#38 Backstory of the Poem “Women of the Fields” from the poetry collection LANDINGS by Andrena Zawinski
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the ideawas first conceived in your brain until final form? Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail.
My spouse and I were driving down to Monterey after visiting her mother in the Central Valley of California. En route, we passed through Watsonville and Salinas, where, like in the San Joaquin, you can’t miss seeing workers in droves pick fruits and vegetables from fields skirting the highways. After stopping at a roadside stands for fresh berries, we made our way through Santa Cruz, a contrast as a college town scene with beaches. (RIGHT: Women in the fields of Watsonville. Credit : United States Department of Agriculture)
It was then a radio show came on promoting a documentary that addressed issues facing women who worked in the fields. This piqued my interest since I had already written and published poetry on field workers: “The Pickers” (published in The Progressive and elsewhere), “Intoxicating Morning” (published in Ale House Review), “On the Road Hijacked by Memory” (that most recently appeared in Aeolian Harp Series: anthology of poetry folios Vol. 3 from Glass Lyre Press). (LEFT: Migrant women. Photo attributed to Dorothea Lane.)
Around that time, I had been giving some thought to agricultural exemptions that allowed children to work the fields along with quite a bit of thought to horrific work conditions for men, but I hadn’t yet turned my attention to women being part of that labor force. In the car, I started jotting down notes of images I had seen, random thoughts that flooded my head, things to later look into, when the radio show turned to sexual assault as something women had to contend with almost routinely. (BELOW LEFT: Woman migrant worker in Salinas, California. Public Domain)
Later I was haunted by this, spent days reading about these women. Then the combination of that rather haphazard research meshed with characters who began to loom large in my imagination and spilled as a catalog onto the page; almost like real essences, as I fine tuned them, draft upon draft, they became very close to the heart for me. https://www.amazon.com/Frontline-Rape-Fields/dp/B00DCRE6GM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1541823591&sr=8-2&keywords=%22Rape+In+the+Fields%22+documentary
The poem at first was no more than a hodgepodge of notes, often my own handwriting indecipherable in its rushes, yet finally the poem took shape into its form. After finishing the piece, I dedicated it to Dolores Huerta (http://doloreshuerta.org/dolores-huerta/), cofounder of United Farmworkers (https://ufw.org/), who after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the Obama White House, said not enough was done in the Civil Rights Movement for women, declaring herself in her 80’s a born-again-feminist.
What month and year did you start writing this poem?
I started the poem sometime in the summer of 2014 (RIGHT) and finished it a month or so later after many interruptions and drafts. An incessant revisionist, I never keep old drafts because they remind me of the mess writing can sometimes be in its false starts, throat clearing, its stumbling around before getting up on strong legs.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem?
I hope readers will recognize women who are not part of the Me Too movement, women who cannot risk raising their voices, women who all too often are taken for granted, the invisible women who do the work others will not do.
LEFT: Andrena Zawinski giving a poetry reading in January of 2018.
This is especially important to me as a granddaughter of immigrants who were relegated to the dirtiest work in steel mills and coal mines, as a woman whose own father in an inheritance of those dirty jobs (and more often laid off than not) got lost in pills and alcohol, as a woman whose own mother worked night shifts on assembly lines, cleaned houses, took care of other people’s children. These women of the fields voices are ones I wish to have heard just as I raise those from my own working poor roots. BELOW: California vineyard attributed to Andrena Zawinski
Has this poem been published before? And if yes where?
An earlier version of this poem appeared in Thomas Merton Center’s The New People: Pittsburgh’s Peace and Justice Newspaper (2014) and then in the San Francisco Revolutionary Poets Brigade anthology Overthrowing Capitalism: Beyond Endless War, Racist Police, and Sexist Elites (2015). It also appears in Borderlands and Crossroads:Writing the Motherland anthology (2016) and most recently in my book, LANDINGS from Kelsay Books (2017).
Andrena Zawinski, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, is a veteran teacher of writing from early childhood through college. She is an activist poet and mainstay in the San Francisco Bay Area Poetry community. Her most recent poetry collection is Landings from Kelsay Books, and she has two previous books: Something About from Blue Light Press, a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient and Traveling in Reflected Light from Pig Iron Press, a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry. She also compiled and edited Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry from Scarlet Tanager Books. Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She is Features Editor at http://PoetryMagazine.com and founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon.
ABOVE LEFT: Andrena Zawinski at the San Francisco port in January of 2017.
001 Backstory of the Poem
“12 – 2014” from the poetry collection BEFORE THE DROUGHT by Margo Berdeshevsky published by Glass Lyre Press on September 15, 2017
#002 Backstory of the Poem
“82 Miles from the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake Café”
by Alexis Rhone Fancher
#003 Backstory of the Poem
“Orange”
by Barbara Crooker
https://christalcooper.com/003-backstory-of-the-poem-orange-by-barbara-crooker/
#004 Backstory of the Poem
“Modern Matsushima”
by Sonia Saikaley
https://christalcooper.com/004-backstory-of-the-poem-modern-matsushima-by-sonia-saikaley/
#005 Backstory of the Poem
“Side Yard”
By Ellen Foos
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/01/5-backstory-of-poem-sidewalk-by-ellen.html
#006 Backstory of the Poem
“The Ringmaster”
By Susan Sundwall
https://christalcooper.com/006-backstory-of-the-poem-the-ringmaster/
#007 Backstory of the Poem
“That Night”
by Leslea Newman
https://christalcooper.com/007-backstory-of-the-poem-that-night-by-leslea-newman/
#008 Backstory of the Poem
“June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
by Alexis Rhone Fancher
#009 Backstory of the Poem
“The Gift of the Year with Granny”
By Charles Clifford Brooks III
#010 Backstory of the Poem
“The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
by Scott Thomas Outlar
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/chris-ricecooper-caccoopaol.html
#011 Backstory of the Poem
“After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
by Anya Francesca Jenkins
#012 Backstory of the Poem
“What I Learned This Week”
By Angela Narciso Torres
#013 Backstory of the Poem
“Holidays On ICE”
By Jan Steckel
https://christalcooper.com/013-backstory-of-the-poem-holiday-on-ice-by-jan-steckel/
#014 Backstory of the Poem
“Colors”
by Ibrahim Honjo
https://christalcooper.com/014-backstory-of-the-poem-colors-by-ibrahim-honjo/
#015 Backstory of the Poem
“Ode To Disappointment”
By Marilyn Kallett
https://christalcooper.com/015-backstory-of-the-poem-ode-to-disappointment-by-marilyn-kallet/
#016 Backstory of the Poem
“Reliquary”
by Beth Copeland
#017 Backstory of the Poem
‘The Swallows of Barcelona”
by Marlon L. Fick
https://christalcooper.com/17-backstory-of-the-poem-the-swallows-of-barcelona-by-marlon-fick/
#18th Backstory of the Poem
“Arterial Discombobulation”
by Juliet Cook
#19th Backstory of the Poem
“Stiletto Killer . . . A Surmise” from the poetry collection ENTER HERE
By Alexis Rhone Fancher
#20 Backstory of the Poem
“At Last I Can Start Suffering”
By Charles Rammelkamp
#21 Backstory of the Poem
“Wind Chimes”
by Marla Shaw O’Neil
#022 Backstory of the Poem
“Studying Ariel”
by Julia Gordon-Bramer
https://christalcooper.com/22-backstory-of-the-poem-studying-ariel-by-julia-gordon-bramer/
#023 Backstory of Poem
“Jesus Zombie”
by Bill Yarrow
https://christalcooper.com/23-backstory-of-the-poem-jesus-zombie-by-bill-yarrow/
#24 Backstory of the Poem
“Brag 2016:
by Telaina Eriksen
#025 Backstory of the Poem
“It is only Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
by Seth Berg
#26 Backstory of the Poem
“Devil In the Details”
by David Herrle
https://christalcooper.com/26-backstory-of-the-poem-devil-in-the-details-by-david-herrle/
#27 Backstory of the Poem
“Carmen Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
by Gloria Mindock
#28 Backstory of the Poem
“Two Deaths”
by Connie Post
https://christalcooper.com/28-backstory-of-the-poem-two-deaths-by-connie-post/
#029 Backstory of the Poem
“Faces in a Crowd”
by Mary Harwell Sayler
#030 Backstory of the Poem
“The Risking Point”
by Larry Jaffe
#031 Backstory of the Poem
031 September 24, 2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After We Drove”
https://christalcooper.com/31-backstory-of-the-poem-after-we-drove-by-mark-lee-webb/
#032 Backstory of the Poem
“Astral”
by Melissa Studdard
https://christalcooper.com/32-backstory-of-the-poem-astral-by-melissa-studdard/
#033 Backstory of the Poem
“I Have A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”
#034 Backstory of the Poem
David Sullivan’s “Paper Mache Peaches of Heaven”
https://christalcooper.com/34-backstory-of-the-poem-paper-mache-peaches-of-heaven-by-david-sullivan/
#035 Backstory of the Poem
“Sobriety”
by Timothy Gager
#036 Backstory of the Poem
“The Second Breakfast”
by Gary Glauber
https://christalcooper.com/36-backstory-of-the-poem-the-second-breakfast-by-gary-glauber/
#037 Backstory of the Poem
“Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”
By Heather McKeon
https://christalcooper.com/37-backstory-of-the-poem-melanias-tone-deaf-by-heather-forbes-mckeon/