Online Floricanto: Writing From Our Immigrant Hearts

Immigrants: Poetry Brain-Drain Out of Europe, Asia, America

Michael Sedano  

Northeast Los Angeles' venerable arts hub, Avenue 50 Studio, represents some of the most creative painters in California. The multifaceted gallery regularly reaffirms its reputation as a vital center for poetry readings, most recently this past Sunday when the gallery, with Moderator Thelma T. Reyna, hosted Writing from Our Immigrant Hearts.

Sunday's panel of poets illustrates the vital gifts immigrants bring to U.S. culture. Reyna's guidance leads listeners through a thoughtful seminar on immigration poetry and human decency. The discussion lays superb context for beautiful readings that generate a spirited Q&A. Look for the third and fourth communion of these poets in early 2024. Cultural organizers will want to study how a "regular" poetry reading becomes a significant cultural event for its audience.

The Moderator encourages each individual to share intimate insights into her personal story and voyage into the present. A rapt audience leans in to hear and listen closely. Despite no PA, the gallery's acoustics are suitable; it's that each poet's expression is flavored with the sounds of their first language and the audience delights in the aural banquet while adjusting Unitedstatesian ears.

Diversity on the panel challenges stereotypic ideas about immigrants. These poets started their moves from Spain, Italy, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Teresa Mei Chuc flees her homeland with incredible hardship. The other poets arrive as adults with middle-class confidence to soften the psychic shock of making peace with their new place in the world.

Immigration demands change, displacement, degrees of anomie, silliness. These adaptations nurture and perhaps injure a soul in the process of adjusting and changing into a person of a new local culture. Reyna's insightful questioning guides the panel into profound insights as well as a few good immigrant chuckles.

Poetry gives voice to a single poet's thoughts that inescapably mirror thoughts and experiences shared with other immigrant voices. These poets speak as outsiders, spectators in their new world. Each has seven minutes to craft an ethos and an insight. Their poems express heightened awareness of place, of fitting in, of moving on. Change exacts at times profound hurt, as one poem grieves castaway memories and the absence of everything remembered.

La Bloga-Tuesday happily shares work from the event. Look for announcement of the next readings here.

 Teresa Mei Chuc

Immigration

It is October, when the winds of Autumn blow strong in 
the Pacific.

There are over two thousand of us, sardines,
barely human and starving. We sleep on the floor and
wash ourselves with seawater. People are sick.
When someone dies from sickness, s/he is wrapped
in a blanket and tossed overboard during a Buddhist
chant.

I was only two years old and cannot recollect the dying
next to me, nor can I recollect my constant coughing nor
can I recall seeing my mother’s worried countenance as she
contemplated our future, how my constant crying made
her want to jump overboard. 

 Alicia Viguer-Espert

April

Pigeons take cover under a red awning, 
a lone seagull, far away from home, 
sits with them in convivial silence.
The scent from citrus blossoms and
honeysuckle mixes with damp soil,
everything is quiet but by nightingales
triumphantly singing the anthem of April.
 
Jasmine flowers open their five arms
to welcome all, and I ask myself, 
how should I greet this season, 
what rains should I use to wash 
my soul’s debris, how can I sit 
in convivial silence with strangers 
from another tribe, honor their ways, 
what luminosity can I generate, 

how should I live my life in April?

 

Toti O'Brien

Commuting

And the surface so thick not just Jesus

but everyone could have walked on water.

 

Psychedelic colors that veered from teal

to purple to pink.

 

It would last, said the captain, less than

an hour.

 

Close your eyes and hang to the rope.

Don’t mind the prickly feeling.

(You should have worn gloves).

 

Close your eyes.

Don’t mind the smell of sardines.

It’s the cargo.

 

It will stick to your nostrils for days.

Better than the fumes of petroleum.

 

Crossing will be smooth, he

said, like a freshly pressed shirt.

 

You’ll arrive before you know.

Your card will be stamped

and you will begin to forget.

 

Like a morsel of bread

crumbling in a pocket.

 

Like a bundle of hair removed

from your brush, released

into the wind.

Lisbeth Coiman

Immigration Status: Grieving

Humanity lost in the dossier Documents of birth applications and fees

Pero sin papeles para el luto

Without the therapy of a funeral No six-feet deep burials Dressed in black
Next to a casket

Mourning forever

Grieving in the distance No visas for grieving

 

Meet the Panel

MODERATOR:

Thelma T. Reyna is an author, editor, and book publisher, the founder and owner of Golden Foothills Press, in Pasadena, CA, one of the few literary indie book presses in the U.S. owned and operated by a Latina. Her poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction have collectively earned 22 national and international book awards from 2010-2022. She has written 6 books—a short story collection, 2 poetry chapbooks, 2 full-length poetry collections, and a memoir in poetry; and has edited 4 anthologies of poetry and prose, collectively comprising the works of over 200 authors from California and across the U.S. Dr. Reyna served as Poet Laureate in Altadena, CA, in 2014-2016. She was a Pushcart Prize Nominee in Poetry in 2017. 

PANELISTS:

Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. Born in Rome, living in Los Angeles, she is an artist, musician and dancer. She is the author of Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020); An Alphabet of Birds (Moonrise, 2020); In Her Terms (Cholla Needles, 2021); Pages of a Broken Diary (Pski’s Porch, 2022); The Past, Ineffable (Cholla Needles, 2023); Odd Arcana  (Cholla Needles, 2023); and Alter Alter (Elyssar Press, 2023). In addition to her poetry and nonfiction, Toti is also a musician, dancer, jewelry designer and creator, and textile artist. She is also the author of a new collection of short stories titled Alter, Alter, to be published in 2024.

Alicia Viguer-Espert born and raised in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, Spain, lives in Los Angeles. She is a three-time Nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Her work has been published in journals, print media, and anthologies, such as Colorado Boulevard, Lummox Anthology, Altadena Poetry Review, Panoply, Soul-Lit, Amethyst Review, and Spectrum Publications. She is author of 3 chapbooks: To Hold a Hummingbird; Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea; and 4 in 1. She is included in “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” “Ten Poets to Watch in 2018,” and “Bards of Southern California: Top 30 Poets,” by Spectrum.

Teresa Mei Chuc was born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam and fled her Vietnamese homeland with her mother and brother shortly after the American war in Việt Nam,  spending three and a half months in a freight boat stranded in the South China Sea before being rescued. Teresa is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Invisible Light (2018); Keeper of the Winds (2014); and Red Thread (2012). Her poetry chapbook, Incidental Takes, was published by Hummingbird Press in 2023. She teaches literature and writing at a public school in Los Angeles. Teresa was Co-Poet Laureate in Altadena, CA in 2018-2020.Lisbeth Coiman

As a bilingual poet, Lisbeth Coiman  seeks to create awareness about the human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis afflicting her homeland, Venezuela, and those she holds dear to her heart. She identifies herself as a brown woman who speaks the languages of the colonizers of the Americas, crossing over intersections of race, gender, mental health, and immigration. Coiman has wandered the immigration path from Venezuela, to Canada, to USA, leaving pieces of her heart scattered in the places she’s lived. She lives in California, where she teaches literacy skills and English as a Second Language to adult migrants.