erasure and documentary to re-claim a series of lost histories, disasters and cultural spaces, for works such as The Place of Scraps (2013) [see my review of such here], Un/inhabited (2014) [see my review of such here], children of air india (2013) [see myreview of such here] and From the Poplars (2014) [see my review of such here]. Nogues, a creative writing teacher in Hong Kong and poetry co-editor for Juked, utilizes erasure and a deft hand to step lightly from phrase to phrase, poem to poem, exploring the nature of and the direct result of a specific armed conflict. As she writes as part of her too-brief opening note: “This book is a hybrid of poetry and digital art. The poems erase historical documents related to the development and aftermath of the Pacific War, especially on the island of Okinawa.”

Towards the worst. In that battle-field

a hundred women.

                                    Women, again.

We dreamed of going to wash their

whole bodies

their modesty crowded in and out of

bed

uncovering skin.

            The illusion was typical,

                                          base.

Luxurious to be thieves of virtues

bound to submit to the knife

with open arms,

welcoming all unfortunates. (“Across the Plains”)

In one of the blurbs on the back cover, Craig Santos Perez presents us with information that might be seen as important for the context of the collection: “Collier Nogues, who grew up on a U.S. military base in Okinawa, explores how war has shaped the island of her childhood. Taken together, these poems not only express a desire to erase violence, but they also attempt to map the topography of islands and nations, caves and embrasures, weapons and flags, grace and dread.” As the notes at the back of the collection inform, she extracts her poems from works such as Gladys Zabilka’s Customs and Cultures of Okinawa (Revised Edition) (1959), Robert Tomes’ The Americans in Japan (1857), Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904), Aikoku Undo Nenkan (Yearbook of Patriotic Movements) (1936), Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes (1916), A Japanese Interior (1893) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Across the Plains (1902), attempting to explore “the discourses of empire” to reclaim a space, using, quite often, the words of the oppressor directly in opposition to their original purpose. “I / will explode any day now.” she writes, in the poem “Dear Grace.” There is such a lovely lightly touch across Nogues’ lines and phrases, skipping across the surface of reclaimed text while retaining and repurposing an incredible depth.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Craig Santos Perez

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent (Hawai’i Dub Machine, 2011), and author of three collections of poetry: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish, 2008) and from unincorporated territory [saina](Omnidawn, 2010), a finalist for the LA Times 2010 Book Prize for Poetry and the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry, and from unincorporated territory [guma'] (Omnidawn, 2014). He is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, where he teaches Pacific literature and creative writing.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I am grateful to my first publisher, Tinfish Press (edited by Susan Schultz), for believing in my work. My first book opened up many opportunities for me, the most important of which was the opportunity to reach new readers.

My first book was the first book-length excerpt of an ongoing story about my identity, culture, and family in the context of the history, politics, and ecology of my home(is)land, Guahan (Guam). My newest book is the third installment of the series, and its subject matter focuses more directly on migration and militarization. In form, the newest book explores the poem-essay and the conceptual-collage poem.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Although poetry is my major genre, I am also working on a non-fiction book about food in the Pacific and a fictional collection of short stories about canned meats and culture.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It doesn't take me long to start poems or projects; however, my writing process is very slow so it does take me a long time to finish. Any writing I do will go through pages of notes and outlines, as well as multiple draft, edits, and revisions. I try to consider every decision and alternative before a work is finalized.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Poems usually begin with a subject matter, theme, or idea. I simultaneously work on longer and shorter poems, and then I will weave these poems into a book.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy readings because I enjoy connecting with readers/listeners and being in a space enlivened by poetry. Public readings are part of my creative process in the sense that I am always experimenting with new ways to engage audiences.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Within my writing, I engage with modernist, postmodernist, postcolonial, and indigenous theories. Some of the questions I try to answer include "What is Culture & Identity?" "What is History & Memory?" "What is Language & Story?"

Other important questions ask: "How has colonialism, missionization, capitalism, and militarization impacted and changed Guahan and Chamorro culture. How has our island and we, as indigenous peoples, resisted, challenged, adapted, and survived these impacts?"

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

In Chamorro culture, the role of the writer has been to share stories; these stories are canoes/vessels that carry our languages, customs, values, practices, knowledge, memories, dreams, hopes, hurts, traumas, histories, beliefs, and much more. Chamorro storytellers have the added responsibility to protest ongoing colonization and to be involved in the decolonization movement.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Working with an outside editor is essential. My new book would not have been possible without my editor, Rusty Morrison. An outside perspective helps us see our poems in new ways. This new vision allows us to see what is possible with the poem beyond our own desires for the poem.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Do something poetic everyday. Live deeply and write in the moment. Transform your life into a poem.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

It is not very easy for me because my poetry is very fragmented and nonlinear, whereas I try to write critical prose in a linear and coherent manner. The appeal is that writing criticism helps me theorize about my poems in new ways, and writing poetry helps me understand the art form that I am trying to analyze and interpret.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I am currently a professor and administrator, so I don't have typical days. My schedule of classes and meetings are always changing from semester to semester, week to week. Between teaching, meetings, paperwork, mentoring students, and organizing events, in addition to household chores, I don't have much time for my writing. The little time I do have looks something like this: after dinner, 90 minutes critical writing, 60 minutes poetry writing.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I read other people's poetry for inspiration.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Plumeria & Spam.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I am most influenced by natural ecologies. The structure of coral reefs, as well as the movement of waves and ocean currents, helped me structure my new book.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Right now, the writing most important to me is Pacific literature. But I read a wide range of American poetry as well.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Finish my dissertation. So stop asking me so many questions!

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I should clarify: I do not consider my occupation to be a "writer." My occupation is an educator. Teaching, inspiring students, designing curriculum, being in the classroom, conducting community-engaged projects, and witnessing students learn and grow is what I love most. That's my purpose in my life. Writing, to me, is another way to educate and inspire.

If I could pick another occupation: Politician. No doubt I would have ended up joining the military.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

At first, writing was a way for me to stay connected to my home after my family migrated to California. This is still true.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Javier Huerta's American Copia (I am teaching this book in my Poetry & Food Writing class). The last great film I saw was Even the Rain.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on my fourth book of poems and my dissertation. Wish me luck!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

A good mention by Ana Božičević and Amy King at Pen America Center: Poetry Roundup: Po-blog is dead, long live the Po-blog!

Ana Božičević and Amy King were good enough to mention the "12 or 20 questions" interviews I've done here since September, 2007 (three series of such listed here, here and here) over at the Pen America Center blog. Thanks so much! They list a whole slew of (mostly American) literary poet-bloggers (with links!), including Elisa Gabbert, Anne Boyer, Sina Queyras, Craig Santos Perez, Dodie Bellamy, Bhanu Kapil, Pierre Joris, Carolyn Zaikowski, Mike Young, Julia Cohen and CA Conrad. Be sure to check out as many of them as possible!