Interview: Gretchen Filart

On Art and Colonization, The Importance of Mentoring, and How Writing has the Potential to Make us Whole

The Isthmus was lucky enough to interview Gretchen Filart—a Philippines-based poet, essayist, world-class parent. Gretchen has been most recently published in Epistemic Lit and in Barely South Review. You can read more about her on Our World in Words.

From reading your work, I’ve noticed you seem to have a real love for travel. What came first: your love of traveling or your love of writing?

My fondest memories were of my stepdad waking us up at 3 in the morning, telling us to pack our bags. We’d find ourselves on the road, in his old Toyota car, sometimes hundreds of miles away from home. The earliest road trip I can remember was in Baguio, a famous mountain city here in the Philippines, when I was around 3. 

Writing found its way to me much later when I was in fifth grade. A Science teacher told us to write three ecopoems as homework. After that, I began to write essays, a hobby that led to a role in the school paper. These two passions shaped my experience of the world from a young age. One influences the other in a tidal, undeniable way - even opening doors for each other.

That was quite a long, winded explanation for a short "what" question!

I love that it started with ecopoems! Can you tell me about your relationship with English and writing in English? I am interested in projects like The Porch Lit Mag and others who are consciously writing in English to present Southeast Asian writers to a broader world.

I think it's somehow a natural transition for us, Filipinos, to navigate English, as if it is our lingua franca. Although Filipino is the country's national language, in nearly all situations and settings - from road signs to media to schools, to households - English serves as the primary instructional tool. We were a US colony for nearly 50 years. However we convince ourselves that we're independent now, I think in a way, this still makes our tongues a slave to this foreign language. In fact, in many homes children are taught English first before Filipino. It is also a common but fallacious notion that when someone converses fluently in English, said person is deemed smarter than others.

In my case, I write primarily in English out of cultivated habit. I grew up with it. It's all around me. At the same time, I also want my work to be understood universally. Reach diverse sets of eyes. Keep the conversation going on important matters using a medium that others, regardless of race or geography, comprehend and speak, too. 

Though I wouldn't deny: part of why I do so - and why recently I've been learning Spanish and incorporating it in my work - is because I think it's wise and empowering to know your colonizer's language. Even during the Spanish colonial era, our Filipino revolutionaries and heroes conversed and revolted in Spanish. Sort of to say, "We can understand you and see through you. We can steer and paddle our way into your language easefully. You will not keep colonizing us for long." 

Colonization is an illness that clings and rarely gets scrubbed away completely from a nation's skin. It's crucial to be conscious of how it enslaves us, how we still permit ourselves to be enslaved, and what we can do when modern colonizers and racists present themselves to us. 

Language is a beautiful and powerful thing. It can serve as a thread that binds and connects, but we must be mindful of our intentions too in using it. When I speak and write in English, I do with the purpose of communicating to a wider audience, without forgetting my mother language. Without forgetting my roots as a Filipino. That is incredibly important to me.

You really laid out this complicated relationship with power and language here with the example of Filipino revolutionaries conversing in the language of their colonizers. Language has a very intimate relationship with power here as a way to gain agency and resist, but, also, as you mentioned, as way to connect us. Do you think literature—whether fiction, memoir, or poetry—still has the power to connect? I think about the way art and community is formed on social media, and so much of it just seems like promotion and hype, not that those things aren't important, but I get pessimistic sometimes about the power of written word in the 21st century.

Oh, I absolutely relate to this feeling! It’s easy to get lost in the glitz and high of acceptances, nominations, and awards, and just as easy to feel demotivated when you receive one rejection after another, isn’t it? There are a lot of voices competing for space - in social media, especially - that if you don’t make as much noise, it will drown your work. 

I recently deactivated all my accounts for two weeks for the same reason. That break forced me to return to my whys. I think that’s very important - self-awareness and staying true to ourselves and our reasons - especially with how intertwined social media is with our lives as writers. Is impact measured by how many eyes see our work? Who are we writing for? Why do we write? 

Four years ago, when I first wrote about my experience as a rape survivor on my website, I didn’t expect anyone to reach out or even read it. Then, I began receiving messages in my inbox from strangers and people I haven’t spoken to in a long time saying, “I don’t have the courage to speak of my assault, but thank you for making me feel seen.” Those are the people we must keep in mind. Those are the people I write for. The ones who sit with unspoken truths. Those who have been cast aside, marginalized, or oppressed. Those in need of arms and eyes. Not the high-brow journals, editors, and writers who deem my work unworthy. 

We tend to think our experiences are unique, but we are not too dissimilar from others as we think we are. It’s a world of eight billion people. Somewhere out there, someone shares the same story craving to be heard and understood. Our individualist society teaches us otherwise, but connection is a basic need. Humans long to connect with and transmit their beliefs, values, and hopes to others. Literature has a profound way of empowering us to express that need and lead us to others with the same experience. And it will continue to do so, regardless of time, because community is vital to our existence.

Really beautifully said! Yes, writing for the ones that are out there waiting for your story because your story is also *their* story. Thank you for that, I needed to hear it. Writing about our tragedies violates much of what we think we should be doing—keeping silent, suffering in silence, and all that which comes with this individualist society. You must've been encouraged by other writing their experiences—who are some of your influences here? Perhaps there are some that a Western audience wouldn't be familiar with?

I couldn't have said it better, Christian! I love what you said about writing being a form of resistance to oppressive individualist thinking. By doing so, it also becomes liberation and a practice of compassion for ourselves.

And it’s true: I’ve always been drawn to writing that is compassionate, raw, and conversational like that of Clementine von Radics’, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Ada Limon, Mary Oliver, and Kim Adonizzio. I also admire Celine Murillo’s ecopoems and biodiversity work, Juan Ekis’s Filipino poetry, and Eliza Victoria’s fiction.

Twitter also recently led me to many up-and-coming Asian writers, whose fluidity in navigating important themes like family, feminism, politics, and other complex intersections really shine. Filipino writers like Jeff William Acosta, Heather Ann Pullido, Alyza Taguilaso, and Karlo Sevilla. From India, Shikha S. Lamba’s tender writing always resonates, as well as Ankit Raj Ojha's. I also like Joemario Umana’s (Nigeria) pieces on boys' struggles from an African lens. 

One of my earliest influences though is my high school Literature teacher, Nerisa Guevara. Ms. G would leave these encouraging little notes on my homework. Those notes kept me going, even in years I stopped writing. She also led the school's Creative Writing elective, which led me deeper into the practice. I've always admired how she transforms grief, including her own rape, into art that while often sorrowful is also luminescent, comforting, and so beautifully human. I am fortunate to be guided by someone like that who witnessed my growth, understands why I write the way I do, and whom I can confide in as a friend for things other than writing and tells me what I need to hear, whether I want to hear it or not.

Yes, mentoring is so incredibly important when it comes to writing. Particularly for those just starting out, but even for experienced writers. It sounds like Nerisa was this kind of mentor for you. Also, thank you for such an international list of writers for readers of The Isthmus to look into! I also want to steer people to your site, Our World in Words, as well. What are your plans for the site and your future writing?

So true. Very fortunate to have her in my life. And you're welcome! Always happy to discuss Asian lit.

The website is a sort of love letter to my daughter. To life. Apart from housing much of my writing, including poetry, there is over a decade of memories of us there. So definitely I'll keep it alive as long as I can. 

I have a few chapbook manuscripts under consideration. Upon Ms. G’s encouragement last year, I also began working on a full-length manuscript. It consists of pieces from a section on the site called "Letters to Lia", which I’ve been writing for my daughter since she was in the womb. 

My dream is to be able to transition from full-time corporate writing to subsisting on creating books, essays, and poetry, plus freelance writing. I want to spend the rest of my life simply inhabiting this existence: taking walks, rediscovering and loving humans, cultivating a personal forest, growing trees, and reading books and writing under one. I like being led by writing wherever it takes me, so we'll see!

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Gretchen Filart is a professional writer and was a finalist for phoebe’s 2023 Spring Poetry Contest. Also, her essay, “Where the Gods Play”, was awarded second place in  Navigator’s Around the World 2017 global travel writing contest. Her poetry appears in multiple venues. You can keep up with her at Our World in Words.