&: experiments in collaborative composition
My poetry is a reflection of how I try to exist in the world. And although that energy is usually full of joy and resistance, my writing/understanding also has gaps. The poems I’m sharing here honor those gaps: the developing self-awareness of mestizos as practitioners of white supremacy. Or, how the need for connection can lead to loving people who cannot love you back. When I write with my gaps and my love, I’m trying to make something bigger, but I’m also trying to figure out what I am afraid to say. And as Cherrie Moraga says, I am trying to find the new silences to speak into. When we “collaborate” by existing, we’re trying to make sounds out of the silences.
Vickie Vértiz is the oldest child of an immigrant Mexican family. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Huizache, among many others. She is the author of Auto/Body, winner of the 2022 Sandeen Prize from the University of Notre Dame. Her first book Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut won the 2018 PEN America literary prize in poetry. A fellow of the Mellon Foundation, VONA, CantoMundo, and Macondo, Vickie teaches writing at UC-Santa Barbara. She lives on Tongva land in Los Angeles.