It began 12 years ago, the concept for my poetry collection Orange Lady. It was 2006, that summer I had gone to VONA (Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation) in San Francisco, where I had taken a writing workshop with Chris Abani. At VONA, I connected with writers who also lived in Los Angeles, and upon my return, through them, I learned about Ruth Forman’s poetry workshops. It was in these workshops held at Ruth’s home in Los Angeles surrounded by willow trees and included Tai Chi lessons taught by her that the poetry collection came to me. Ruth always showed immense compassion toward our writing process and lovingly gave us permission to just write. That permission to just write sparked this emotional surge in me, and I wrote without care or judgment, with pure reckless abandonment. It was in these workshops that I began compiling the poems that would ultimately become part of my first poetry collection Orange Lady.
After theses workshops, which I took for about three years, I sought different opportunities available to me to further my writing. The fact remains that as writers of color, we sometimes have to forge our own way because of lack of resources, financial limitations, and accessibility. It’s not as easy as saying I want to write, and the world opens up. At that time I was single, supporting myself, and worked jobs where I couldn’t always take time off to go to writing retreats, and residencies, plus taking time off meant I would have less financial resources to pay for these opportunities. I sought out opportunities that were available and accessible to me. I joined a writing group. We met once a month and shared our work with each other. I would always be grateful to my writing group because they were veteran writers, and I came in with my raw, unfinished work but a huge desire to become a better writer. I will always be grateful to Deirdre Harris, Olga GarcĂa EcheverrĂa, and Liz GonzĂ¡lez for taking me in, and giving me the support and guidance I needed.
With the help of the writing workshops and my writing group, I applied and participated in the PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship in 2009. The fellowship showed me a different part of the literary world. The one that included talks with agents, authors, and a mentor. Working closely with Suzanne Lummis, Donna Hilbert, and my poetry cohort, who were amazing poets, allowed me to focus on editing. To take the work I had and smooth out all the creases. I quit my job and lived off my savings for most of the fellowship. I felt I needed to absorb everything, to not have any distractions, to simply be a writer. It was one of the greatest times in my writing life. My relationship with writing deepened, because I was able to dedicate all my time to it. It no longer felt like I was neglecting it.
After the Emerging Voices Fellowship, I thought that the next logical step would be to earn an MFA. In 2011, I started an MFA program at Fresno State. The MFA program was truly where I belonged. I felt like I had stepped into this magical world of writing. I remember feeling elated as I walked through the campus to my poetry workshop with Corrine Clegg Hales—it was fall, the trees glowed crimson, gold, and copper. In this workshops, poetry was revered, discussed critically and analytical, and with the hope of making each poem, the best poem possible. Unfortunately, some of our most beautiful experiences have the most tragic endings. I was forced to leave the program because of financial constraints. This was one of the most devastating decisions of my life. I came back to Los Angeles, dejected, depressed, and for the first time felt that my desire to be a writer, my love of writing, wasn’t going to be enough.
If you are reading this and are overwhelmed, know that for me it was also overwhelming because all this happened as I worked different odd jobs. I worked for a property management company in Mid-Wilshire, the Girl Scouts (to this day I still dream of cookie season), and a diamond wholesaler in Downtown L.A. At one point, I even worked as a nanny for a family in West L.A., to a beautiful baby boy named Lucas, who I would recite poetry to. Besides these jobs, I also had to deal with family, relationships, breakups, losses, and plain life. I lost my father in 2013, and that in itself was enough to cause a tsunami effect in my life. I kept pushing though and in 2016 I participated in Community Literature Initiative which connected me with my publisher, World Stage Press. My loyalty to writing was finally paying off.
I believe that what saved my collection during all this, is that I continued to work on it. I carved out time to write. I wrote in the mornings, in the evenings, during lunch breaks. Sometimes, I would pretend to write emails, but instead drafted poems, because we all know that poems can just as easily as they come, drift out of our imagination. We have to sometimes stop everything and write before it becomes that elusive poem. It was 12 years of poems floating around in my consciousness, finding different forms, demanding alternate line breaks, wanting to sometimes not conform to the rules of poetry. Like everyone, I have some gems, those poems that come out almost perfect, sparkling, but most poems are stubborn, we have to chisel them out of stone.
I want writers to take away from this that writing a book is not straightforward. It does not happen overnight, at least not for me, and I believe not for many writers. But through all this, I never gave up, and neither should any writer. I knew I had to complete this collection because the title never left me, the poems haunted me, and writing encompassed my dreams. If the title stays with you, the poems, novel, story never leaves you—listen to it, allow it to come to you, even for a couple of minutes a day. If you don’t abandon it, it won’t abandon you. It will patiently wait for you in the darkness of your notebook pages until it is brought to light.
Don’t rush the journey either. I don’t regret for a moment what transpired during this time. If I had published this poetry collection ten years earlier, even five, I would not be as happy with it. I would not have been as proud of the collection as I am now. I would not have had the liberty of picking my favorite poems and setting aside the poems that were not ready. I would have lost on the existence of poems that came to me in my most trying times. I would not have been able to sit with each poem. To carry each poem in my heart. To live with them. To dream with them. To laugh and cry with them. To have this incredible love affair with each poem, with poetry, with my poetry collection. A love affair that gave me the courage to quit my job, move to a different city, and know what true love is.
Erika AyĂ³n emigrated from Mexico when she was five years old and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. She graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in English. She was selected as a 2009 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow. She has taught poetry to middle and high school students across Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Acentos Review, ChiricĂº Journal, Orangelandia Anthology, Wide Awake Anthology, Coiled Serpent Anthology, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection Orange Lady was published by World Stage Press.