Thread by @NYUADArtsCenter

Poet @thedesertpearl Danabelle Gutierrez visits @SabynJaveri’s @NYUAbuDhabi class Real and Imagined: Women’s Writing Across Worlds and discussed her transition from writing novels to poetry.

She also talks about the ongoing conundrum: where is home? She grew up in 3-4 different countries. She started her time as a poetry focusing on Love Poetry. She admits that it was in part a shield to protect herself from being self-revealing.

Discussion of @RebeccaSolnit and the way that female poets often get classified as “confessional”. “Even if I wasn’t revealing elements of myself in my poetry, people were still interpreting it as “confessional.”

Danabelle admits that she didn’t realize at the time that she was shielding herself from being self-revealing. It was only later that she discovered she was not being fully open. A year of writer’s block allowed her to think and reflect.

Now that she doesn’t do love and heartbreak poetry, and focusing on identity/locus poetry, it doesn’t “land” as well in performance, but it is stronger on the page. Not as many snaps but it goes deeper.

But the smaller number of people who DO go in the journey with her end up sobbing.

Story from @SmithsonianFolk festival as she was cooking adobo with dates, about an audience member who felt the question deeply about “where do I belong?”

Student question - what is the role of ambiguity in her poetry?

A: I don’t want to be ambiguous, but I want to be subtle, in a way that sonically sounds good. Poetry should be read out loud.

A turn that we take together, I keep sound in mind.

Here’s a reading that Danabelle Gutierrez just have to the class. (It gets cut off before her big conclusion about her fragmented self.)

“Danabelle lives in Dubai, which she has learned to call home.” She speaks to the question of permanence vs planting roots. She finds so many others here who share her status and a third culture kid.

She talks now about how she’s often been the only Filipino poet in most of the spaces she has performed. “Unwillingly became a representative” of her community. In her piece she throws in an allusion to Augustine Paredes, another prominent member of the UAE Filipino artist scene

I was trained as an actress, but I don’t like to perform poetry. I do it because I believe it should be spoken out loud. And I need to show up for my work.

Some poets are committed to that one poem. Everything they do goes into that single work.

I write for collections.

Is it a blessing or a curse that you grew up in many different places?

Some days it’s a blessing. Other days it’s a curse.

I wonder what it would have been like if I grew up in just one house.

Is a sense of home what currently drives your work?

Currently yes.

Everybody has a different version what home means to them.

I just haven’t found that yet.

Prof @SabynJaveri also talks about the idea that stability of home is also a luxury.

On self publishing - I haven’t seen a lick of the money. Because I have publishers based in the US but no US bank account.

But I believe the poetry needs to get out.

Why do you write in English?

I think in English. My mom made sure I speak Tagalog but I think in English. I dream in German. (She grew up in Cairo, Vienna, Muscat and in Dubai for 18 years.)

And then I learned about code-switching.