Home Is Wherever I Am: An Interview with Leonora Simonovis

conducted by Jefferson Navicky

JN: Hello Leo! Thank you for agreeing to this interview. In doing a little research, I’ve read that Federico Garcia Lorca was an important poet to you. I wonder if we could start with Lorca. Could you talk about Lorca and what he has meant to you as a poet, and especially I’m wondering how your relationship with this superstar poet has evolved over your life. On a personal note, I also love Lorca, though my most powerful memory comes not only from him, but from a teacher, Bhanu Kapil, who asked me to write a poem as Lorca’s lover, something that at the time felt like quite a stretch for me (which I now know to be the sign of an incredible prompt and teacherly gift). The resulting poem ended up as one of my most memorable and influential poetic experiences. I wonder how Lorca sits in your memory.

LS: Hi Jefferson! Thank you for getting us started and with Lorca, no less. The prompt from your teacher sounds lovely and I’m sure it allowed you to connect more deeply with the poet and with your own work.

My relationship with Federico started at a young age. When I was 6 or 7, my mother gifted me with a Cancionero or book of songs for children by Lorca. It was a small pocket book that contained illustrations for each of the poems included. While I was able to read at the time, I preferred it when my mother either read out loud or recited some of these poems by heart (especially “Romancero Gitano”). So I can say with much certainty that poetry and my love of poems began with the act of deep listening. I loved the musicality in Federico’s poems, how they sat in the tongue and seemed to activate a desire to sing or respond orally. Alone in my room, I’d read them one by one, emphasizing the end rhymes as much as possible and using color pencils to fill in the drawings. I remember a sense of sadness and longing behind the “joyful” sounds, something I also associated with the music we listened to at home (boleros, salsa, folk music).

I found the story of Lorca’s life fascinating. In Venezuela, where I grew up, many of our neighbors and a few family members were refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Conversations about General Francisco Franco and the Falange (a nationalist political group with which Franco joined forces) were day to day occurrences. I learned about Lorca’s brief participation in the war and his untimely demise thanks to my mother, who explained to me why he was killed. I found his courage and willingness to speak about his art and to honor his life choices brave and inspiring, as well as revolutionary. I think about him often when I write and also about my mother and those first immersions into the soundscapes of poetry.

JN: I’m glad you mentioned your mother, because I wanted to ask you a few questions about her. I’ve read that she was a loyal reader of your work, and that she called you a poet before you knew that about yourself. So my next question has two parts: 1. What did your mother see in you before you realized it? And 2. When did you begin to call yourself a poet and how did you know?

LS: I spent a lot of time during my childhood drawing, coloring, and writing stories, as well as playing with imaginary characters.  My mother was a very creative person. From painting, to making ornaments for different festivities, to cooking, she could transform anything into a beautiful piece of art. She loved using her hands and experimenting. I think I must have inherited that from her. She inspired me and encouraged me to create things, not just stories but also origami, pictures, games, desserts and other things.I took drawing classes as a teen, studied French, and played the cuatro by ear. In college I studied painting with a wonderful woman named Lucia, who was self taught and hosted classes in her home. Some of my pastel pieces are still at my father’s home.

The last time I saw my mother, she gave me an album she had made with a variety of photos from my life both as a child and as an adult. There were hand written captions and a story she loved as a kid, which she typed up and asked that I read to my children. Among the photos was a little booklet with poems from my 8th grade class, one of which I had written and performed at a county wide contest. As I pulled the booklet out, she said while smiling, “Remember? You were always a poet.” Reflecting on this, I realize that from a young age I put imagination before all else, especially since things were difficult both at home and in our country. Imagining and creating helped me (us) not just survive but also thrive and find joy and wonder in the simplest things. I come from a family and a culture of storytellers, where metaphor is part of everyday life and where we needed to constantly shift and adapt and adjust to the unexpected; to make do with what we had. Working with language is similar. Language will never come close to representing the real thing, yet as a poet, it’s all I have.

I didn’t start calling myself a poet until the year 2017, when I attended a weeklong workshop with VONA (Voices of All Nations) and we —the participants— were constantly reminded that we are writers and poets and that our voices matter. We were asked to repeat this out loud and it felt very powerful. It took a while to sink in, to believe. There are still times when I doubt, but then I remember how I got here and it all settles again.

JN: I’d like to end with a question about a few lines of a poem of yours I particularly enjoy, “Voyage,” published in River Mouth Review. The lines, which are the opening lines of the poem, are: “I never asked for a tether and yet, here I am, unwinding, my body / a restless landmass, boundaries –allegiances?– blurring and shifting. / To remember what is gone: my homeland, my friend, the archive / of my mother’s heart..” There’s a lot packed into those few lines. Having those lines brought back to you, I wonder what you think about them now in light of our conversation. And finally, as an archivist myself, I always enjoy when the archive is invoked in poignant ways, and so I wonder, what’s in the archive of your mother’s heart?

LS: What a great question! I wrote this poem while I was taking a weeklong workshop at the Napa Valley Writers Conference a few years ago. It was one of those moments when I felt like a vessel since the poem came to me whole. I had been thinking about exile and how much loss I have experienced, how sometimes I imagine a different reality where I was still “tethered” to my homeland, surrounded by family. What if I had stayed? What kind of life would I have led? It took me a long time to realize that home is not a place. Home is wherever I am. I have learned to say I am ‘of’ the land, rather than from ‘a’ land, something Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about in her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass. I believe we’re all connected by land and water. It’s quite freeing to realize that and to feel it deeply.

My mother was my “cable a tierra” —ground wire—, meaning that she was, in a sense, the umbilical cord joining me with our motherland. In the archive of her heart she kept stories of our family, of ancestors I never met, of the lands where they lived and what they looked like in the past, of different celebrations that were no longer relevant when I was born —at least not in large urban spaces. She was a source of knowledge and ancestral wisdom. I remember when she’d talk about trees being treated as the wonderful sacred beings that they are. At her school, they celebrated the ‘Day of The Tree,’ sang a special song and planted young trees in the school yard. In the archive of her heart, abundance and resourcefulness thrived, as well as creativity, compassion, and love for the world and for life; poems, songs, recipes, sayings, and rituals. In the archive of her heart, an expanding universe.