 "Photo: Courtesy of Sarah Gambito")
Sarah Gambito, author of “Matadora” and the upcoming “Delivered,” is the current director of creative writing at Fordham University. Gambito is also the co-founder and executive director of Kundiman, a non-profit organization dedicated to the creation and promotion of Asian American poetry. Gambito made an appearance at the Kundiman Poets edition of the Poets Out Loud series on Oct. 8. She read six poems at the event, including “For My Attention,” “Hunger” and a newly revealed poem titled “Father.” The Observer sat down with Gambito to find out more about her writing, Kundiman and Internet poetics.
Observer: What was your life like growing up, and how did it affect your poetry writing?
Sarah Gambito: I think that my mother always read to my sister and [me]. I think that when I first started to read, what I heard was her voice. My household was a bilingual household, but she didn’t speak to me in Tagalog. But somehow, it was always in the ether. The sounds that I understood and didn’t understand became this way of negotiating what kind of poetry I’m interested in now. It’s kind of that positioning that interests me in kind of experimenting with language and thinking about its possibilities.
Observer: How and why did you begin to write poetry?
SG: I didn’t really start writing seriously until I was a senior in high school. Part of it was that I had a short attention span. I also liked this idea of this extreme attention to the word itself and this idea that you can sort of filter between ecstasy and dread and dream within the space of four words. That kind of philosophy began to fascinate me.
Observer: How did your experiences at Brown University and the University of Virginia affect you?
SG: I feel that Brown and UVA, aesthetically, were really different. At UVA, I studied with Charles Wright and Rita Dove. It was sort of more the narrative idea of poetics. Brown was completely experimental. In that sense, it gave me this ability to experiment with how I wanted to find my own voice with writing.
Observer: What are some major themes of your poetry?
SG: Right now, immigration. [“Delivered”] is all about immigration. There’s a theme of femininity and the responsibilities that come attendant with that. Also, there’s an idea of post-colonial, hybridized identity, which is what we’re looking at in terms of an American population.
Observer: What are some experiences that have informed your work?
SG: Teaching informs my work. I’m inspired by my students, by how brave they are. It helps me continually test myself and push myself. I try to just be as still as I can in the city. If you can do that, it’s almost impossible for poems not to come to you.
Observer: Why did you decide to read those six specific poems tonight?
SG: I just got the galley of my second book, and I’m just excited about it. I wanted to hear it come together here at Fordham. Debuting these poems sort of prefigures when the book will come out in January.
Observer: Similarly, how do you decide which work to include in your books? What’s the editing process like?
SG: It’s different from project to project. With “Delivered,” I was thinking about various instances of that word and how it related to the project of immigration, this idea of being delivered, being saved, also of being shunted forward as an object, as commodified. Each different movement reflects a different instance of how I was thinking about that word. In “Matadora,” I organized those poems along the order of a bullfight. It follows what happens first in a bullfight, what happens second and then the liberation of the bull at the end.
Observer: To you, what is the power of poetry? What do you hope to achieve through your poetry?
SG: I think different poems have different agendas. I think sometimes what I would like them to do is not what they’re doing. To say that is also untrue because they’re a part of me. What I hope at some level is that it gives a voice to peoples and languages that are unspoken. It opens up an idea of dialogue, which can lead to understanding and an idea of empathy.
Observer: I understand that your current research is on post-modern U.S. immigration via Internet-based poetics. For people with no background in this sort of research, how would you explain what that is?
SG: I want to experiment with form, not just on the page but on the Internet as well. I was experimenting with various avatars and what I can say through them and not through myself poetically.
Observer: What courses are you currently teaching this semester, and what would students get out of these courses?
SG: I’m teaching The Writer’s Craft and a graduate course called Lyric, Silence and Sound. They’re both at [Fordham College at] Rose Hill. The Writer’s Craft is an introduction class to creative writing. It’s three genres: fiction, poetry and playwriting. A lot of it is a combination of workshop and intensive free writing exercises, which I facilitate. Lyric, Silence and Sound is an exploration of lyric from different vantage points, such as musical lyric, on-the-page lyric and also the spoken word. I’m more on the page, but I also brought a spoken work poet in. And later on this semester, I’m bringing in a hip-hop MC. It’s this idea of how can we conceive of growing understanding and rigor of lyric.
Observer: Do you know what courses you’ll be teaching for next semester?
SG: I’m teaching both a Close Reading class and an Intro. to Poetry class at [Fordham College at] Lincoln Center.
Observer: What inspired you to start Kundiman?
SG: I think it’s hard to write in a vacuum and that you need constellations to find your way. One can sit around and say, I wish this was around, but at some point, that’s rhetoric. I think you have to believe, and you have to do something to make that belief workable. Kundiman was a very practical venture. It was inspired in the sense that, as a writer myself, I needed it. Although I’m staff, I feel like I learn as much from the faculty. It’s just everything and more than I thought it would be. It’s a family of poets. It’s hard work to keep writing poems, and so you need people around you who can help you along your way.
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