Lozada-Oliva Discusses her Projects and Survival Methods of Being a Young, Productive, Artist in our World’s Current Society.
Interview by Tracie Taylor
I came across the wonderfully funny, online presence of Melissa about two years ago on Instagram. I, an aspiring poet, was on the hunt for voices that were out in the poet community creating a life for themselves in any and all creative ways possible. Throughout these years of following her, I discovered she was in a band, created a podcast with a fellow poet, and still travelled to perform spoken word, all while pursuing her MFA.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of Peluda (Button Poetry 2017) & the co-host of podcast Say More with Olivia Gatwood. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, REMEZCLA, Kenyon Review, BBC Mundo, PAPER, Redivider, Huffington Post & more. You can follow her everywhere except in real life at @ellomelissa.
My first question for you is: how do you keep up with it all? The constant (in my experience) pressure to create and make money for yourself. And if you find yourself not keeping up, how do you put yourself back on track?
It’s hard! It’s very hard and I am historically horrible with money. I think I just developed a very ridiculous and objectively stupid life stance that “Everything Would Be Fine.” So far, it has been. But before it becomes fine, I have to work hard. In dire moments, I print out chapbooks and sell them via Instagram. Those help me buy groceries and make it until the next freelance check from a college comes in. It can be awful but it has always been better than having a boss and pretending to have goals for “the good of the company” and being apart of a “family” & other ways that guilt you into ignoring your art & laboring for the Man. I’m a bad employee because I don’t believe in rules. They seem like a suggestion to me. When I am not keeping up, I usually break down, honestly. But those are also good moments because they help me reassess what I need to do.
Who/what are some of your creative inspirations?
I love ghost stories. I love horror. I hate how they make me feel but I respect them for doing that.
What is the process of publishing physical books like?
It differs from publisher to publisher! In terms of chapbooks like Rude Girl is Lonely Girl or Plastic Pajaros that I did with Pizza Pi Press, I came to Jess Rizkallah and Cassandra de Alba with an idea and they were like, let’s do it! I am teaching myself indesign currently to release some spooky stories that I worked on with Jess. I’m having a lot of tantrums because I’m twelve and this shit is hard, but if you’re a poet or an artist of some type my advice is LEARN INDESIGN and then you will always have merchandise. I wouldn’t have been able to put those books together without Pizza Pi and their graphic design expertise and diligence. Also, with the chapbooks I’ve often collaborated with my friend Tiffany Mallery who is a prolific artist. I trust her with everything. Publishing hardback books the traditional way is a bit different. With Peluda, Button approached me after I had been on their channel for a while and they wanted to become a publishing house. That’s pretty rare & not how it usually is! I’ve been working on a new book (that I am going to keep top secret just for the case of appeal) for about two years and decided to try to find a different press. But in order to find a different press I had to go about finding an agent. It’s been difficult, honestly! I pitched to so many agents and got politely rejected a ton. One agent was like “these are love poems and I thought it would be more political and aggressive like Morgan Parker.” I was like . . . what? It’s been hard negotiating my “brand” with the sort of art I want to make. Love poems are political! Any way I ended up meeting my amazing agent at a party where we bonded over a cat, and now we’ve been working together and I am so so excited about what’s coming next. I guess my advice is always pet cats.
Regarding your poetry, I know your book Peluda, published in 2017, was one of your first full publications, correct? How has that set forth your career as a spoken-word poet? Do you still feel a connection to your first publication or do you feel chained to it at all?
I still feel so proud of my book. I was working forty hours a week at a book store and writing that book on my days off. It has so much heart in it and so much need for perfection to not let a reader down. It’s also two years old and sometimes I look at that and I’m like “Okay . . . that’s corny.” I don’t feel chained to it, but I am definitely ready to show the world my new stuff. I also don’t think publishing Peluda was very traditional. Button Poetry approached me when they first became a publishing house after I had a bunch of videos on their Youtube channel. That’s not usually how it works, which is what I’m realizing now, trying to shop my new stuff around.
Your recently released chapbook, I’m Scared But I’ve Been Here Before, are poems about your dreams. Dreams are a piece of art within themselves, what inspired you to make them into concrete poems?
All the dreams you see in the chapbook are basically as they were recorded in my iPhone notes. I think just writing them down changes their initial form. Like, once I write them down they’re poems. They looked so specifically bare and vulnerable on the iPhone lay out that I felt like . . . moved? So moved that I posted it to my Instagram page. I also had this weird constraint where I had to fit it into the Instagram box, so that involved a lot of cutting and rearranging of the dreams. Maybe I’m fucking with the cosmos by sharing my brain clouds, but it’s very fun for me.
I notice you incorporate humor into a lot of your projects, how has your niche for humor shaped you as an artist?
I think humor is always in conversation with any other mood. It can provide a sense of relief but it can also open a reader up to hearing something more intense/serious later on. My friend Hieu Minh Nguyen wrote a thesis called “Trust Me, I’m Funny” where he talks about how using humor in poetry is away of establishing intimacy with the reader. So, like, later on when you’re getting in the feels the reader is like, “Oh my god . . . My friend . . . the buddy who just made me laugh . . . .”
I moved to Chicago for the exposure in poetry and opportunities in general, it’s been an overwhelming transition. As a young creative in NYC, how has living in a big city shaped you as a writer?
It’s shaped me a bunch! I feel forever grateful toward the community I came up in, in Boston, and also knew that at some point it wasn’t helping me grow anymore. When I moved to New York, I knew a lot would change in the way I did everything and that scared me. Not to be that bitch who is like, “The thing about New York is” but the thing about New York is that everybody is hungry to show you what they’ve got. I started doing more shows here in general. I’m on comedy or variety shows a lot more now and it pushes me to do new stuff. I’ve just had so many more opportunities here and a lot of that involves being exposed to outta control art that I wouldn’t have before. The other thing about New York is I’m taking up space here while following my artistic heart. I’m responsible for changing the neighborhood even if I’m a person of color. So I guess I’m still figuring out what it means for me to love it here, you know ? I also feel lucky that I can pay the rent with this job I have that makes no sense, and also feel lucky that I’m stupid enough to pretend my student loans aren’t real.
Do you plan to stick to writing just poems?
Hell no! I’m working on a YA novel and a pilot and some other stuff. What I’ve learned, however, is poetry has absolutely destroyed any sense I’ve ever had on using punctuation. Like how do you write a sentence like ??
You too are an MFA student, and I feel like in this day and age, there’s a lot of skepticism in pursuing an MFA. What are you studying and how do you feel it benefits you or hinders you (if it does) as a writer?
So, yeah! I’m getting my MFA in poetry at NYU. I definitely wouldn’t have written this current book I’m working on without my MFA, but maybe, also, without New York. But maybe, also, without growing older and reading more and more life experience? MFA is cool when you’re fully funded (I’m not) and MFA is cool when your famous teachers have time to actually, like, give you an assignment. I guess it’s taught me discipline, but I also read and write all the time by myself because I am mortally taxed. Anyway, I went part time so that I wouldn’t have to take out any more loans (I literally exceeded my limit, O.K.) and so I could have health insurance. What I’ve loved the most out of it are the people I’ve met. They’re incredible and sensitive and funny and laugh easily. When I wasn’t in a workshop last semester, some fellow students (specifically of color) and I got together once a week and read poems to each other while drinking wine and eating dinner. It was perfect. It was like, oh, right, we are all friends who love words this much. It was like, oh, actually, maybe it’s all about trying your best to impress your friends in one room for as long as you’ve got.
Peluda
Paperback: 60 pages
Publisher: Button Poetry (September 26, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781943735242
ISBN-13: 978-1943735242
Tags: Melissa Lozada-Oliva, interview, poet, podcast, artist, lifestyle, NYC, peluda, writer, humor