TREE INTERVIEW WITH SARAH A. CHAVEZ
TREE LOCATION: HUNTINGTON, WV
Do you ever think about trees?
Frequently! In fact, it was thinking about trees and wanting to be around them that helped me decide to go to graduate school. Not because I wanted to study them, but because I liked having the opportunity to sit against them. In the neighborhood I’m from, there weren’t many trees or much grass, mostly a lot of black asphalt and cement. But on CSU Fresno’s campus, trees where everywhere. One day, sitting on a low brick wall in between classes, intermittently reading poetry and looking out at the tree-lined quad, I thought, “I always want this to be life.”
What is a vivid/significant memory you have involving a tree or trees?
In college, I took a mixed media art class in which we were told to go find something out in the world with which to make art. Thinking about the assignment, sitting against a tree & kind of scratching my back on the bark, a limb – about an inch and a half diameter, two feet long, and craggily – fell off and hit me on the head. Luckily it didn’t hurt, only scratched my shoulder a bit, but it felt like the tree was trying to help. Like it said, “here you go.” So I took the branch home with me and began painting with it. I can still, so many years later, feel the textured knobs of its bark rough in my hand as I dragged it through acrylics.
Are trees involved at all in your writing or worldview?
Definitely. When I graduated with my MA in creative writing, I commemorated it by getting a tree of life tattoo on my back. Trees as symbols have always appealed to me: their sturdy trunks, the deepness of their roots, their reciprocal relationship with other plants and animals. That interconnectedness is something I try to always keep in mind. Our actions, including our words, ripple through our environment, in ways we can’t always anticipate. The more we remember that, the more compassionate we can be. I guess you could say trees are kind of like my role models.
Sarah A. Chavez, a mestiza born and raised in the California Central Valley, is the author of the chapbook, All Day, Talking published by Dancing Girl Press (2014). She holds a PhD in English with a focus in poetry and Ethnic Studies from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Luna Luna Magazine, So to Speak: Feminist Journal of Language and Art, among others. Her manuscript, This, Like So Much, was an Honorable Mention for the 2013 Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Contest. A selection from her chapbook manuscript All Day, Talking won the Susan Atefat Peckham Fellowship in 2013. She is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. www.sarahachavez.com
Go green and read some of Sarah’s poems here
