Victoria María Castells is a creative writing teacher in Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared in Reservoir, The Journal, Quarter After Eight, Notre Dame Review, and other literary journals. The University of Notre Dame Press is thrilled to publish her award-winning poetry collection, The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes (August 2023), as part of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize series. She recently answered some of our questions about her work and her writing processes.
When did you first get the idea to write this book?
I first started poetry in my MFA program at McNeese State. I actually went to study fiction, though my writing has always tended to be on the lyrical side. But under Amy Fleury, I took classes on the form and theory of poetry, and then my first Poetry Workshop ever my last semester there. It was such an exotic experience for me! Suddenly, phrases could have “sonic texture,” for instance, so I was introduced to a breadth of terminology and analysis I had never seen before. Starting a manuscript for poetry wasn’t initially on my radar, since I was still thinking just poem by poem. But I kept on diligently writing after graduation until it became apparent that I was capable of more, though this book-length project took many revisions. This wasn’t a lightning-fast process—that was over five years ago!
How does this book relate to the issues brought to light in our world today?
Since both my parents are from Cuba, I tend to write a lot about the island. I have always found it strange how it’s comparatively such a small nation, around 11 million people, and how almost every person has a strong opinion on the country. And then of course there is Cuba becoming a contentious topic in the last Democratic primaries and the ongoing mystery of the Havana Syndrome, then what is actually going on for the Cuban people—the San Isidro Movement, the July 11 protests, and ongoing blackouts and energy crisis. There are so many angles, I can only concentrate on a limited scope. In my writing, I tend to look backwards, at its history and the way a family can be shaped under colossal political upheaval.
Another running thread throughout the book are hurricanes, speakers who are in utter fear of them (an issue relevant for both Miami and Havana). There is the annual dread of the start of another hurricane season, and hopefully the relief that all will be well by the end of it. There is just no real way to fight a flood, and since I tend to write poetry when I feel emotionally affected by the topic, a good number of my poems revolve around speakers grappling with storms, with just the pure terror of it.
Who or what was the inspiration behind your book?
I would say Amy Fleury for inspiring me to write poetry in the first place. Additionally, Orlando Ricardo Menes for his brilliance and encouragement of my writing. I would also have to add the work of Cuban-American historians whose books I like to read in order to spark my writing. Lillian Guerra, for instance, who is doing such important work researching not only historical archives but interviewing the Cuban people who can still tell their story. Lastly, of course, my entire family and my abuelas, who are really at the heart of this manuscript.
What did you learn while writing it?
Probably the poetry itself of collecting pieces together and forming a narrative through association. Writers have such obsessions and recurring words and messages, and when assembling the work, it’s almost eerie how specific references will match up by seeming coincidence. Growing up, my mother had always been warned not to stay late at someone’s house, since there had been this really tragic event many years before where her great-great-aunts (or a generation more) had drowned in the bay of Santiago de Cuba after not waiting after staying too late for a party. Also, refusing to spend the night at their friends’ house, presumably because they didn’t feel like it—I really do think you can chart our family’s stubbornness there. Then I realized that it fits with the poem on the “Twelve Dancing Princesses” fairy tale, the rather dark story where princesses sneak away each night to an enchanted underground kingdom. In a way, these group of sisters also receive punishment for celebration and festivity gone too far, after they are forced from ever returning and the eldest one is made to marry instead. By viewing these poems in comparison to one another, they add more richness and a somewhat cyclical sense of time by virtue of this repetition. This is something that happens to every poet, forming a more concrete relationship between the pieces, and it was such a rewarding experience.
In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?
I wasn’t initially going to have as many fairy tales as I ended up having in the final version of the book. But I would end up assigning the same fairy tales each year to my writing students, and eventually these poems got pulled out of me after reading the same texts over and over again. At some point, I just had to write a Bluebeard poem and the one about Twelve Dancing Princesses. You always have to pay attention how organically a poem fits in a collection, but what I realized is how much of a universal human experience displacement is and how these stories portray that theme. You have Bluebeard’s wife separated from her family and all she’s known and the twelve princesses unable to ever again access their underground kingdom. Even Rapunzel, for example, is essentially exiled from the tower after she is caught with the prince. But in my version, it’s not a quick, happy reunion with her beloved, rather it’s a suspended limbo state where the two continue to suffer in each other’s presence. Not all joyous stuff, but I was happy to see that it could fit in the manuscript’s style!
Who is the biggest influence on you and your work?
Of course, as with every work, there are several! For lyrical influence, I have been greatly shaped by Cathy Song, and the one of the first books of poetry I ever read, Picture Bride. There is this absolutely brilliant poem, “Girl Powdering Her Neck,” that concludes its narrative with two chrysanthemums briefly meeting in the water, and then parting. I always think about the elegance and the beauty of that closing image/metaphor after a poem has focused on a more specific, literary topic. It’s like going from a wide shot in film suddenly to a close-up—just absolute magic.
I always return to Patricia Smith’s book of poems Blood Dazzler, her masterpiece on Hurricane Katrina, just pure lyricism and tragedy throughout. I would also have to say Lorca, and the poem I always find myself re-reading, “Cuidad sin sueño.” When you read a work enough times, sometimes parts of it become embedded in your brain. In this poem, it’s the refrain, “No duerme nadie por el mundo. Nadie, nadie / No duerme nadie.” Just saying it out loud has this lilting, slurring quality where some of the vowels just seem to go on forever, a real mastery of sound I don’t think I could ever match. And of course, there all these great writers both old and new, like Christina Rossetti, T.S. Eliot, Milton, Ono No Komachi, Francisco X. Alarcón, Fiona Benson, Francisco Aragón, Dorsey Craft, Khadijah Queen, Dorothy Chan, Ingrid Contreras Rojas, and Eduardo C. Corral, but in the end of the day there are too many to count.
What is your writing schedule like?
During the school year, it tends to be more chaotic, so I end up writing in smaller increments after work, interspersed with moments where I try to create new pieces at random times. Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that writing can be escape, not just labor. It can be hard work to get to that sustained point where writing seems natural, but it’s such a beautiful, gratifying, transcendent place. I’m always trying to make new writing goals, so I can see an end and purpose to what I’m doing and fully appreciate the experience of finishing a draft of a poem.
What advice would you give to a writer who wants to start a book?
To really find yourself in the adventure of making each poem (or chapter) the best possible! There were a few pieces in my collection that I liked, but I wouldn’t have counted them as my best or something I’d want to show as an example of what the book could offer. It was fun when I eventually went back to those pieces and tried to break them apart, reshape and restructure them, and see if they might break out of their artistic limit. Even if a piece of your writing seems “clean” and locked in place, it’s a good idea to see what happens when you try to actively add some chaos to it and attempt to achieve something higher.
Who would you like to read your book and why?
Of course, I hope any person would read this book and enjoy it. I like to think of my poetry as both lyrical and accessible! But I would say anyone interested in Cuba and political and historical examinations of the island. Then afterwards, hopefully, to read more about Cuba, in any medium, and any Latino author.
What books are you currently reading? What books are in your “To Be Read” stack?
I’m currently re-reading Patricia Engel’s It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris and starting the classic Aeschylus play Agamemnon. Next, I’m planning on reading a book of poems of Li Po and To Fu.
What book or project are you working on next?
There is always a fear after writing a poem that is the last one you can ever write. What if you run out of things to say? It’s such a weird fear, but it never goes quite away. But that also makes a new poem seem like such a miracle! Right now, I’m working on new poetry that is focusing on current issues regarding Cuba and Cuban-Americans that I haven’t broached yet. I hope this is forming into a new collection, though I still haven’t discovered the exact narrative focus. I’m definitely looking forward to figuring out the world that these poems are creating.