Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: “Nearly two years after having a nervous breakdown after the birth of my son, I started to examine this experience with poetry. Mental illness runs on my mother’s side of the family—with the Vasquez women, specifically—and in searching for the reasons why, I found stories. Some of these are from the lips of my grandmother and mother, some are ones I unearthed inexplicably, from the fertile dirt where poems grow.” (web)
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: “Nearly two years after having a nervous breakdown after the birth of my son, I started to examine this experience with poetry. Mental illness runs on my mother’s side of the family—with the Vasquez women, specifically—and in searching for the reasons why, I found stories. Some of these are from the lips of my grandmother and mother, some are ones I unearthed inexplicably, from the fertile dirt where poems grow.” (web)
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: “Nearly two years after having a nervous breakdown after the birth of my son, I started to examine this experience with poetry. Mental illness runs on my mother’s side of the family—with the Vasquez women, specifically—and in searching for the reasons why, I found stories. Some of these are from the lips of my grandmother and mother, some are ones I unearthed inexplicably, from the fertile dirt where poems grow.” (web)
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: “This poem began with me outlining the ways I have been terrorized by men on the street, as triggered by the Charlottesville violence. I encountered a Twitter thread by @boguspress that made me consider how aggression is encouraged in boys from such a young age, which changed the poem to a mother’s voice.” (web)
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: “This week, I read that a Russian telescope detected a strong signal from sun-like star HD 164595. Though unlikely to be from aliens, I considered how we might introduce ourselves to an extraterrestrial civilization.” (website)