Inside the Writing MindA talk with Luisa Igloria - On writing and her latest poetry collectionRochita Loenen-Ruiz“Come back to yourself and believe in what you have to say. Believe in your voice. Trust the sound of your voice.”
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“Tell me what I’ll find, in this early period It is not everyday that one gets to speak with a writer who in her lifetime has received so many awards and recognitions that recounting all of them would make this column extraneous. Being one of those people who is a bit scared of literary poets because their poetry might be over my head, I found myself delighted by Luisa Igloria’s latest collection. Published by WordTech communications, Trill and Mordent captures the imagination and touches the soul of the reader. Here we see the poet revealed in words, in portraits and images that inspire us to think beautiful thoughts. The poetry in Trill and Mordent, is reflective of the spirit of the times. It is poetry that feeds the soul with lines that are almost mythic as well as lyrical. Perhaps it has to do with the writer’s own roots and with her inner life. Talking about the poems in Trill and Mordent, Luisa Igloria says that most of these poems were written in the post 9-11 climate. She had been invited to write an essay for the anthology To Mend The World: Women Reflect on 9/11, edited by Marjorie Agosin and Betty-Jean Craige (White Pine Press, 2002) that led her to think about the climate of terror and anxiety that we live in. It made her reflect on our relationship to beauty and happiness, and to the things that are the opposite of terror and anxiety. The title poem, Trill and Mordent, was partly triggered by an incident in Baltimore and West Virginia wherein a father and son carried on sniper attacks and went on a killing rampage. Trill and Mordent becomes a metaphor for the things that befall us, seemingly at random: “a rifle angled through the window of a van, aimed at any head smooth as the next one” -from “Trill and Mordent,” Luisa Igloria- When she wrote the poem “Trill and Mordent,” she had no idea that it would end up as the title poem for her book. Raised as the only daughter of a lawyer and a stay-at-home mom, Luisa relates that her parents wanted her to choose either law or music as a career. She was named after a pianist whom her parents admired and she started piano lessons at an early age. Her musical background is reflected in the lines of the title poem, Trill and Mordent. Here she says: “Accidentals are symbols that change the pitch with just the slightest touch of dissonance” Further on, the reader almost hears notes falling on the ear, “Ascending or descending they become appoggiatura – trills or mordents. The trills are as random birdsong strewn over a field. The mordents slip down enough to remind me of their root in morbid things, in falling in death. The French, too remind us how in pleasure the body dies a little: la petite mort.” -from “Trill and Mordent” - When choosing Trill and Mordent as the title for her book, the image that gripped her was of “the spiked tops of notes which are like little bayonets.” She then went on to speak about the related roots of the musical term “mordent,” and words like “morbid” and “mortal;” the poem also refers to a French phrase, an idiom representing something pleasurable. It interested her that different words could contain the references to opposing things. Luisa: “Trill and Mordent has to do with control and how much we control circumstances. How do we control whatever befalls us? How do we shape it, how do we approach those things that have the effect of anxiety upon us? Does it affect our need to have or create beauty or pleasure in our lives?” To her own question, she replies, “No, it doesn’t. Anxiety and terror do not diminish our desire for beauty or for things it might represent.” In Trill and Mordent, the beliefs which she grew up with find resonance in poems such as “Trousseau” where she talks about the rituals of a marriage ceremony, and “Dialogue with the Body,” which is inspired by burial rituals in the Cordillera region of the Philippines. Her strong predisposition to belief rather than towards its opposite has its roots in animism, wherein interconnectedness is so much a part of the culture. She refers to the popular Tagalog saying, “Sakit sa kalingkingan, sakit sa buong katawan” (“What ails the little finger is the ailment of the entire body”). Talking about her beginnings, Luisa remembers her mother giving her the book Magnificence, short stories written by Estrella Alfon, when she was in the first grade. It was Alfon’s clear eye, her attention to the precise details of daily life that created an impression on the young Luisa. While she was doing her graduate work in Chicago, she came into contact with the late Carlos Angeles, who was also a source of inspiration. He became one of her closest literary readers and she developed a mentoring kind of friendship with him up till the time of his death. Today, Luisa teaches Creative Writing, Poetry Workshops, Asian American Literature, and Women’s Literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. In her teaching, she likes to create new ways of thinking about writers and their work. Luisa: “Writers who fall in between (categories), writers in interstitial places, people who are products of hybrid experiences, express themselves in different ways.” “While there might be a certain usefulness to labels, they can also have an insulating effect. People are always changing and imposing labels causes us to miss the exciting nuances that are taking place in a person’s place and life.” She believes that every writer should be open to other things in order to extend their voice and the range of material that they already have. Because she did not cut her teeth in a writing program, she finds it “kind of strange having to teach, and having to lead a workshop program.” At the same time, she feels her background gives her a certain freedom. As a writer and a teacher, she is not bound by the workshop culture that other people might feel a certain loyalty to. Luisa: “The community of writers, even if in an academic setting, can be a friendly space. It can be a place where the writer can go and share his or her writing and get feedback that feeds the creative process. Nevertheless, there is more than one way to write and if there is one thing to be learned about getting into a writing program it is being able to return to a sense of your own voice, to be able to trust that voice and to know what you want to achieve in terms of your writing. Over and above all the advice you get, bear in mind that you cannot please everybody.” So, does a published poet, and a multi-awarded writer ever experience rejection? “Yes,” she says. “A lot of times. But it is part of the process. If anyone wants to be a serious writer and is interested in the business of publishing – getting their work out there – rejection is part of the picture. There are so many venues that it is difficult to have a grasp of what every editor is looking for.” “It does hurt,” she says, “but by now, I’ve learned not to take them personally.” Part of the process is getting up, sticking the manuscript in another envelope and sending it back out again. With Trill and Mordent, Luisa hopes that there will be something in the collection that will speak to the readers and to their own experiences as well. She says, “all that any writer can really hope to do is to reach somebody.” And so, we continue to write. For a sampling of poems from Trill and Mordent, visit Luisa’s website Trill and Mordent is also available from: WordTech Editions
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