Kaya Ortiz
‘TAKE CARE’ is your second poetry collection, due out in September. (Congratulations, by the way!) What was the writing process like for ‘TAKE CARE’? And did you find the process easier or harder than your debut collection ‘Flood Damages’?

Eunice Andrada
Thank you! I’m so excited and nervous for the poems to be out in the world. The writing process behind the two books was so different. I have less distance between myself and some of the personal events described in ‘TAKE CARE’, which made it difficult to approach the poems at first. It’s been more than three years between ‘Flood Damages’ and this book, and I was languageless for most of that time.

The writing of ‘TAKE CARE’ wasn’t as challenging as the work I had to do to arrive back at language. I learned how to ask for help and let myself be cared for by the people in my communities. I had to arrive at a place where it felt safe enough to write the poems – on a physical level, I removed myself from a dangerous domestic situation; on an emotional level, simply put, it was a lot of work and a lot of time. I felt like the right language didn’t come until I was ready to confront it, and I’m grateful that language was patient with me.

I didn’t do any of that vital work for ‘Flood Damages’. That collection just kind of happened. I was 20 when I was initially approached for a collection and I realised I did have enough poems for one. I didn’t think of those poems as working within a book-length project until I read them together and saw the narratives binding them. So, putting the first collection together was simple, but the writing of each poem without really stopping to reflect on what I’d written put me in a harmful thinking pattern. In many ways, I don’t think I was ready to release those vulnerable poems, but I try to honour them all the same. It’s comforting to hear from poets I admire that they wish their first books had never been published! Maybe it’s not so rare a predicament as I thought.

There was a lot more intention when it came to crafting ‘TAKE CARE’. I had been writing shapeless fragments influenced by my many obsessions and hauntings – care, labour, surviving sexual violence, desire – but I had viewed them as scraps and didn’t know what to do with these pieces. The poems in ‘TAKE CARE’ were actually born from what I thought was going to be two separate projects, focusing on the history of sexual slavery in Iloilo on Panay island, and how rape culture is weaponised by empire; and another, quieter project, only meant for me, on living in the aftermath of assault and confronting a longer history of violence I had buried.

On a quiet afternoon in lockdown, I read all these fragments together and realised they were parts of poems that were asking for wholeness. Save for two poems, all of the other poems were written while living alone during the lockdown period. Writing these poems became a way of caring for myself. I think this time around, I cared for my poems as much as they care for me.

Kaya Ortiz
In ‘Flood Damages’, you started to touch on themes that are expanded upon in ‘TAKE CARE’, such as sexual violence against women of colour and inhabiting a brown female body. These are difficult topics to address, and as a writer whose natural habitat might include self-isolation, how do you practice self-care when writing about difficult topics?

Eunice Andrada
With a lot of breaks and indulgences, chaotic Gen Z memes, adorable Pixar films, shit-talking with friends, The Eric Andre Show, fried food. I need my brain to swim in some lightness in between the heavy poems. 

Knowing that my friends are beyond my computer screen and are going to read my poems helps tremendously. It reminds me I’m not truly isolated, lockdown or not. It’s also incredibly comforting to remind myself that intergenerational trauma was not all that was passed down to me – the women who came before me also passed down their capacity for joy, despite. Making a conscious effort to nurture joy is a new skill for me, and it’s been helping me and my poems through so much.

Kaya Ortiz
‘TAKE CARE’ begins and ends with declaration, with a voice, with the echoes this leaves behind. Poetry, too, celebrates voice, and yours is unapologetic. How did you come to find your poetic voice? And have you found your voice evolving between writing ‘Flood Damages’ and ‘TAKE CARE’?

Eunice Andrada
I think I’m always still finding my poetic voice. But a constant for me has been a commitment to beautiful sound. Maybe that was because of all the sounds of language in my home, the Hiligaynon, Tagalog and English melded together, and I think becoming a poet in ‘public’ through performance deepened that devotion to beautiful sound. I would read out the poems as I wrote them and make edits in response to the sounds that I wanted to bring out.

Before they’re ever published, all of my poems are read aloud by me, hundreds of times until I’m satisfied with the sound of them. For ‘TAKE CARE’, there’s a lot more dexterity with sound. I know this for sure because I felt these poems in my body, listened to them in their hundreds of iterations, and spoke them through the muscles of my mouth. The sounds feel more precise in this collection.

The collections have wildly different tones, perhaps as a reflection of the varying physical, emotional, and psychological landscapes I was navigating when I was nineteen to twenty-one, versus when I was twenty-one to now. As a reflection of how I am now, I think the speaker of my poems is less concerned with self-punishment and more interested in their salvation, by any means necessary. While most of the poems of ‘TAKE CARE’ do sometimes lean into dark inclinations, some are more sure, more hopeful. That’s a newer voice for my poems.

Kaya Ortiz
In this collection, many poems take on an artistic form through your use of the visual space on the page. Where do you find inspiration for the structure of your poems?

Eunice Andrada
I’m always fascinated by the everyday erasures in interpersonal and political speech and it helps me visualise how a poem might appear on the page. In the section ‘: Comfort’, I try to use erasure as a way of blunting the violence of fascist language.  

The visual structure of a poem like ‘Pipeline Polyptych’ is influenced by convenient, nationalistic narratives that portray Filipino women as saints – women who leave their families and communities behind in the Philippines to work overseas, care for the sick, the dying, the privileged and the ungrateful. But unlike a traditional polyptych that would be found in a church, I wanted to peel back those layers of reverence and lay bare the imperialist groundwork that leads Filipino women into exploitative care industries, where they’re treated as disposable resources. Each ‘panel’ of the polyptych shows some kind of subversion of imposed sainthood.

I play with a few different structures throughout the collection, all different ways of exercising candour and control. Some poems are kept short so they could easily be summoned when the reader is in need, just like how Lucille Clifton’s poem ‘won’t you celebrate with me’ is something I often call upon when I’m desperate.

Kaya Ortiz
Throughout ‘TAKE CARE’, there are poems that commemorate women who are unknown or have been forgotten. I’m thinking especially of the poems in section two, ‘: Comfort’. These stories highlight the oppression of generations of Filipina women and what it means to survive in spite of that. How did you find writing through and about other peoples’ stories compared to writing from your own life?

Eunice Andrada
I’ve been exploring what it means to write towards – not for, or on behalf – and it’s helped me write with more care, rather than worrying about being careful. I had serious ethical considerations when thinking about how to approach my poem ‘The Chismis on Warhol’, which was a response to Alfred A. Yuson’s poem ‘Andy Warhol speaks to his two Filipino maids’. Written in the voice of Warhol, the tone of Yuson’s poem is so icky and condescending towards the ‘Filipino maids’ – are real people, rooted to real families and communities. They have real desires, hopes, and futures. It didn’t feel right for me to write a response from the voices of Nena and Aurora. I thought, How dare I – a young Filipino woman living in Australia – write from the voice of two Filipino mothers who worked as Warhol’s maids? I felt it more apt – and deliciously vengeful – to write from the perspective of town gossips trash-talking this white artist’s paintings of sopas.

For the poems in the section entitled ‘: Comfort’, I didn’t want to limit the role of Filipino women as only being receivers of violence. That was why it was so important for me to carve a space for desire-based narratives in my work, instead of only damage-based narratives. I wanted to let in wonder, awe, and curiosity even as I was wrote about these histories of dehumanising violence towards Filipino women.

For poems that touch on Filipino complicity in settler-colonialism in Palestine, I had workshopped these with a Palestinian poet and a few other Filipino poets. I wanted to make sure that while I was speaking about Filipino complicity in imperialism, I wasn’t punching down on my own communities, who are put in these situations through colonial labour pipelines and do what they need to do to survive. These poems in particular feel very community-written, and it’s so different to how I usually approach my poems. I’m usually very private when it comes to writing, and I don’t show anyone the work until I think it’s ready.

Kaya Ortiz
In the past couple of years, you’ve been involved in bringing the Filipino literary community together through online spaces like The Digital Sala, both in Australia and internationally. How has community shaped your own writing practice?

Eunice Andrada
I’m in love with the idea of ‘lateral ancestry’ in literature. The poet Safia Elhillo has spoken about how we shouldn’t only look up at the poets who came before us, but we should also look around and see who’s writing alongside us. I’m a lot more confident in my writing practice, knowing that my work falls within a rich lineage of writers before me and beside me, writers like Merlinda Bobis, Barbara Jane Reyes, Craig Santos Perez, Danny Silva Soberano, and poets like you, too!

Being part of these transnational writing communities was the start of me being more collaborative and open with my writing process. Throughout lockdown, I’ve been part of a long email chain of poets sending each other drafts of their work, with no expectation of receiving feedback, to remind each other that we’re all still here and writing our poems in separate corners of the world. That generosity has nourished my writing practice so much.

Community has also shifted my view on the legitimacy that comes with institutional support. When I was starting out as a younger writer, I had these ambitions of being connected to fancy publications and institutions, being seen as an ‘established’ writer. But I now realise that I fell into the trap of hungering for power, and that ‘prestige’ is actually just classist, white supremacist bullshit. That bullshit can be so seductive. But over the last year especially, community has been my true north, reminding me that my work and I will always have a place. I don’t have to fight for my work to be seen as valid because community doesn’t depend on these colonial standards for success. We recognise, honour, and study each other’s work, however it appears. Whether or not we have institutional support, we are driven by our own original yet entangled ars poeticas, praxis, and pedagogies; our literary ecosystem is so rich – and institutions feed on the work of writers like me in parasitic relationships. I’ve been in all-white rooms where academics have built their whole careers on studying the work of writers of colour, but have made no original contributions to knowledge. Experiences like that have helped me differentiate spaces that are for cliques and networks, and spaces that are for literary communities that are driven by the ethics of care. It’s also helped me re-evaluate who I’m writing for and towards. 

Kaya Ortiz
Whose work has been influential for you during the writing and collating process for ‘TAKE CARE’ (whether as inspiration, comfort, or escape)?

Eunice Andrada
I was hugely inspired by the poets Aracelis Girmay, Craig Santos Perez, Barbara Jane Reyes, Lisel Mueller (and so many more); the feminist anthropologists June Prill-Brett and Rita Laura Segato.  The work of poet, writer, and activist So Mayer helped me weave together the narrative of my poems. I owe so much to So Mayer – it was through their articulation of rape as a political and cultural act that I began to see how all my poems fit together.  

Kaya Ortiz
As Filipinos, cooking and sharing food is one important way we take care of each other. What is your favourite dish to cook at the moment?

Eunice Andrada
Soupy dishes like kansi and tinola are getting me through the winter! But my favourite dish to cook is buttery miso eggs, one of Marion Gatsby’s recipes. Super easy! It’s beaten eggs cooked in a silky pool of melted butter and a heaped teaspoon of strong miso paste. One of my favourite breakfast dishes.