American River Review 2022 - copy - Flipbook - Page 57
AN INTERVIEW WITH
ALI BLANCO
Your poetry deals with social issues, identity, sexuality, intersectionality,
obviously sociology influences your poetry. Yet you seem apolitical in your day
to day life. Are your poems political in some way? Are they subversive? Polemical?
For this answer I am going to have to refer back to an Amanda Gorman speech
that changed my life. She was discussing poetry, and how it relates to politics,
and she said that writing is a political statement. This was very liberating to me
because I felt empowered to share my story. I think about sexuality and identity
as political topics, especially now, with services and freedoms being challenged
at the governmental level. Through my writing and performing I attempt to
share a perspective, to hopefully bring about an honest discussion, an understanding. I carry that same ideology into my day to day life, and try to make
intentional decisions, to bring about change. This activity may be as simple as
holding a woman’s hand while we walk, or educating a colleague about gender
neutral terms. Whether it be through spoken word, or grocery shopping, my
goal is to raise awareness that we are here, that we deserve to be here. I want
to show my children what it means to live unapologetically (unashamed) and I
think that desire comes through in my writing, as well as in my not-so-privateanymore life.
Has there been one person (force, experience) who influenced the creative
path of your life?
I absolutely started trying to write poetry after reading “April Rain Song,” by
Langston Hughes. I remember sitting in my high school English class, with this
photocopied poem propped up on my desk, and I just stared at the words in
amazement. I felt as if the letters were rearranging themselves in front of me,
becoming rain drops, and falling off of the paper. There are only a few lines in
that poem, but they contain such vivid imagery, such a nostalgic feeling. I wanted to use words in the same way, to paint a picture, create a scene. For many
years I focused on stanzas and rhyme schemes, but I never felt like my work
represented me in an authentic way. Then last year I took a Women’s Literature
class and I studied Jamaica Kincaid, and her prose poem titled, “Girl.” This
poem literally knocked the breath out of me. There were decades of history,
culture, and judgment smashed into one free-form paragraph. I drafted a letter
to Kincaid, thanking her for this work-of-art. Then I wrote my first prose poem,
and I called it, “Dear Mrs. Kincaid.” After that I continued to explore all manner of free-verse writing, until I had compiled a collection with which I felt
satisfied. This newfound satisfaction immediately diminished, however, when I
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