Q&A with Matt Blesse

Edited by Molly Higgins and Hatty Lee / Photograph by Astra Kim

Hatty Lee got a chance to chat with poet Matt Blesse over the phone about his work with the API spoken word artists collective ReWrite. For the full story, click here.

Hatty: How did you get involved in the ReWrite and the APIA Spoken Word Poetry Summit? What drew you in? What was your motivation to be a part of these?

Matt: The planning for the summit in 2009 that was held in the Bay Area was a two-year process. I actually came into it about a year already gone through. I heard about it through my good friend Pattie Cariño … She mentioned it, and I was like, ‘Whoa that sounds amazing’ … The ReWrite came out of that. Like a year later, finally recovering [laughs] from being burnt out of organizing that huge event, there was definitely an underlying sentiment amongst some of the previous organizers that we should create something local.

So one of the mission statements of The ReWrite is to seeing how our words can create change. How do you personally see art creating change(s)?

I think spoken word is a platform where folks can really dialog with honesty … One big thing that we try to stay conscious of in our organizing is – especially [because] we are a very young collective right now – ‘How are we providing for whatever needs there may be, material, spiritual, mental or physical, of the folks we are working, building and interacting with?’ … It’s facilitating ways in which that energy can lead to concrete transformation.

[Spoken word] also creates a cultural shift in direct opposition to the values of the oppressive system, like individualism, and the ways we are taught to come up with solutions based on coming up with one and only one right correct answer. Creativity creates that cultural shift.

So it’s not purely art for art’s sake. What would you say to some people who think that taking stance on any issues like values and having conscious as a propaganda? When people ask, ‘Why is it so angry?’ ‘Why can’t it be just flowery language and poetry?’

I experienced lot of disempowerment in my life as an Asian American and as a Korean American. To not feel the need to speak out against power often times comes from a place of privilege, not being present in situations of disempowerment or engaging with power structures on an everyday basis as someone who’s oppressed …

A lot of what I’m hearing is that we speak from and write about our personal experiences. How do you feel that your identity, the ways you identify yourself, influence your work?

I’ve been trying to play with this idea recently that the poetry that speaks to me the most is this counter-intuitive thing; the more personal the poetry is the more relatable and universal. So I really shifted from talking about issues in a detached way, and I’ve been trying to write more about my past and how that affects where I’m currently at and where I’m trying to go …

At the ReWrite, Jason Bayani’s a great example in that every single one of his poems is a beautiful, beautiful story. And I think the story and the emotions of that story and the small human details make it really relatable for me, even though my experience is nothing like Jason’s.

If you can do anything with your work, with your art, what would that be? Anything in the world!

The thing that I really find the most happiness in is providing and facilitating spaces for others to also engage in spoken word. I’m really kind of a lazy poet. I don’t write much [laughs]. But something that I’m always thinking of and working on a lot more is trying to create spaces for others to realize their own voices and for others to write poems and strengthen that. Yeah, and to teach me also how to do that. That’s the cool thing about poetry. It’s not, ideally, this interaction in which energy goes from one direction to another. It’s more symbiotic, more circular than that. Even in the act of teaching poetry, you are learning about yourself.

What are your hopes and dreams for The ReWrite and the bigger APIA writing community? Where do you see The ReWrite and the poetry summit taking off in the next five years?

My main concern, and at the same time my main hope, is that it’s something that it will be relevant and engaging with the APIA community and the greater community. I was just in Detroit, and the really amazing thing that I saw was that they were so responsible to the needs of the folks that were living in that city, whether through gardening/farming or through fighting to keep people’s homes.

OK, so we as poets have this great tool of voices, blah blah blah. But if everyone is unable to participate, if people are dealing with gentrification, if people are getting their homes taken away or being pushed out by economic forces, then what are we really doing to help them with that? And are we actually being activists in that sense or are we being witnesses to something terrible that’s going on?

I have one silly question, and then we’re done. Let’s say you’re leading a workshop, and someone’s piece is really really really bad. What do you do?

[laughs] … [By saying that] Writing is a tool for you to communicate your truth, and right now I’m not understanding the point you’re trying to get across. If your goal is to communicate your truth, then find ways to make that communication as sharp of a tool as possible … It’s hard – at some moments you hear something, and it’s really against your beliefs. But if I were to just say, ‘Yo stop writing that, that’s whack,’ I don’t think there is any process of transformation to happen … It’s about trying to understand where folks are coming from and at the same time asking them questions, so both of you can come to a better understanding of what’s really going on.

Check it out! The ReWrite is having a General Community Meeting on Tuesday, July 26 in Oakland!