It takes a rich and diverse mind to excel at both math and writing poetry, and author Angela Chaidez Vincent has just that sort of mind. I was lucky enough to share a table with her at the Louisville Book Festival this year where I learned that she is also a really fun person to hang out with!
Arena Glow author Chaidez Vincent’s background is in mechanical engineering, mathematics, and instrumental music performance. Her work is infused with numerical winks and a collagist impulse that seeks to join vigorous dreaming with the subterranean and overlooked. She has an MFA in Poetry and keeps her tech side smiling by teaching precalculus and computer science. Angela resides in Fresno, California with her wife, Lisa.
Q: How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
A: There was such relief (and a fair amount of amazement) in knowing that I can actually see a major literary undertaking through to completion! I feel much more confident in my ability to do it again.
Q: What was the best money you ever spent on your writing career?
A: Kenyon Review Writing Workshops, without question. Not only was the instruction incredible, but the format in which you generate new work every day left me with some of my most consequential rough drafts. In addition, immersing myself with a cohort of fellow writers in a bit of a pressure cooker made for some meaningful friendships that I continue to treasure.
Q: What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
A: This is perhaps an ill-advised anecdote, but I was at the top of a playground slide once (you know, the metal 80s slides that burned your hide in the summer) and briefly forgot about the ride down because I was completely fascinated by the graffiti. To be sure, there were words and symbols that were, ahem, unknown to me at that young age, but I felt as if I had stumbled onto a momentous secret that I wanted very much to decode. Strange, unnerving, exciting.
Q: Do you have an all-time favorite writer, or does your favorite change over time? Who is your favorite writer today?
A: I deeply admire Karen Russell, who writes with strangeness, joy, imagination, and incredible depth of feeling. Her short story “Tornado Auction” from her collection Orange World is one of my all-time favorites for its bizarre premise (a rancher who raises not livestock but tornados tries one more time for a return to his glory days). It is sensitive to the humans in the story who are in understandable conflict about the dangers often inherent in living out one’s purpose, while simultaneously touching on climate anxiety and a world that is changing faster than our comprehension of it. Russell’s stories have a sweet sentience that is both observant and wild.
In addition to Karen Russell, I admire the work of Donna Tartt (Secret History, The Goldfinch) and Milan Kundera (Unbearable Lightness of Being), and the poets Larry Levis (Winter Stars), Terrance Hayes (How to Be Drawn), and Kim Addonizio (Tell Me).
Q: What kind of music or sounds do you like to listen to as you write, or do you prefer complete silence?
A: It’s usually difficult for me to write with music. Near-impossible with lyrics. Sometimes I freewrite early drafts with a cinematic movie score in my ears if I want a dramatic sweep of emotion to come through. I often simply put on my purple headphones with no sound. Just noise reduction.
Q: How many hours a day do you write?
A: I like a rubber-bandy requirement of 50 hours per month so I don’t feel like a failure if I miss a day. I keep a rather elaborate spreadsheet full of summations and formulas for tracking categories of writing as “deeps” and “shallows” to make sure I’m not just futzing around with answering emails instead of generating new work. I bribe myself with points based on time spent and difficulty level of the session (tracked by a multiplier formula on the spreadsheet because: NERD), which I redeem for lottery scratchers at the end of each month. I encourage everyone to find the silly bribes that work for them.
Arena Glow is a collection of poems swirling about the shin guards donned by women of the arena. The arena takes many forms: the rodeo arena, the cockpit of a small plane, the boys’ club of engineering, the confines of a murderous board game, the Colosseum in which women also desired to fight as gladiators, the traditional marriage.
Exploring themes of danger versus security, belonging and not, the limits of moxie, power that grows across time and experience, and coming out in mid-life and mid-marriage, the poems range in tone from unflinching grit to awed sweetness as they trace the trajectories and life spans of women born with a daredevil oblique.
Q: If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? (Or what do you do “for a living” if you aren’t supporting yourself with your writing – yet?)
A: I could fill several lifetimes with alternate careers! To date, I have made my living as a teacher of mathematics and computer science, but I think I’d also love to be a meteorologist: weather is such a diva and the many variables that comprise it (humidity, coriolis effect, season, moon position, ocean currents, etc.) are deeply fascinating to me.
Q: Do you Google yourself? If so, have you ever been surprised by what you have found?
A: One of my favorite finds of a self-google was finding that there was a medical school that taught one of my poems in a class on contemporary literature as vehicle for encouraging understanding of and compassion for patients. Quivering tear emoji!
Q: What is your favorite book from your childhood?
A: I loved The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley as a kid. I used to check them out at the bookmobile that came to my school every Tuesday afternoon, so mwah! To all the librarians out there! I also remember devouring biographies of Harry Houdini. Chronicles of Narnia was very dear to me in its depiction of children with agency and adventurousness.
Q: What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
A: I procrastinate so hard on revision stages! The end of the first draft represents the end of what I know at that time. Writing through the uncertainty of shaping it into its most impactful form stresses me out to no end. Resistance through the roof!
Q: Do you believe in writer’s block? If so, how do you break through it and begin writing again?
A: Block just means avoidance. Asking myself why I am wincing at the task at hand is often fruitful. I often have an answer that, once said aloud, dissipates in strength. Another great help is lowering my standards. Sometimes I type at the top of what I’m working on: “What follows is the dumbest possible attempt at figuring out what comes next.” With that low bar, I can usually eke out some word count. And “no, dumber!” is a fun challenge if I start to get stuck again.
Q: What is the biggest thing that people THINK they know about your subject/genre, that isn’t true?
A: Many people have been taught in their high school English classes that poetry is some kind of trick. That poetry doesn’t mean what it says. This is so untrue! A good poem means what it says on the surface and can also suggest deeper meanings. It works on multiple channels and it’s ok to connect to the channel that resonates with you. Trust your ability to hear one or more of those channels. Need not be all of them at all times.
You can follow Angela Chaidez Vincent on her blog at https://angelachaidezvincent.com/.
Now available in print and on Kindle!
While you’re here, don’t forget to check out my latest suspense novel, It Had to Happen, now available in print and on Kindle!
Book Summary
When Jack Utley loses his daughter just as his business is about to soar, it seems he’s traded financial gain for Callie’s life. After an encounter with a mysterious woman on the eve of Callie’s funeral, Jack wakes up to find that time has somehow rewound to the morning of Callie’s accident. Jack gets an opportunity that most grieving parents can only dream of – he saves his daughter’s life.
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Write on the World 