AWP 2019– Portland

Join Vickie for a book signing and cumbia dance party pop-up with poet Heidi Restrepo Rhodes, author of The Inheritance of Haunting at AWP.

Date and time: Friday, March 29, 2019, 3-4pm

Location: AWP book fair booth 6042: The University of Arizona Press/Latinx Caucus 

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Come through for a second event! The reading is called “The Literary Citizen: SW X NW” with fabulous writers like TC Tolbert, Elizabeth Alvarado, and more to be announced.

Date and time: Saturday, March 30, 2019, 3-5pm, FREE

Location: Rev. Nat’s Hard Cidery and Taproom, Portland, just across the river from the Convention Center.  Rev. Nat’s is brewing a Literary Citizen Cider in honor of the event.

Entropy–adding to an epic poem with epic girl drama

“Susi stopped being my best friend once she got bangs and a hickey.
Because I’ve heard her say it, I can hear her thinking: Ugh, what a wetter.
Are all your outfits from the swap meet?”

Today at Entropy, read about drama at the bus stop with a girl’s momma. Maybe it was me. You’ll never know. Big shout out to Gina Abelkopf for the chance to share.

 

(Photo: Han Link, 1970. Corner of Florence and Eastern in Bell Gardens.The Foodland parking lot where Toys R us stands now. From the City of Bell Gardens archive.)

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“Pets”– a cine poem

For those with philandering fathers or a penchant for the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, I offer you a cine poem featured on Luna Luna Magazine. Thank you, Ruben Quesada for the feature and Kenji Liu for the editing.

maria feliz

 

What You See, What You Take With You, in UCLA’s Parrafo magazine

Along with many talented writers, the awesome Sesshu Foster among them, Vickie published a poem in Parrafo magazine’s Los Angeles issue. Read an excerpt from her poem below and click the link for the whole enchilada.

 

 “What You See, What You Take With You”

AFTER MARISELA NORTE’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF LOS ANGELES

 

 

On the Broadway bus with Marisela, her French diamond  lips
Composition notebooks and fancy uñas

A chola’s drawn-in dragon eyebrows warn us at the Walmart in Pico
In my skin, Jefitos      fade blue on my chest
Donuts and doctors and acrylic tips   tiendas y más tiendas
Open a n d c l o s e d              closing
Closer, chula
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…

 

Visit the magazine to read the full poem.

Swallows Book Release Parties, Bay Area, June 7-9th

Come celebrate the official release of Swallows, my poetry collection just out from Finishing Line Press.

Friday, June 7th
ScholarMatch & McSweeney’s offices, 849 Valencia Street at 19th St., from 7-8 pm
Featuring Maya Chinchilla, Emilie Coulson, Kenji Liu, Aimee Suzara and special guests.

Saturday, June 8
At Aimee Suzara’s Finding the Bones book release
Eastwind Books, 2066 University Ave, Berkeley from 5-7 pm.

Sunday, June 9
At Arisa White’s A Penny Saved book release
Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, from 7:30-9 pm.

The first book release party was on:
Saturday, May 18th from 12 pm- 3 pm at North Legg Lake, hosted by South El Monte Arts Posse, Aimee Suzara, Kenji Liu, and myself for poems about sassy family pets, lucky cereal bits and being broke in college, with cameos from flying girls.
bookbday-01
I will also be reading in the San Francisco Bay Area on:

The Next Big Thing- Swallows

First I’d like to thank Arisa White for inviting me to be a part of The Next Big Thing, a blog-tagging project for writers who recently published a book. Arisa’s latest collection, A Penny Saved, is a riveting example of her multi-faceted, brilliant poetry.

What is the title of your book?


Swallows

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?


“I’m named after my sister, a ghost for whom our mother makes birthday cakes
Out of Styrofoam discs, a name I make up another life for
every day.”

(from “Tocaya,” the first poem in the collection)

What genre does your book fall under?

Swallows is a collection of narrative poems, a short story in each of them.

Where did the idea come from for the book?


The poems were written over many years and were not conceived together.
When I organized the poems chronologically (as in, when they occurred in my life), I noticed an arc. I saw an abridged hero’s journey that emerged naturally from the work.

Although the poems are mostly autobiographical, I do take some flights of fancy. As a poetry teacher recently told me, “Poetry is nonfiction,” and so this book is as well.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?


It took ten years to complete the poems, and during that time I took classes with Willie Perdomo, Ruth Forman, and Lorna Dee Cervantes to work on many of the poems you’ll find in the book. I’m still making last minute changes to the manuscript.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

In college, I took a class organized by a friend called “Women of Color in the United States.” One assignment was to read excerpts from Loving in the War Years. It was then that I found the words I needed as a Chicana to describe the world around me. In this sense, Swallows began after reading that book. When it first came out (and even today), Cherríe’s writing broke through so many social, cultural, and literary barriers. Cherríe has said that she started to write to save her life; writing from the silences in my own life has also saved me, and the poems in this book come from that place.

Who will publish your book?


The publisher is Finishing Line Press in Kentucky. The book is available for pre-sale here and will arrive in mailboxes in May 2013.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?


Given that the poems were written over a decade, I did a lot of reading that influenced the writing. Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes stands out because the voice in her poems affirmed the feminism I practiced in my community and in my writing.

Once I was organizing the collection last year for publication, I was further influenced by reading Bring Down the Little Birds by Carmen Gimenez-Smith. This lyric memoir provided a concept that helped arrange my poems into vignettes about enduring grief, remembering being loved by the men in my family, and coming back to myself.

I also have to mention fellow poet Aida Salazar who first turned me on to the VONA writing workshops. Because of her and my writing group with Maya Chinchilla, Aimee Suzara, Lisa Marie Rollins, and Kenji Liu, my writing has grown in leaps and bounds.

And if I’m lucky and my brain grows a garden, I hope to write poems like Arisa White someday.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?


The characters in this book include composite versions of my younger brothers, parents, ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, and my half-sister whom I’ve never met. If I had my way and could go back in time, to play my parents I would ask Lupe Ontiveros and Charles Bronson who would have been ideal, may they rest in piece.

For the part of my brothers, I would wave a magic wand and create tan, Chicano (read: expressive) versions of Keanu Reeves and Paul Dano. For the exes, Jack Black and Eva Longoria (for that is indeed the community service range of dating I have done).

To play a version of me in the book, Melonie Diaz would bring the sass needed to hold it down. Finally, I’d cast an early Jennifer Lopez to be the half-sister I’ve never met; she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The poems are funny, incisive, and illustrate how a family remembers that forgiveness is a great
healing salve for grief. And even though this family is Mexican, New Wave, and working class in Los Angeles, all families can relate to that journey.

An excerpt from the first poem of the collection, “Tocaya”:

Victoria – I don’t blame you for not staying
It was pure mean-ugly girls through high school
Throbbing lack in college
But grad school made me a carpenter
I have a Master’s Degree in Leaving
Our lineage proud I will always have a job

This is what I know of your face
A pen mark across your feet in yellowed photos
You in a baby carrier, a marigold tablecloth, our turquoise kitchen
waiting for you to run out of breath

The next writers I tag in this project are:
Lisa Marie Rollins
Kenji Liu
Aimee Suzara
Rachelle Cruz

Look for updates about their recent projects next week!

KPFA with Luis Rodriguez and Ching-In Chen, Tuesday, February 11, 2013

Tune in to KPFA 94.1 FM, the Bay Area’s Pacifica station, next Tuesday for “Pinay Poet on Setting the Standard.” Vickie will join award-winning Luis Rodriguez (ALWAYS RUNNING); Lee Herrick (GARDENING SECRETS OF THE DEAD), and Ching-In Chen (THE HEART’S TRAFFIC). They’ll discuss getting their work into the world as writers and cultural workers. They will also read from their most recent publications.

To listen the next day at your convenience, go here or to kpfa.org find “Setting the Standard.”

Riverside Youth Opportunity Center Open Mic

Join me as I host the Youth Opportunity Center Open Mic this Friday, December 7, 4-6 PM.

Come witness the artistic talents of some of Riverside’s most gifted young people.

 2060 University Avenue, Riverside, California 92507