Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:28 Dr. Amy Shon Santo is a writer and educator believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her work connects the yards, education and urbanism. She has been nominated in the past for a pushed our prize for creative nonfiction, best of the net for poetry and was recognized on a national honor role for service learning by her own emission. She writes because it's forbidden. She writes to see what's real inside and out. She writes to find her own north using her power and her voice. Amy, welcome to write on radio.
Speaker 2 00:01:00 Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be together.
Speaker 1 00:01:03 When did even the Milky ways undocument first come together.
Speaker 2 00:01:07 This book took a few years to come together. Okay. So Chatbooks is how I began making books. So I would make Chatbooks for myself and for my friends and I made about six of 'em before I ever moved into kind of sharing them publicly. Um, so this book actually wrote a lot of it when I was actually in a process of, I was pursuing the MFA program and creative writing at Antioch university and that I was in a, a really rhythm for writing. And this was a collection that was, was part of my thesis. And, um, it was my first book that was published by somebody else. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:01:49 So how did that happen then? Did unsolicited press seek you out? Did you find them?
Speaker 2 00:01:54 Um, actually a friend of mine, a that recommended that I reach out to them and, uh, we had done a reading the night before and he said the reading was so good and it was so intimate that he, uh, reached out to the publisher and said, I don't know if you guys have read her manuscript yet, but you better not sleep on it because she <laugh>, you have to hear her. And I had sent them the, I had submitted the manuscript for their review. Um, but after I think that little nudge, um, they read it again and reached out to me. They said that they wanted to publish the book. And it's funny because you know, now a few years later, I'm about to publish my next book with another press called flower song press. It's become a part of my life that I hope to be doing the rest of my days,
Speaker 1 00:02:43 The cover design for this, for this, even the Milky ways undocumented you, I saw a little preview talking about this work, you know, it was designed by Kio Griffith.
Speaker 2 00:02:53 Yes.
Speaker 1 00:02:53 Did you collaborate with Keo on coming up with a design for it? Cause on the cover for people who don't know, it's a, it's a skyscape that also has a compass and also has canoe is that service north and south and Northwest and Southwest and gives directions.
Speaker 2 00:03:06 Yes. So I love all forms of artistic expression and visual art among them. So all of the books that I've made, I've had the chance to collaborate with the fine artist on the cover art and Keio Griffith. I love and admire him so much. I asked him if he would be open to designing the cover. And he said, yes. And then I said, I gave him kind of an abstract idea. So I said, I see a boat made of light in the sky. Does that inspire anything for you? And he, I sent him the manuscript, he read the manuscript and he came up with this image, which I just love because the canoes in the sky are turning almost like they're unlocking a compass. And then he has the, the circling, uh, words of the title. So it's just kind of perfect. He figured out how to visually he saw the book in an image.
Speaker 2 00:04:08 And, um, I went through a similar process with collaborating with, for the cover of the new book, catastrophic molting. The cover is done by an lovely artist named Mio Stevens Goda. And we'd worked together on an exhibition here with self-help graphics and art in Los Angeles. The whole image is about shedding your fur <laugh>, you know, you're malting your skin. And so we did a lot of back and forth with the imagery and her sketches, uh, uh, about this Californian coast. And I had seen there's a part of the sea, the shoreline here where sea lion, the elephants come to malt and it's unlike any other part of the shore I've ever seen. And they're just laying around throwing sand on their backs and resting together during the resting. They have to rest in order to shed their fur. And they also fast because they're, they're so close together, they make a choice to be peaceful with each other because they're all vulnerable.
Speaker 2 00:05:19 That's how they're able to collectively go through such tremendous change in, in such a vulnerable state. And I saw them on the, on the coast for the first time with my children when we had left the first time after we'd been isolating for the, for the pandemic. And so I felt that watching them decide to rest and to rest for change and to rest together for change because of their vulnerability was what it felt like to me to have gone through those first, you know, the first year and a half in particular of the pandemic. So working with visual artists is a great way to bring the, the deeper, uh, sense, you know, the, the deeper, emotional, or sensorial experience of the book into a visual image. So I'm glad that you like the cover that Keo made. And yes, the visualization is, is, is meant to accompany the story of the words.
Speaker 2 00:06:20 So the books are just evidence of a relationship with poetry, but my daily relationship with poetry is to compost poems every day. You know, I basically, I'm just writing what you might call bad poems every day, um, for the pure satisfaction and wonder of it. And then I go through them when I feel like I have enough. And that's usually I have a, an intuitive feeling that I've done too much and I need to stop and I need to look back. And then I look through them for which ones belong together, thematically kind of as fam a family of ideas and, um, thinking. And I start to think about sequence. The whole process feels really similar to my former life in dance and choreography, where you would make dances. And then you would think about larger themes that are coming out of the work I write every day to, to have writing accompany me in life. And then I stop and I pause every year or two. And I think my, is there anything here have I done enough for now? Does, is this a body of work that I, I feel ready to, to kind of craft into shape for a book.
Speaker 1 00:07:37 I noticed a couple times you refer to the direction north in your poems specifically. I see that in cobble, Verta and evacuation, I noted this because I, in your preview for your book, you have on YouTube, you also talk about how you wanted to find your own north. I was wondering if you could talk about the significance of north to you.
Speaker 2 00:07:55 I am the kind of person who's really, there's a good word in Spanish called Obi Gol. And to me, it's to orient yourself, I guess, to position and place yourself in relationship to, um, everything else. And I feel that the creative writing process and poetry in particular helps me orient myself to the world. So it is a kind of a compass and north would be kind of, I feel like saying <foreign> is like trying to restore, find yourself in this big world of overstimulation, overstimulation, and, and information to try to very quietly and mindfully pay attention to one's self and, uh, ones perceptions. And to be, to, to figure out how to live and be yourself in this big loud world. I, I think it's fair to say that I find my north in the natural world. I'm not the kind of person who feels particularly American or female or Jewish or this or that because my life, you know, my family is multicultural, multinational, poly interfaith. I've lived a good amount of time and collaborated with people all over the world. The north has to come from the planet and the galaxy. It can't come from the United States of America
Speaker 1 00:09:25 On that. No, I think it's a great time for you. If you could please read from your poem borderless,
Speaker 2 00:09:29 Okay. My body is pulled by the heavens infinite space without nationality borderless, sky of darkness, living and dead light moon recognizes every mother on earth, her cycle, her blood, her ability to reproduce stars. The border patrol doesn't care. It has orders from the incandescent white house to separate children from their constellations nature means nothing. A river, a plane, a family, nothing even the Milky way is undocumented.
Speaker 1 00:10:29 Very good borderless. It's a poem where we find the namesake, the collection. But what I really liked is that you have this macrocosmic focus on human condition. You describe the perspective of the moon looking at mothers. And the only way I think I can imagine it can as parts of nature that are pulled by the same infinite space without nationality like you were talking about before. It's also a response on what I assume is the Trump administration and not seeing nature in this view, nature, having nothing really meaning nothing. Can you talk about this?
Speaker 2 00:11:02 I mean, it's, that's exactly what inspired the poem. And I think it goes beyond the Trump administration. It, it points to a relationship with the world and, you know, looking at the natural world as a place to, to control resources and to transform resources rather than the source of life itself. So it's kind of the idea of human beings dividing up and conquering the planet versus being children of the planet. I wish it was only one administration that had done that, but that's sadly the legacy, the formation of human kind of, you know, of territories and NA and nations. It's really different orientation to say that we are a part of a galaxy, a planet that a sphere, uh, that is shared versus, um, you know, we see our identities only as one nationality or locality. I was just, uh, I was visiting with, um, you know, my mother-in-law my former mother-in-law, we were still kind of family, even though the I'm not married to her son anymore.
Speaker 2 00:12:14 <laugh> um, but we were looking at the trees and talking about the trees and she was telling me their names in Portuguese, and I was responding with them in English. And I thought it's so amazing that the natural world knows that it could just grow across the entire continent in this particular part of the ecosystem. And it doesn't see itself as like a American tree or a Brazilian tree or a Mexican tree. It's just a tree on this part of the land. And that's kind of the way I see myself <laugh> but obviously this sadness of, of this kind of thinking is resulted in separation of families, of the violence against children and families and the denigration of refugees and immigrants as somehow not deserving of basic human rights, which is something of course, that many people have experienced. And I come from a legacy of refugees and immigrants. So I do, I think behind that is this idea of a world consciousness and certainly equal respect for and dignity for all human things, including all human beings
Speaker 1 00:13:28 At this time. No, I want you, could you read no number 10, please?
Speaker 2 00:13:32 <laugh> sure. No. Number 10. What if I said no saying no is as important as seeing I said no to a partner sleeping with my P our peaches, no, to a lover who wanted to put a finger in my mouth on Sundays and spoon with other fish on different days. I said no to a boss who wanted to pay me with sawdust. I said, no, to suffering, no to pain, no. To being lied to no, to shaking on the freeway, driving someplace. I know I shouldn't go. So I said, no. I said, no. I said, no, no floats up like cream, no raises a new day. New chance, new breath, my heart shakes. Every time I say it. It's the hardest word for me to utter two tiny letters ending in one open sound. No, no, no, no, no. Is the word I take with me on a rowboat to a desert island.
Speaker 2 00:14:47 If I had to choose just two I'd bring yes. On my lips and no in my pocket. Just in case. No is more useful than salt. No. Is the compliment to pepper? No. Is a word you pin to your kid's shirt when you send them off to school. No. Is a headlamp on your bike. So you won't get hit in the dark from behind. No, no, no, no. To a book about family written only by men. No, no. Is the word. Every woman should keep with her for emergencies. No is better than a first aid kit. No. Is a bandaid that matches your skin color. No is a Swiss army knife with tweezers, small scissors and a blade. No rejects things. We're allergic to like food allergies, love allergies, life allergies. I'm finally learning to use it. Say it. I said the word. No,
Speaker 1 00:15:58 I think it's a very powerful poem. Uh, I wanna, I wanna ask you about the structures. What I, I noted right away. You force the reader to think about language and the power of an utterance, not just by the content of the poem, but through repetition and these dashes and slashes, these breaks you have in what you're saying, how long did it take for you to write? No. And think about that composition.
Speaker 2 00:16:20 So the poem came, I actually started this poem as an audio recording. I plugged in my earphones into a phone when I was taking a walk. I was walking. I was whacking home from the gym <laugh> and I was upset and I just, I just let myself riff all the way home. So I, like, I just basically talked know about all the things I could imagine for 30 minutes.
Speaker 1 00:16:43 What were you upset about?
Speaker 2 00:16:45 Um, I don't remember. <laugh> okay.
Speaker 1 00:16:47 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:16:49 And so then I downloaded it all as the transcript and I started to look at what came up kind of organically. And then I made a lot of choices and I took out, as you can imagine, most of it <laugh> I, I, you know, I kind of cleaned it up, but I, yeah, it's one big chunk. It's kind of like a brick of ice. When I first read it, I read it at, beyond broke in Los Angeles and a woman came up to me and she said, I need to have a copy of that. I need to print it out and put it by my computer. <laugh> like, all right. So I guess a lot of us need to learn how to say it. I think that when I realized thatnot Han said, you can, you're supposed to, oh, this is actually true of yoga practice as well or stronger yoga practice that you're supposed to be truthful.
Speaker 2 00:17:34 And you're also supposed to be non harming. So if you are to be truthful and non harming, sometimes we might confuse saying no with being harming, like, I'm not gonna give this person what I think, or I'm not going to draw, but actually what it is drawing a boundary and you can say a difficult thing in a kind way mm-hmm <affirmative> so you can actually say no without being angry. And maybe if you learn how to say no, without being angry, before you get angry, you'll come to respect your own health and wellbeing and what you need before it gets to the point where you've lost your cool. And um, so I think it's a really good thing for us to practice, practice being truthful and practice being non harming and saying no is a part of that lesson.
Speaker 1 00:18:24 There's a piece in this work that has, is multiple parts called Cabello mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, it describes an episode of sexual assault. Your daughter's girlfriend experienced mm-hmm <affirmative> while reading it. Um, I mean, I physically actually became a little bit upset reading this and that doesn't happen too often to me, I can compartmentalize something I'm reading, but it really kind of was very visceral and yeah, writing. This was this cathartic for you. Did you, did it help you? There's a phrase you have in the piece of how your daughter, she was unable to evaporate, evaporate, evaporate the trauma mm-hmm <affirmative> through I think cutting her hair, but she, it was just some ritual, I think, just to focus in to help go over it. Was that like, was this writing this like that for you?
Speaker 2 00:19:09 Well, when the, I mean, the poem is poem is our response to living, right? Trying to live authentically, I guess, in what you feel and think what you, you know, the word sad to, to feel, think is something that I'm trying to kind of follow in my life. When she first called me, she was living in another city. She was living in New York at the time and she said, mom, I have to tell you something bad happened. And I just felt all of the floors in my body just kind of fall to the ground. And she's like, it's okay. It's okay. You, you, you, you raise me right. She knew what to do, but it's awful. You know? So I guess what this is, is we do hear, I wrote it for myself and my own healing to try to feel what I was feeling and, and not feel completely powerless because I really wanted to go and find the guy who did it.
Speaker 2 00:20:01 And, and I wanted to hurt him too. I wanted to stop him from hurting other people, but you know, when domestic violence or sexual violence or gender based violence or any race based violence, all of these violences age based violence, they affect two people, but they also affect the community who loves those people. So I hadn't, I'd, I'd heard a lot of wonderful poems about women by written, by authors who had experienced it, but I'd never written anything by a mom. And I thought, maybe it's not appropriate for me to write this because it wasn't my experience. It's just someone I love. And it's someone who I wanted to protect. And it's someone that despite all of my efforts, I wasn't able to keep this from her life. And so I wrote it for myself and then eventually I, I, I asked her if she wanted to hear it and I shared it with her. And then she asked her girlfriend at the time, if it was okay to share and got her approval to share it. And then, but I never read in California. I actually had to, the first time I read the poem was in Florida for an AWP conference. And it was because I didn't wanna read it anywhere that anyone I knew might hear it because I thought, I wasn't sure that if in reading a difficult poem about a traumatic experience, if I might accidentally be re retraumatizing or re-injuring right.
Speaker 2 00:21:20 And <inaudible> talks about this in the end of her book, black mud, when she's like, how do you speak about racialized violence without re reenacting somehow that violence. And I think we, we, um, try to figure out how to balance, how to speak to truth, how to speak truth, to power, how to speak about the things that need to be said. So they're not held alone or privatized, but also how to be thoughtful and conscientious about how to not reproduce the pain or suffering, or even yeah. Reproduce the, the pain or suffering. I think that, you know, a lot of the things that were limiting women's lives, we weren't allowed to talk about it was seen as something happens in private. So I think making them public is important so that we can stand together for life living ilities for girls and women. So that's kind of where I went with it. And actually my daughter is also an artist, so is my son, but she ended up making a film about sexual violence herself and, and it was completely different than my poem, but all of us were kind of processing it in our own way. But how do we build a culture that is nonviolent and non harming? First of all, we have to not naturalize the repetition of these kinds of violences. We have to call them out and say, no more. This is not okay.
Speaker 1 00:22:44 Have your children, have they read through even the Milky way is undocumented. Mm-hmm
Speaker 2 00:22:49 <affirmative>
Speaker 1 00:22:49 Sure. What do they think of it?
Speaker 2 00:22:51 I I'm really lucky that my kids were on my side. Um, I had them in my mid twenties and so I was kind of young. They saw me go through a whole career in dance and choreography, and we had a community cultural center where they were, we kind of raised them with amid the arts. And of course they both became artists, but I'm lucky to, to, to have two kids that want me to keep learning and want me to have these new experiences. So I was kind of ashamed when I finally decided I really didn't wanna live without poetry and I didn't wanna live without poetry publicly. I was curious to see what poetry, what coming out in a way as a poet, uh, would feel like, cause I'd been writing poetry my whole life, but I was just what you might call it an organic poet. And I would just share with my friends and now, you know, I say I'm a poet and people who know me know I'm a poet and my kids we're really cool with that. They're like how many people have a mom who like has a, a new Renaissance later in her life? So I'm very lucky, um, that they have had patience with me and that they want their mom to have new experiences, new creative experiences, and to, to have a fulfilling life. Apart from my role as a parent,
Speaker 1 00:24:11 You were kind enough to share with me your, your next collection. You just mentioned before catastrophic malting mm-hmm <affirmative> could you read declaration for us please? Sure.
Speaker 2 00:24:21 This is so funny. This poem, uh, I was really ashamed. I was
Speaker 1 00:24:27 <laugh> you're ashamed.
Speaker 2 00:24:28 Well, okay, so this is the thing about being a poet for me. Like the poetry has more courage than I do. I'm really just kind of like the vessel and tinker. I'm like the, you know, the gremlins that come out at night with their little hammer and tries to, you know, whittle them into shape before the morning, the shoes, the poem shoes. Um, so yeah, they they're really free and I'm less free cuz I've been socialized in a society that tells me that I should behave in a certain way, but I use the poems to help me free myself. So yeah, sometimes a poem comes and I'm embarrassed of it for sure. I'm like, I can't read this. People will think I'm crazy. Um, and then of course that's what the poem is there for it's to help me loosen up is to help me keep it real.
Speaker 2 00:25:15 And usually what happens is nothing happens. I don't die. I'm not ejected off of the face of the earth and I get to keep on writing more poems <laugh> so this poem was one of them. I wrote this kind of foolishly one day and then I, I, I put it, I posted it for a moment on, uh, on Instagram and one of my friends was like, oh man, I really needed that. So it's just kind of a declaration and it opens the collection declaration, whereas the galaxy deserves better. Whereas I am a mother who is the descendant of circumstances beyond our control. Whereas I was born into a female body and have generated life. Whereas I am daughter a granddaughter, a great granddaughter. Whereas the world is a spinning disc trying to unlock mutual understanding. Whereas one must learn how to learn and keep learning. So as not to drown in ignorance, whereas I am powerful. I declare myself a living, being aware and evolving, prepared to face ugliness with a Warrior's mindset imbued with the strength of health and wisdom. So be it,
Speaker 1 00:26:52 That is one of the most honest, truthful, and emotionally mature things I have read in a very long time. I feel like this should be the first line. If they ever amend the universal bill of human rights, just I was going,
Speaker 2 00:27:05 Wait, that's playing with the structure of legislation. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:27:08 Pretty much. And that's poets are UN unacknowledged legislatures, the world. So told so
Speaker 2 00:27:13 Oh right
Speaker 1 00:27:13 On. Yeah. Uh, I was gonna ask you how you came up with this, but the thing is it's self evident and it's it's, it is what it is. And that's why I liked about that. So be it, but you actually helped me out here a bit though, Amy, cuz I was reading through the collection and then in sun you have a line saying, I began to see how the world is, all things linked in the same place. And it kind of reminded me of something I've heard before, where someone's asked. I don't know. It was someone asked like where do you think, why is there hate in the world? And the person's response, what the person's response was. It was the inability to see the interconnectivity within everything and thought are really good and it's the best kind of response I've ever heard. So I liked that and I felt it's very in line with what this declaration is. So yeah. That's my thought about that. And it's profound. I think it's, I dunno if I have a question, but just we have to acknowledge it at least and talk about it.
Speaker 2 00:28:03 Yeah. Well that poem that you mentioned, those were a series of poems that was actually first, it showed up in a, in a, the first section of the new book, catastrophic malting are just kind of a few highlights from a, a limited edition chat book that came out in the UK called endless bowls of sky. And I wrote it as ature poems during the pandemic when I was sick with COVID and it was early in the pandemic and we didn't have a vaccine yet. And the, the illness took away my, my ability to speak and made my breathing really uncomfortable. And it was so unknown that, you know, that when I was diagnosed, I was diagnosed over the, uh, online from a doctor who, and no one was going to the hospital cause everyone was so afraid. Um, people were going to the hospital who were out of completely, um, had lost control over their health.
Speaker 2 00:29:02 But I was in that in between space. If I didn't know whether I would become very ill and die or whether I would rebound and recover. And I, it was just all too unknown to know what would happen. And I thought this might be the last couple of weeks of my life. That's what I thought. So I wrote erasers and that last, so all of the erasers are erasers from a wonderful novel that everyone should read by Ben Oak Creek called the famish road. And it's a really frightening to me. It was a very frightening book, but that's how I felt. So it helped me to dwell in, um, in that space and coming to that point of, you know, I see that we're all things linked in the place is of course, all of us humans under the, you know, on a planet beneath circling the, the sun <laugh> and how absurd our, um, how absurd that it's so hard for us to see each other as one species. Yeah. The disease itself knew better.
Speaker 1 00:29:59 Thanks so much for being here. I'll write on radio with us, Amy.
Speaker 2 00:30:03 Oh, thank you for having me
Speaker 1 00:30:05 Even the Milky way. It's undocumented, it's currently out from unsolicited press, then Castro. Malting is vailable for preorder pre uh pre-release.
Speaker 2 00:30:13 Yeah. People can, it's open for pre-sale it's coming out this year with flower flower song press. And, um, I really appreciate the chance to be together and to reach new listeners and just to be with you, Josh, and to think together about what poetry can do for us. Um, it's helped me a lot and it's so close to my heart. That is a real joy just to be together and to be able to be attentive to what poetry has to say.
