No. 12 Air Head Feature: Alexandra Gómez

Jan 23

Alexandra Gómez is a Portland based poet and photographer and submitted a piece to No. 12 Air Head. Today we learn a little bit more about the writer.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself...where are you from? When did you start writing?

My name is Alexandra, a Portland based poet and photographer. Where am I from? That’s always the toughest question for me. I’m from a wave of my mother’s love and my father’s brown skin. But, I was born in central Florida, if that’s what you’re asking. I grew up equally between Florida, Arizona, and Southern Oregon. However, after living in Barcelona, Spain for about a year, I’d say that feels most like home.

I started writing when I was maybe four years old. I loved to make the grocery lists and carry a pen through the aisles to check everything off. I wrote a book about a cat and a rat when I was in 1st grade. I’ve written all my life, really. I think the first time I really started to take writing into my own hands and explore “looser” parameters than those of academia was when I was 14 or 15. I journaled, and later called it poetry.

If you can remember, what was the first thing you wrote where you read and thought it was good?

Oh my god. I was on the fourteenth floor, in my grandmother’s apartment in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was staying with her for about a month in the summer. I don’t think she was home, so I had the place to myself. I had written some angsty sensual poem about god or lust and it was maybe only five lines. But I thought it was brilliant. I submitted it along with two other poems to every big poetry magazine I knew of. No one published it.

Why do you write?

To figure out how I feel in very concise terms. To explore what-ifs. To make a feeling last for pages.

Who are some of your favorite writers and/or heroes?

Sylvia Plath, (but I prefer her journals over her poetry). Frida Kahlo for her womanhood and self inquiry. Shinji Moon’s entire collection “Anatomy of Being” reminds me to let things move like water. All of these women are steady in their unknowing and maybe that is what attracts me most.

What was the inspiration behind writing your piece for Air Head?

It all started with scribbles, I suppose. AirHead was proposed to me by Beacon with the issue being focused on thoughts, knowledge, all of these intangible things that take up space in the mind, and presumably heart. So, I started exactly there: with my thoughts. I like to start any project with a free write just to check in with myself and see what comes to page. I probably had a coffee, too.

It's funny how much of an audience member I feel in regards to my own work, never really sure of what's about to be revealed to me. Recurring notes of self, identity, bilingualism, a certain person's touch, and all of the unknowing bubbled up and over until I knew that I just needed to write a list-like poem of what I know. Take the pressure off of dedicating to one specific thread of knowledge, and rather fleshing each out until I could see for myself how they were all really very deeply connected.

What does Air Head mean to you?

Socially, someone without much of a brain. Maybe stupid?

In regards to how this issue was presented to me, someone who thinks more than feels.

What do you do if you have writer's block?

Play “Beach Baby” by Bon Iver.

If you have to write an autobiography what would the title be?

You don’t know how many times I’ve contemplated this over the course of my life. Some of the titles that have come and gone are “self portrait” “overripe” “more about flesh”.

Safe to say, I have no idea.

How can people follow you? Social media channels or website?

Instagram is best right now! @alexxandrawho

My website is under construction! But feel free to explore! alexxandrawho.com