An Interview with Amy Uyematsu
In celebration of her What Books Press title published in spring of 2022 and as a promotional notice during National Poetry Month, members of the press and its intern interviewed Amy Uyematsu, an exchange conducted by email in March of 2022. Amy is a sansei (third-generation Japanese American) poet and teacher from Los Angeles, California. She taught high school math for a number of years and has been active in Asian American Studies since it first emerged in the late 60s. Uyematsu has six published collections - the most recent being That Blue Trickster Time (What Books Press, 2022). Her new collection addresses topics such as Asian American history and identity as well as contemporary American issues. Her other books include Basic Vocabulary (2016); The Yellow Door (2015); Stone Bow Prayer (2005); Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain (1997); and 30 Miles from J-Town (1992), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. In 1971 she co-edited the influential Roots: An Asian American Reader, which has been used in classrooms for fifty years.
In celebration of her What Books Press title published in spring of 2022 and as a promotional notice during National Poetry Month, members of the press and its intern interviewed Amy Uyematsu, an exchange conducted by email in March of 2022. Amy is a sansei (third-generation Japanese American) poet and teacher from Los Angeles, California. She taught high school math for a number of years and has been active in Asian American Studies since it first emerged in the late 60s. Uyematsu has six published collections - the most recent being That Blue Trickster Time (What Books Press, 2022). Her new collection addresses topics such as Asian American history and identity as well as contemporary American issues. Her other books include Basic Vocabulary (2016); The Yellow Door (2015); Stone Bow Prayer (2005); Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain (1997); and 30 Miles from J-Town (1992), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. In 1971 she co-edited the influential Roots: An Asian American Reader, which has been used in classrooms for fifty years.
How would you say that your new work in That Blue Trickster Time is a different kind of work than in your 2005 Copper Canyon volume, Stone Bow Prayer?
The big difference is my getting older – That Blue Trickster Time was written over fifteen years after Stone Bow Prayer. Since 2005 I was diagnosed with cancer – in 2010 and recently in 2021; I became a grandmother, twice, to two wonderful boys; and I had my 70th birthday, which even in America’s ’50 is the new 30’ culture certifies me as old. Several poems in the new book are dedicated to older women. It also reflects a deeper level of spirituality that, for me, has come with age. That Blue Trickster Time was also written during the Trump and Covid-19 years, so some of the poems reflect the deepening political and racial divides in America, including the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes since 2020. This collection addresses more political issues than Stone Bow Prayer. Is there a poem in your new book that came to you as a surprise or perhaps one that had been in a shape that had not been working but had found its energy in an unexpected line or direction? Several come to mind, but the poem that had been in various draft forms was the long piece on Manzanar, the concentration camp that my dad’s family was sent to in 1942. I’d wanted to do a longer poem in 36 sections, based on one of my favorite Japanese woodblock artists, Hokusai, who’s well known for his “36 Views of Mt. Fuji.” The Manzanar experience has so many facets to it, and I found that looking at it from 36 ‘views’ enabled me to combine historical fact and my family’s experiences at Manzanar. If you were to compile anew or otherwise change or re-think Roots: An Asian American Reader today, what might some of those changes be? Actually, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center is planning on doing a digitized version of the original Roots, to celebrate its 50th anniversary (as of 2021). In our editors’ meetings, we felt that so many of the issues Roots addressed are still present today. Of course, there have been many changes within the Asian American communities since Roots was published – the most obvious change is the large increase in our population; when Roots came out in 1971, Asian Americans comprised about one-half of one percent as compared to today’s seven percent. The other major change is that Asians now come from nearly twenty countries from East and Southeast Asia as well as the Indian subcontinent. So, I’m sure a new Roots would be very different. What is one memory from working on that 1971 collection that still stands out? In 1971 Asian American Studies was just beginning – at UCLA the Asian American Studies Center officially opened in the fall of 1969. We young editors were all inexperienced when it comes to putting a book together. The field of Asian American Studies was brand new, and we wanted to provide a textbook for those early classes. One of my fondest memories was the fact that we were completely on our own – no one telling us what to do – and we got to include articles, interviews, political statements, etc., that we felt were important. We had total creative independence. What Books Press is associated with Los Angeles, which is important to its writers and editors. What does it mean to you to be an LA writer? I’m a third-generation Angeleno. My grandparents and parents lived in Pasadena and Montebello, and I grew up in Sierra Madre and have lived in LA throughout my adulthood. So, for me, being an LA writer is closely connected to my being a third-generation Japanese American with deep roots in the greater LA area. Japanese Americans have a rich history in LA. My first book’s title, 30 Miles from J-Town, was based on the fact that Little Tokyo (“J-town”) was an important business and cultural center for Japanese families throughout Southern California. It still is – only now we’re into the fifth and sixth generation of Japanese Americans. When you first started out as a poet, submitting poems to magazines, it was true that the poetry editors of those well-known magazines were all men of a certain generation. How did your knowledge of that publishing situation make you feel as a young sansei writer? When I first started submitting poems, I didn’t know anything about lit journals and magazines. I was a high school math teacher, and I didn’t begin submitting work until I was in my thirties. As time went on, I did get the feeling that the only work editors would publish were poems on Asian American themes – that my other work was not considered. So, in that respect, I felt pigeon-holed. Yet when I submitted my first manuscript to Story Line Press, whose editor Robert McDowell was white and a few years younger than me, I was chosen for the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. The collection was largely Asian American in theme. And I think that’s what made it stand out from other submissions. This was in 1992 when there still weren’t that many Asian American poets. You are confronting a significant health crisis. With several of your poems acknowledging, as a way of putting it, the strangeness of the body—I’m thinking of “Before,” “The Fold,” and “Unexpected Passage” in your Copper Canyon book—how has the vessel of the body either become more intimate to you or more estranged? In 2010, I had my first diagnosis of breast cancer and found myself writing poems about my body. The poems included 31 poems written after each of my 31 days of radiation. Several of those cancer poems appeared in my fifth book, Basic Vocabulary. What was different then was the fact that I had stage 2 cancer and was ‘cancer-free’ for the next ten years. Now, in 2022, I’m dealing with stage 4 breast cancer. This new book was accepted for publication before my diagnosis in May, 2021. And given the different nature of my illness, I haven’t been able to write poems about the body. Perhaps, I am feeling more estranged from my body knowing what I am facing. I actually think about my body every day – how I’m reacting to my meds, pain, mobility, etc. – more than ever before, but I’m not motivated to write any poems about what I’m going through. If one of your poems was to be placed in a jar and buried for a thousand years, which poem would it be? That’s a difficult question. I don’t really have favorite poems. But I might say “Nursery Rhyme for Chris” – which I wrote for my son, or “A Mother’s Day Poem to Myself,” also a poem for my son when he left for college. I also have a piece that I often read – “On Poets” – which is dedicated to poets. Besides your fellow Angelenos or even, more broadly, Californians, who are the poets you return to when you want to reset your poetry stars? My go-to poets are Pablo Neruda, Native American poets like Linda Hogan, and Asian American poets like Lawson Inada and Marilyn Chin. One of my favorite California poets is Juan Felipe Herrera. After years of being involved in activism, what has been the most important thing you’ve learned? Learning to think independently and critically and to listen to one’s voice and to what you know as true. As a Japanese American and former activist of the 60s-70s, I’ve been fortunate to be able to use poetry to confront issues like racism and war. In Basic Vocabulary, the opening poem is a long anti-war piece. With my early experiences in ethnic studies, I’ve learned how important it is to tell the true history and identity of Asian Americans from our point-of-view; and poetry has been a vehicle which allows me to do this. In addition, I feel it’s important to speak out as a woman and more particularly, as a woman of color. Whether I talk about how older women become invisible or how Asian American women are fetishized, I consider these important topics which sometimes find their way into my poems. Has being a math teacher for so many years kept your sharp as a poet? Some of the most enjoyable poems I’ve written are math-related. Ever since the nineties, I found myself writing about math themes. In Algebra 2 classes I’d be discussing ideas like infinity, zero, irrational numbers. Stone Bow Prayer included math poems like “The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem” or “When Geometry Gets Mixed Up with God and the Alphabet.” In subsequent books I’ve included math poems, including “In Praise of the Irrational” in my latest book. Whether being a math teacher has kept me sharp as a poet, hmmm – I think learning to survive the classroom with five classes a day of 30-40 teen-aged students forces one to be sharp. Maybe some of that had an impact on my poetry. Interviewed conducted by Kevin Cantwell and Michaela Shirley |