Paul Hlava Ceballos is the author of banana [ ],
winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, the Norma Farber First Book
Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a finalist for the National Book
Critics Circle Award. His collaborative chapbook, Banana [ ] / we pilot the blood, shares pages with Quenton Baker and Christina Sharpe. He has
fellowships from CantoMundo, Artist Trust, and the Poets House. He has been
featured on the Poetry Magazine Podcast, Seattle’s the Stranger,
and his work has been translated to Ukrainian. He currently lives in Seattle,
where he practices echocardiography.
1
- How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most
recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book
changed my life primarily in how I think about myself. Despite being a writer
for decades, and having some accomplishments in fellowships, magazine
publications, and organizing readings, I sometimes felt out of place in
literary spaces. Silly, I know! These feelings of underachievement or not
enough-ness are mostly in our heads, but they are real feelings. At some point,
after the book and the awards that came with it, I realized that people were
expecting me to engage with them about our craft—I simply had to. So having the
book has been an opportunity to open up, have conversations about poetry, make
new writer friends, and fanboy out to my favorite writers. I got a lot more
books signed at AWP this year than before.
Well, I should say
that our feelings of not enough-ness are in our heads but they do come from
somewhere. For me, a lot of those feelings of not fitting in had to do with
race and class, from actually being an outsider in professional or monied
spaces. This book is different from my previous writing in that I wrote about
those subjects for the first time. In that way, it’s the most personal and true
writing I’ve done. So, it feels a bit disorienting and wonderful that people
have responded to it so positively.
2
- How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
My abuelo was a poet. He wrote occasional poems to his
children, my abuela on their anniversary, and even about the World Cup. These
typewritten pages are saved in plastic sheets and shared as near sacred objects
by my tíos. When I was a child, walking around with a book tucked under my arm,
every relative I saw would tell me I resembled him.
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?
Oh my god, I am such a slow writer! banana [ ], as you
can imagine came from years of research and note-taking. I have to remind
myself that it’s ok to take months or even years to write a poem; art is a slow
process.
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?
My thinking can be very webby—I can’t help but see connections
between everything. So as soon as I write one poem, I’m imagining a book! You
can probably see that in banana [ ]—this was a singular thought worked
and re-worked.
5
- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the
sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I dread doing readings! Even now, after touring and having
done dozens of them in the past few months—I want to run away and hide! I just
want to read or write instead. While I dislike the process, afterward, I love
having done readings. I love hearing other people’s writing and thought
process. And the best part, of course, is getting drinks or ice-cream
afterward.
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?
This book is driven
by the ways global resource extractive policies affect individual people. While
the title poem—the 40-page collage about the history of bananas—lies at its
heart, it begins with elegies to migrants to illustrate how historical
atrocities are directly connected to current ones, how the past and present are
concurrent.
7
– What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do
they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think the cynical
part of me would say “entertainer.” But I truly believe that the role of a
writer—the real role of a writer as a thinker—is more profound than that.
Writing should do more than re-form old tropes into new media. I believe that
writing as an artform sees outside of structures of thought that we are raised
in, and shows us different stories that exist outside a kind of hegemonic
thought. In journalism, for example, this is the difference between media
simply restating what the police or political authority says about an event, versus
digging into history of the officers involved, background evidence, witness
testimonies, etc.
8 - Do you find the
process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential, of
course! I truly believe all thought is communal. This means that what I write
should be considered, re-considered, edited. My first editors are always my
closest writing friends. But after a few rounds with them, I try to show my
writing to someone I don’t know, and then, ideally, to the editor of a press.
9
- What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you
directly)?
I tend to write in
many different styles, depending on the needs of the work, and my mood. One
day, as a student, I went to Sharon Olds’s office, and she had my poems spread
across her desk in a grid. She showed me how different styles I was practicing
worked (or didn’t work) in relationship to one another. She told me where she
thought my strengths were. I cherish that advice. It helps me remember the ways
of writing that feel natural for me, so I can challenge myself by writing in
other ways too.
10
- 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 wish I had a
routine! The sad fact is that with a full-time job, a newborn, and trying to
keep my life in order, it’s tough to find time to write. Though I do consider
writing my life and career, with my paying job secondary, unfortunately, my
culture does not value art enough to help me survive on writing alone.
This means that a
writing day for me might be scribbling something in my Notes app during my
lunchbreak. Or it might start with preparing food for the next day. Then, if
I’m not too exhausted after coming home from work, I can scarf some pre-made
dinner, bring my computer down the hall to a quiet nook in my apartment
complex, pop in some earphones, and get a good hour of editing done.
11
- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of
a better word) inspiration?
You know, I think
that sometimes the most rewarding and inspiring thing can be removing oneself
from the page and getting involved in community work. Volunteer at a dayworkers
center, march for Black lives, join your union’s picket. This has felt crucial
for me to remember what and who is actually important in our work on the page.
12
- What fragrance reminds you of home?
The woody,
spicy-sweet musk of a California pepper tree after it’s wetted in a hot summer
rain.
13
- 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?
Visual art has
always been an inspiration. When I was in grad school in NY, I would take the
subway to the Met and spend all day walking and observing, or sitting in front
of a sculpture and free writing.
However, in the past
decade, I’ve swung the other direction. My book banana [ ] was very
research-based, and I loved coming home from work and reading history books,
writing down any fact about the fruit that struck me. Right now, I’m writing
poems that begin with cardiac studies that I perform at the hospital where I
work. I’m very interested in what happens when we combine language that is
supposedly “poetic” or “beautiful” with scientific or academic language that
intends to serve a different purpose.
14
- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your
life outside of your work?
Poetry is important
for my work, of course, but history and critical theory are, too. Some of my
the books that were critical in the formation of my most recent book are: The
Open Veins of Latin America, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, How
to Read Donald Duck, and Bananas, Beaches and Bases.
15
- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love to
conduct interviews of people in my mother’s hometown in Ecuador and in my
hometown in California, as a starting point for my next writing project,
thinking about immigration and displacement.
16
- 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 would love to be a
researcher of some kind, so I could go deep into scientific rabbit holes but
also travel to, like, the arctic to collect ice samples or something
adventurous like that.
17
- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
There’s something
special about language as a medium, in its accessibility. Anyone can do it,
anywhere, without expensive supplies.
18
- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I’m just finishing
Jane Wong’s memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, which is stunning.
I really recommend you check it out. For movies, I’m still thinking about what
a weird and funny movie Triangle of Sadness is.
19
- What are you currently working on?
I work as an echocardiographer at the primary cardiology
center for the Pacific Northwest. Currently, I’m writing poems using medical
language and thinking about how larger, political and structural decisions
affect personal health outcomes.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
