“Brava is my tía”: An Interview with Violeta Garza

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I had the pleasure of chatting with Violeta Garza on December 8th, 2025, to talk about her debut poetry chapbook, Brava. The following is a transcription of our conversation.

Cloud Cardona (CC): I’d like to start with the journey to Brava. What was your journey-making process? How did you know this was going to be a collection? What called you into writing Brava at this particular moment?

Violeta Garza (VG): I wanted poems I could age into. I wanted poetry that could stimulate my throat chakra, which is something that I struggle with sometimes. You know, I was rewarded for not speaking up when I was growing up. So,I wanted something that felt very truthful, something of the ages, of the ancestors, lineage of who has come before and who is here now and who is going to come in the future. When I think of what Brava became—not that I set out to do this, but after the fact when I saw what she became—I realized that I never grew up. It’s funny that I’m telling you this because you have your poem “Tía-Shaped,” but I never really had the tía that would take me in and take care of me in that way. I know that some people talk about their books being their children, but for me, Brava is my tía. La tía Brava. She likes to take her clothes off, and she’s the one who is healing those generational patterns by speaking her truth. There are times that I want to be more Brava than I really am. She’s become the role model for what I can’t say out loud, but she says it for me. I feel her taking me by the hand and saying, c’mon, get out of your shell. I am just really grateful for her showing me the way.

CC: Brava is your tía! I love that. I wanted to ask you about your public readings. We first met at a reading for Voices de la Luna. You were coming into the poetry scene here in San Antonio and doing a lot of readings. I feel like very quickly, even maybe the first time I saw you read, you already had a stage presence. Could you talk about your performance style, what helped you along the way, and any tips for people looking to break through on stage?

VG: Yes! There were three things that got me here—one, I got to teach English to high school students in Japan who didn’t speak English, so I learned to use my voice and body in a way that was more, maybe, dramatic, operatic, almost, to get my point across. Two, I did story time for toddlers for ten years, so even though they spoke English, they didn’t have an attention span. So again, it made me realize that instead of having people sit through a bland reading, making it come alive was a gift for them. For toddlers and adults, I mean, our attention spans are not something to be proud of these days [laughs]. Three, I went through these brain injuries that recalibrated my entire life, and it felt like divine interference to bring me into this world. I thought to myself, these ancestors and guides did not go through all that trouble to get me here just to sit there and not own my power and my presence, like I am supposed to be up there. I think a lot of people are nervous, and I understand. I get nervous too. But if nervousness leads to I don’t belong on this stage, the audience will know it immediately. So when I am up there, I know I am supposed to be up there. Even if it’s only for five minutes, that stage is mine, and nobody else’s. As an introvert, it is the only time I don’t have to interrupt anybody, I don’t have to time my response, I don’t have to wait for the right moment to jump in and say, Here’s what I think… No! I get to set the pace. So I lean into that.

I think most people want to see you succeed because they want to succeed. So if you’re bombing, they feel like they’re bombing. But if you’re killing it up there, there’s killing it up there too. It is almost like the audience wants to be up there with you and wants to root for you. On a more technical level, what I would do is plan the very first word you’re going to say when you’re up there, whether it’s “Hello!” or “Welcome!” or “What’s Up!” because once that happens and the audience responses to you, then the rest comes naturally. Another tip: if at all possible, memorize at least one of your lines from your poems, so you can look up and make a connection. The printed poem is the rough draft to the performance, if that makes sense. And what I’ve seen, that I would have never imagined, is these middle-aged cis men who are really connecting with my poems because it takes them to this time of childhood with their grandmothers or with someone that they’ve lost. So I learn more the more I perform, based on audience feedback. So I hope it’s not something people are scared of, but something they embrace.

CC: I love that. Is there a particular poem that you love to perform?

VG: Oh yeah! These days, it’s the “Comadre” poem; it’s a prayer of finding your bestie. When I wrote that poem, I was lonely as heck, but that poem got me my comadre because I was vulnerable and specific and insistent that I wanted a bestie, dammit [laughs].

CC: I love it. It’s almost like a spell. I like to see poems that, sometimes subconsciously, are these prayers and manifestations that we don’t even know we’re writing. It’s like an incantation, you know? It obviously worked for you; you have several now.

VG: It did. I am so lucky. I had to voice it. Again, throat chakra stuff.

CC: Speaking specifically to Brava, it has a lot to do with the body. Both its struggles and its celebrations of the body, the sensuality, and the pain it brings, and how it fails us. Could you talk about how you approach writing into the body, into the senses?

VG: I have been a very cerebral person for most of my life and have been rewarded for getting good grades in school and making the family look good. So for a long time, I put my body last because I felt like it was shameful. In many cultures, but especially in traditional Mexican households, girls are taught shame as a way of controlling their sensuality and autonomy. I bought into that for a very, very long time. About a decade ago, I was at a poetry festival in New York City, and I forgot who was speaking, but someone from the audience shared, “Our bodies are the longest and most intimate relationship that we’ll ever have in our lifetimes,” and this triggered the crap out of me at the time cause I thought Ugh! [laughs], I don’t like that, that makes me uncomfortable. It took me a very long time to realize that I was being very unkind to my body because it didn’t look the way I wanted it to look. There are different ages where I’ve wanted different things. There was a season I wanted bigger calves because I wanted fuller legs, and I think that a lot of us have those hang-ups. But then, when I experienced my brain injuries, my body rebelled and said, okay we’re just going to do the bare minimum now. And it didn’t matter what my calves looked like, what mattered was that my legs were able to take me to the restroom, shower, and all of things. It started being less about what I wanted my body to be, and more about the things that my body did for me all the time without me even giving a thanks. Once I started demilitarizing myself in that structure where intelligence was my entire sense of worth for a very long time, the brain injuries made me a C+ adult, where I was an A+ adult for so much of life. But C+ is alright, my body does what it does. I am grateful to her for having more way more wisdom than my brain has. My body remembers. My body honors. My sacredness, my existence, you know, I carry the blood of my ancestors and of my family. In the long term, do I want to look hot or have peace? And it took me a long time to realize that, to do what I need to do in this lifetime, I needed to stop the war with myself. And that’s what “Bless My Inconvenient Body” is about. We don’t have to be enemies. We can actually be besties. And she’s one of my homes, this body of mine is one of my homes. And I best respect her, cause she has a lot of power.

CC: Yes. That’s so well put. I relate to that struggle. I’d love to dive into one of your poems. Could you read “A Veces Me Pongo Brava” for us?

VG: Reads “A Veces Me Pongo Brava”. Click here to hear her poem.

CC: Thank you. I love this poem. There’s so much strength. It reminded me of Sandra Cisneros’ poetry in Loose Women, with its punctuation. There’s a strength even in the uncertainty, and the quieter moments of the ending, too. I specifically wanted to talk about the moment about Flaco Jimenez. You address the audience with the line, “There I go with the lies again, I don’t drink tequila, and I barely listen to Flaco, just hoped I’d win points with my people.” When I heard this poem for the first time, that stanza was stuck in my head because I had never heard a poet, specifically a Mexican-American poet in San Antonio, reference this desire to connect, even if it means embellishing. And I love that. That’s so real, that desire to connect with our culture and people, even if it doesn’t speak true to our own experiences. Could you talk about this moment? What inspired you to write that line? That stanza?

VG: Yeah, so I’m from San Antonio. I grew up in Mexico, and I speak Spanish. My family barely spoke any English; I mean my parents did not speak English conversationally or for fun. So I am very Mexicana, but in some ways, because of my skin color and colorism, again, I was rewarded growing up for acting more white than Mexican. Which, at the time, felt like a success story. I felt this responsibility to elevate my family out of poverty, and to do that, I felt I had to be a professional. And to do that, I was taught to get along with dominant culture people, and again, it felt like a success story until I thought, oh wait, my own people don’t know who I am or don’t know that I’m Mexicana like them. Growing up, for a long time, I thought it was important to be monetarily successful, but I realized no one was claiming me. My culture wasn’t claiming me. It wasn’t like, she is not one of ours; she’s one of theirs. Especially living in Portland for a very long time, I felt like my own culture was slipping away from me. And there are times when the more performative, flashy elements of our culture are celebrated, so you go oh yeah, I drink tequila, I listen to Flaco, don’t ask me for one of his song titles, I don’t know him, but I am going to be like yeah! in moments of desperation. I have always felt like I could belong anywhere, but I didn’t actually belong anywhere. There were times when I was just desperate to be one of my own people. So I did feel like it was vulnerable to call myself a liar because I didn’t want people to think I lie about everything cause I don’t, but I felt like it was important to own up to, sometimes, in order to fit in, we peer pressure ourselves into being one of the crowd when in fact, there are so many different types of Mexicans and I just happen to be one of them. So in moments of strength, I remember that, but sometimes it isn’t always easy.

CC: That’s so real, though, and so human in a way that a lot of us don’t talk about in fear of the shame, the vulnerability, which is why I love this moment in the poem. I think there are certain trigger words at a poetry reading in San Antonio, and you get the audience reaction. It’s the conchas.

VG: YES! YES!

CC: You could do a whole concha anthology. It’s a whole subgenre of Chicano poetry. We just don’t talk about it, or maybe there are academic essays talking about it, but it’s not a conversation I’ve seen. So I love that you brought that into Brava.

VG: And I wrote this poem before Flaco Jimenez died, so now when I perform, I say, “que en paz descanse,” which is not in the book.

CC: I love that addition. You referenced the “Comadre” poem earlier. Could you read that for us and then talk about it a little bit?

VG: Reads "Comadre". Click here to read her poem.

CC: I love hearing that one, it’s so joyous and so vulnerable and has that element of humor that so many of your poems hold, while simultaneously holding the harder things, the vulnerability, the loneliness. I’d like to hear you talk about this balance, how you bring humor into your poetry. What draws you to placing humor in these poems of yours?

VG: I think humor is something that helps us get through the really difficult times. To me, laughter and grief are part of the same coin. My best friend who I dedicate this book, told me once, “I can’t tell if you’re crying or laughing, they sound the same,” when we’d be on the phone, and it was the truth. I laugh and cry in the same way. Like many of us, life is very painful at times, and the only way to get through it sometimes, even if it’s just me making myself laugh, I’m not saying I’m trying to make everybody laugh, humor is so subjective, but for me, if I am having a good time with my poem, then I find other people tend to come along. In part because I am such a drama queen, that even when I suffer, I make myself laugh from the sheer drama. I’m grateful that people call this a humorous book, because it did make me laugh, and I hope it does the same for others, but I would never say that I set out to write a funny book of poetry, because then people are going to look at it and be like, that’s not funny. But to me, the more I read it, the more it makes me laugh at times when I thought it would be the opposite, that I would be hardened to the humor, but no, it is the laughter that keeps on giving to me.

CC: You know, I feel like that is very in the Chicanx tradition of poetry, too, that I’ve seen a lot in San Antonio. Bringing in that humor feels rare sometimes in the poetry space; there are so many spaces that are very serious and silent, which at certain moments is appropriate, but I think there’s always more room for humor, especially in poetry. There’s nothing better than making people laugh at a poetry reading, I feel. I’m sure you feel the same way.

VG: Oh yeah, it’s the best. It’s the best [laughs].

CC: I’d like to talk about your artistic inspirations for Brava. What poets and poems were you in conversation with or inspired by while writing these poems that ended up in Brava?

VG: You know, I think I’m constantly inspired by, especially here in the San Antonio community.. I’ve been drawn to your work, and to the work of Yesika Salgado in L.A., and, of course, to the work of Sandra Cisneros. There’s also Analicia Sotelo from Houston, who’s amazing. Saúl Hernández, too, what a badass. I also take a lot of inspiration from musical stars like Juan Gabriel, Tori Amos, to some extent, Fiona Apple, a lot of those songstresses. Even Kate Bush, The Beatles. In fact, in a way, “A Veces Me Pongo Brava” was inspired by the work of the later Beatles; it feels like two different songs in one, so I have two different poems in one. It could have been two different poems, but it was the cosmic coin, you know, two different signs, so I find that I’m inspired by artists in general. Oh, also the cartoonists, Lynda Berry, Malaka Gharib and Nicole Georges.

CC: I love the range, and I love what you said about the eight-minute-long Beatles song with a secret song at the end, when you think the album is over. On that note of inspiration and process, I noticed a lot of these shorter lines and sometimes words broken up across multiple lines, specifically in “La Tiendita” and “Inheritance.” Could you talk about this stylistic choice? What inspired your line breaks and enjambment?

VG: I love working with white space on the page. Even in my weaving, I wove this whole piece [points to piece she made], and you’ll notice some white almost as if they’re line breaks themselves. So for me, I need to breathe when I’m reading a poem. You know, I’m an earth sign that’s sustained a constellation of concussions, so slow burn is my jam and always has been. I take my time on the page. And part of that is because I want to make sure that some of these lines really shine and don’t get buried in with all the text. I think more claustrophobic forms are effective, but I find that I have a hard time understanding all of that, and part of that is because of my TBI-imposed ADHD. I find that when I do use those line breaks, I really slow down the reader, and it’s up to them on how they want to read it and how they want to receive it. But for me, I need to be able to feel like I’m stepping on the ground, slowly almost like Thich Nhat Hahn, really savoring the meaning and moment. And that’s meaningful to me, which is why the cover also has so much white space as well, because originally, she was this creature engulfed by everything else, but by widening out her hips and giving her some bluebonnets and picking flowers, she’s resting into the moment and being in the moment.

CC: That makes sense that it does create a mindfulness, a slowing down, a lengthening the poem, staying in that moment, and you know something else I noticed in Brava, the range of topics that you approach is varied, like we have comadres, we have the body, we have home, we have loss, we have Ulvalde, we have a personal poem about a friend of yours that was killed by a drunk driver. We have these intense moments alongside the aforementioned humor and lighter moments, but I’d like to know the process for determining what you were going to include in this collection. And how did you approach your process of including certain poems in Brava?

VG: Yeah, when I first started writing poetry, I was going through a very traumatizing breakup, and really exploring poetry was a healing modality. As an ugh, like let me excrete this from my skin, from my pores, and that was a wonderful practice. I thought, “I really want to publish this grief collection.” But I found that while those poems were good and my editor at the time said, yeah these are great, I didn’t want to revisit so much of that pain, like I’ve already gotten past it, and books take a long time to get published, and like, some of these poems in Brava that just came out were written two years ago. But I wanted to enjoy this collection. I wanted it to be deep, I wanted it to be medicine, but I didn’t want it to feel like I was cringing at the thought of this book. Some of that I learned from Rioberto Gonzalez at the Macondo Writing Workshop: you don’t want to keep retriggering yourself. You want to be able to enjoy, and I’ve seen some writers when their books come out, they’ve had enough of the book and they don’t want to revisit it again, but for me, I wanted it to feel honest, truthful, you know difficult at times, but feel like even though I could go into those depths, I could come out easily. So even though there’s only sixteen poems, when I go to readings, I have my pick of do I want to do a sensual poem: do I want to do a funny poem? A sad poem? I like the fact that I am a bit of a wild card when it comes to poetry; there’s so much for me to choose from. I like having that range because, depending on what’s going on in the world, I might choose a specific poem. Right after the Texas floods in July, I had a reading, and I was able to do the Uvalde poem and tie it to that current event. So I feel like she’s just a rich field of wildflowers, and I can pick whatever I want for any given moment. And I want to thank my editor, John Espinoza, for helping me winnow down the collection. I gave him about 36 poems and he cut it to about half that had a narrative, so I am grateful that someone told me to make sure to get an editor because it really helped me feel like I could step outside of myself and get that help so that it would make sense to others.

CC: That’s such a good point about having variety, like having any given situation you’re in, you have different poems that speak to what the audience's needs are in the moment or what the event calls for. I think that’s brilliant to have that in a chapbook. There’s only so much you can do in 30-40 pages, but Brava proves that you can have so much variety in one collection. This brings me to my next question, if there any projects or anything on the horizon that you’re working on currently?

VG: There are a few things that I’m proud of. I’ve composed an instrumental classical music album, which will be released in 2026. I’ve collaborated with the University of Incarnate Word and their music therapy department to make it work, and it’s been exciting. We finished recording it, and mixing is next. And I’m also working on a fully Spanish-language collection of essays about leaving Mexico as a child, coming back as an adult, and feeling all these hollows in my body from being torn away from that first homeland. I mean, technically, I was born in the States, but I moved there when I was four, so that felt like my homeland for a very long time. And I’m working on a hybrid poetry graphic memoir about brain injuries. So, it is a full load over here, but I am mentioning it because I’m manifesting support for all of these projects because they’re all very different and in some ways, I’m taking on more than I can chew, but that’s on purpose because the help will come. I am especially looking for help with learning how to draw better.

CC: You’re doing so much in different genres, like you have music, you have essays, you have a hybrid memoir, that’s awesome.

VG: Yeah, I can’t seem to stay in one lane [laughs].

CC: Yeah, do it all!

VG: Yeah, do it all! With the time that we have.

CC: Lastly, I wanted to ask if there were any musicians, artists, poets, or anything that you want to shout out or have people put on their radar. Whether it’s forthcoming or it’s been out for 50 years.

VG: In terms of collections of poetry that are coming out from local San Antonio poets, I’m really excited about Osmani Ochoa’s chapbook, Once We Were Rebels, from Maíz Poppin Press and also Alejandra “La Mera Mera” Sanchez-Alaniz is coming out with Lip Liturgy from Mouthfeel Press in January of 2027 I believe. I am also excited for the anonymous fuzzball graphic novel by Nicole Georges. And I was going to say the new Chet Baker album. No one ever told me about Chet Baker when I was growing up, and I discovered him a couple years ago and thought, how come nobody told me? I especially adore early Chet Baker. Like just cause I’m Mexican, no one told me about this! [laughs]. But I live.

CC: It is messed up, it’s the assumption that we wouldn’t be into it! But I’m glad you discovered it now.

CC: Thank you so much for talking about Brava, poetry, inspiration, and everything. I greatly appreciate it. If people want to purchase Brava or follow you, where should they head?

VG: Yes, so if you want to go to my website at violetagarza.com, I am also a performance doula, so I help with performing in front of audiences. We work together to get to the root of what makes you nervous, but also why you keep coming back to it. On Instagram, I am at @violeta.poeta. Thank you so much for this opportunity, it’s been so lovely. I also want to give a shout out to my press, First Matter Press, which has been so kind to me, and I’ve learned a lot about this process from them.

Cloud Delfina Cardona is an artist, writer, and book cover designer from San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of What Remains, winner of the 2020 Host Publications Chapbook Prize, and the past is a jean jacket, winner of the Hub City Press BIPOC Poetry Series. Cardona is the cofounder of Infrarrealista Review, a nonprofit that publishes Texan writers. She is an associate at Letras Latinas.