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VM: I was thinking about how you talk about, you have a poem which talks about, the poem about Lawson, and you mentioned his assignment to all of you young activists to write poems using certain buzz words and how you all ran out and did that. I'm wondering what kind of, do you give similar assignments, or what kind of assignments have you given to your students?

AU: I've given all kinds of assignments. I mean, whether it was writing a haiku, whether it's a particular topic, lots of different things. But the running joke in the workshop is that most of the people do their own thing and don't do the assignment. [Laughs] Which is okay with me. Because as long as you're writing something, that's great. That's always my thing, is, "Are you writing?" "Are you writing?" So even if it's just journal writing.

VM: And may I ask which poets you have introduced your students to? Because you have a wide range of background.

AU: You know, I'd bring in my favorites. So I would say I'd bring in mostly writers of color, poets of color. You know, occasionally other groups, but that's really my own passion. And a lot of people, I think, sort of have similar views about that, because we're all nonwhite. Right now we're currently one Chinese American and the rest of us Japanese American.

VM: So are you introducing them to some of your old favorites like Lucille Clifton or Juan Felipe Herrera, or are you also introducing them to new or more recent works?

AU: I try to do both. Well, I did while I was teaching. This is before the pandemic, and we were meeting in person. I would try to do a wide range of poets for them. And it got a good response. I think they were happy to be exposed to people that they otherwise wouldn't know about.

VM: And how do you keep up with... I mean, there's lots of poetry out there. How do you keep up and keep your finger on the pulse? What outlets or magazines or websites, how do you keep up?

AU: I don't keep up, I don't. So I've really never been part of a tight-knit poetry community per se. Maybe if I were, everyone would be talking about, oh yeah, you got to read this book, you got to read that book. But that hasn't been my experience. I've been in my Far East Lounge collective, but then I'm the teacher in that group. And then I have another group I work with, and they were all former students of Peter, and we critique each others' work. But we're not talking about other poetry books. So I subscribed to Poets and Writers, and maybe just through the grapevine, some of my friends had published books. So of course when traci kato-kiriyama's book came out, I was going to get that. Sesshu, I always try to get Sesshu's books.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.