Episode 137 Notes and Links to Vanessa Angélica Villarreal ’s Work
On Episode 137 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and the two discuss, among other topics, Vanessa’s upbringing, her bond with her beloved grandmother, religion and indigenous traditions in her family and in her communities, punishing and overbearing institutions that oppressed her as a student, finding solace in books and poetry and bands, and ideas both historical and personal that inform her standout poetry collection.
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. She is the author of the award-winning collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series 2017), recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award nomination, and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, Oxford American, POETRY, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she is working on a poetry and nonfiction collection while raising her son. Her essay collection, CHUECA, is forthcoming from Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in 2023. Find her on Twitter @Vanessid.
Buy Beast Meridian
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal's Website
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal's Wikipedia Page
Review of Beast Meridian for Pleiades Magazine
At about 2:35, Vanessa talks about beginning to read at a young age, and how her dad’s music compelled her to read liner notes and still informs her writing
At about 3:30, Vanessa talks about childhood bilingualism and some early writing based on the loss of her beloved grandmother
At about 4:40, Vanessa describes the resultant grief and rebellion after her grandmother’s death, as well as how her mistreatment in school led her to be part of a backwards educational/carceral experience
At about 7:35, Vanessa discusses grunge and other 90s music-”angsty” and “against the Man”-and how they led her on a path to poetry
At about 8:30, Vanessa describes Paul Celan as an inspiration for critiquing language in rebellious and “seek the haunted”
At about 9:35, Vanessa talks about how her poetry career took a pause as she began to work long hours at an early age
At about 11:20, Pete cites the famous quote about “art being a luxury” and Angelica adds that she considers it a birthright”
At about 12:30, Pete and Vanessa fanboy and girl about the previously-mentioned musicians, and Vanessa cites these creatives as “Romantics” and writers of beautiful and “strange” lyrics
At about 15:00, Vanessa responds to Pete’s questions about where her musical/lyrical sensibilities were born, and she expands on ideas of repetition and prayer derived from her father
At about 16:50, Vanessa speaks of “writing toward the body” in a lot of her work, “creating an understanding of the body”; she compares this writing to a chord change
At about 18:20, Vanessa highlights her father as “an intuitive composer” and his facility with sound and writing
At about 21:20, Vanessa discusses inspirational and formative writers in her writing journey, including Celan, Aase Berg, Harmony Holliday, Ronaldo Wilson & Duriel Harris & Dawn Lundy Martin (The Black Took Collective), and Jennifer Tamayo
At about 25:10, Vanessa discusses the implications and subtleties of nomenclature around Chicanx/Latinx/Mexican-American identities
At about 26:30, Pete asks Vanessa about the implications of the term pocha and Malinche and ideas of women as traitors is discussed
At about 30:15, Vanessa gives background on the famous quote by José Vasconselos
At about 33:10, The two begin discussing Beast Meridian; Pete compliments Vanessa’s original use of verbs
At about 34:40, Pete’s question about the poet as s
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