Tommy Pico’s critically acclaimed books of poetry include IRL and Nature Poem. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. Pico’s many honors include a Whiting Award and fellowships with Lambda Literary, Queer/Arts/Mentors, and New York Foundation for the Arts. I had the pleasure of meeting Tommy when he visited Mills College as part of the Contemporary Writers Series. The following exchange took place over email in the fall of 2018.  

Growing up, was there any particular moment, book or person that piqued your curiosity in  writing? During the Q&A after your reading, you mentioned that you used to watch your father practice speeches as tribal leader. Do you see a connection or link between intertwined speech and written language in your work?

I think it was probably Grover in this children’s book There’s a Monster at the End of This Book. He spends the whole time warning you not to turn the page because, as the title suggests, there’s supposedly a monster at the end of the book. I was super delighted I think because it kept calling my attention to the book being a book, like it was self-aware. It was playful. It was kind of tilted. I loved that. That’s what I love about performing, confronting the audience with my voice in a way the text does. It’s meant to be read aloud, and as I’m writing and editing the words have to fit perfectly in my mouth otherwise reading them to others would feel disingenuous.

I like that, reading the book aloud gives it much more depth, character and playfulness compared to if you were reading it in a quiet library. One of the reasons I love books and reading is from my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Weaver. She read Matilda out loud to the class every day for 3 weeks with so much gumption and gut. Since then I can see how many different characters and worlds can come out of just one book. Are there any writers or poets whose performance or readings you are a fan of?

Omg do you have an hour? Lol but for reals I feel so fortunate in this life because so many of my favorite reader/performers are friends of mine or at the very least we have a mutual admiration. Obviously my ride-or-die Morgan Parker, Eve L. Ewing, Danez Smith, Franny Choi, Anastacia Renée-Tolbert, sam sax, Kaveh Akbar, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Angel Nafis, Shira Erlichman you know what I’m just going to stop there because I could literally fill out this whole interview just with names of people who are fire emoji performers.

You talked about being an avid fan of riot grrrl. Growing up as a Native girl in a small reservation bordertown, I was and still am a big fan of Bikini kill/le tigre and Julie ruin, and through work and zines by Kathleen Hanna, I was inspired to create zines by and for Native womxn. You started out in zines as well. Was there any particular zinester or band that inspired you to create your own zine?

Yes! There was a zine called Hey, Soundguy written by Corin Tucker that documented a Sleater-Kinney tour and was kind of about having this cache as a rad female punk band, but then night after night having to submit to these bro-ey sound guys. If you’re not nice or patient or whatever to the sound guy, they can really fuck up your set! It’s travelogue style about being a traveling performer kind of underlies my forthcoming book Feed out next year from Tin House.

Interesting! So, it’s like the good, bad and the ugly of being a traveling writer/performer? This should be juicy, I’m excited to read Feed.

In the beginning it’s like the thrill of the road, the thrill of the stage, the thrill of the heauxs in area codes. By the end, Teebs is just exhausted. In many ways he’s “made it,” she’s a professional yarn-spinner, but he’s all alone on a farty bus or in a hotel robe wishing his friends were there.

Now that you are touring and publishing books with Tin House, is there anything you miss or don’t miss about making zines or the zine community?

I really miss the immediacy of zine making. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tin House and considering how long it takes other publishers to release poetry collections, they are more immediate than almost any other publisher. But when I’m excited about something, I want everyone to read it now, now, now. I also miss the anonymity of zine making and not having to care if something is good or not. One of the beauties of zine making is that it doesn’t have to be good, you just have to make it.

There is something very grown-up about publishing a book, just typing the words “publishing a book” sounds too grownup for me even though this is a position most writers would like to acquire someday compared to the zine world where you can  make a zine and table it the next day at a zine fest. For any graduate poetry students out there reading, how long does it usually take for a poetry collection to be out in the world? What is the process like? Do you receive editorial feedback, and how has a longer time frame between writing to publication changed your approach to poetry? 

I think my situation is pretty unique. In most cases my books come out about a year after I finish them, so it’s an approximation of the immediacy I found in zine making. I think for most poets and probably most writers in general the timeline is a little more protracted. Like let’s say their book was accepted for publication in summer 2018, they’re probably on the schedule for a fall 2020 release at the earliest. That’s my understanding, anyway. But I’ve got a great relationship with Tin House and a trust there, and I was very adamant about these books coming out now. It’s a temporal immediacy sure, and a language thing, but also (and this is something I write about in Feed) the average age of death on my rez is 40.7 years old. I wasn’t raised with the idea that I have a shit ton of time to just think shit over. I need the poetry of “now” to happen now.