"I Was Just Someone with a Journal and Feelings" — Michelle Peñaloza, Poet & Award-Winning Author

Michelle Penaloza is a poet. She is also a farmer, a substitute teacher in a small town in Northern California, a James Laughlin Award recipient, and someone who first read her work aloud in a high school classroom while she was grieving her father. Her dad died when she was a teenager. The grief had no obvious outlet. A teacher made space for her in class, and she read. That was the beginning. In this conversation, Keshiia and Michelle talk about the life of a poet, what the creative process actually looks like from gathering to the book in hand, and what it means to build a practice out of listening to the world and writing toward what you find. They also talk about growing up Filipino-American in Tennessee in the 1990s, where there was virtually no representation, where people mixed her up with other Asian students constantly, and where she ran for student council with a poster that turned that confusion into a joke on her own terms. The grief of her father's death, the history of Philippine colonialism, the experience of being the only brown dot in a room and wanting desperately to connect with people who could not quite figure out what to do with her. Michelle's poetry does not separate any of these things. It holds them all. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode [#170]