A Passion For Poetry

Interview with Santana Shorty
​
By Jessica Rath

Image credit: Santana Shorty.

What better way to introduce a poet and writer than with one of her poems? So, here it is:

Lake Valley

At the end of the road, there is a gate

It is an old gate

The kind that takes two arms to pull

Common rez courtesy means the passenger opens the gate

while the driver passes through

The mud ruts make everything hard

An abandoned one room house keeps guard at the gate

Someone told me once a family of five lived there

I don’t know if it’s true, but it could be

There is a thrum in the ground

Petrified wood scatters with pottery shards

The wind carries small porous pebbles of ancient lava

In the distance, I see a group of wild horses

The days of taming them are gone

The road has alternate paths forward

A way cut through when the rains came

At the end of the road is the house, hogan, and corral

A lonely tornado ruined the house long ago

someone told me

Many people once came here for ceremony

My grandfather sat at the head of the hogan

A circle of us sat along the wall

Tobacco smoke holding the room, keeping us warm

There was blue corn mush and elk meat with piñon

There was tea in a pail


There was sweet corn and canned fruit

I used to pick out the cherries for myself

The thrum tenderized the ground

The drum pulled the room inward to the fireplace

A song carried out the chimney, ribboned with wind

that finds me here today, years later

opening a gate for ghosts to pass through

Santana Shorty

A good poem captures your attention by building a multi-dimensional picture: it creates a rhythmic, visual image which is imbued with your feelings, memories, and thoughts, as if tiny hooks would pull little snippets from your mind and weave them into a reflection of the words you read. At least, that’s my experience reading Santana’s poem, and now I want to learn more. When did she start writing poetry, how did she become a writer? Although she has a full schedule, Santana graciously agreed to chat with me.

She was born in Santa Fe and grew up in Abiquiú, Santana told me. The family lived in Plaza Blanca, and when she was about eight years old her parents separated. She and her Mom moved to Barranco while her Dad moved to Lindrith, a small village past Coyote and Gallina.

Image credit: Joan Davidge.

Santana’s father is Navajo, and she is a member of the Navajo Nation. Her mother is Anglo and has been a teacher at Abiquiú Elementary for many years. Santana started school there, then went to Fairview Elementary in Espanola for a couple of years because her mother was teaching there, and then returned  to Abiquiú for fifth and sixth grade, again because her mother was teaching there. For middle- and high school she attended  the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe.

​“My mother is an amazing teacher,” Santana told me. “She's taught for  25 years, and she always stuck with elementary, first grade, second grade, those are her favorites. She encouraged my and my sister's artistic interests, she really nourished those. I've always been a big reader, and she got me the books I wanted to read. So I've been reading a lot ever since I was really young, and I've been writing since I was really young. My Mom  did a remodel recently and found a bunch of boxes filled with things that she had collected over the years. In some of the boxes there were some journals with poetry I wrote when I was six years old.”

Image credit: Joan Davidge.

How nice of her mother to preserve all these early records! I bet it was fun to sort through them.

​For middle- and highschool, Santana was a dorm student at the Santa Fe Indian School, something that was both challenging and enriching. On the one hand, it was hard because she loved Abiquiú and being with her family. She would try to spend the weekends at home, but often Cross Country and Track and Field events took place on Saturdays. It was inconvenient to go home for one night and be back at the school by Sunday afternoon, so she would stay for close to two weeks sometimes. On the other hand, it taught her self-reliance and independence.

Image credit: Joan Davidge.

“I was valedictorian of my school, and I got a full-ride scholarship to go to Stanford, which is where I went for my undergraduate studies,” Santana explained. “One of my main extracurriculars was poetry.”

Image credit: Santana Shorty.

I wanted to hear more about Santana’s poetry. She had mentioned that she wrote poems at an early age – what motivated her? Is it even possible to put that impulse into words?

She had to think about this for a moment. “For me, it is a way of processing the world,” she answered. “The artistic component is a byproduct of trying to understand life and experiences. It's not always that I want to write a good poem. It's that I have something on my mind that I can't let go of. The only way for me to satisfactorily explore that is via poetry. And then afterwards I recognize that I have a piece here that I want to work with.”

This is so interesting. It’s almost as if something is nagging her, as if a poem knocks on her head and wants to come in and then she has to explore the meaning of it.

Santana explained further: “A lot of artists have their little obsessions, the things that they have to return to again and again, and maybe at some point they can move on to the next thing. It's part of that. You have to get it out of your system, you have to explore this thing so many times, until you can finally put it to rest and don’t have to think about it anymore.”

​And what are the things that want to be explored, I wanted to know. Do they come from the past? Or from relationships? Do they come from nature?

Image credit: Joan Davidge.

“For me, what tends to be knocking usually comes from nature,” I learned.  “I write a lot of poetry about landscape, and the desert. New Mexico. That's something I can always write about, and will forever be obsessed with. Sometimes it also can be current events or a life experience.”

She continued telling me about her education: “I went to Stanford in the Bay Area, and I graduated with a biology degree. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I ended up in the tech industry, and I worked in the tech industry for a long time in the Bay Area. In 2019 I moved back to New Mexico because I missed it and I wasn't really happy in the Bay Area anymore. I tried to pivot into a career in the public sector and I worked for the Santa Fe Public School District in their Native American Student Services Program. I was hoping to shift into a full time government position, but then the pandemic hit, and there was a hiring freeze. So I went back to the tech sector because it was reliable.”

​“I was working for a bank creating banking software,” Santana continued. “During all this time I was writing. I wanted to get more experience with writing, I wanted to learn how to write more formally. So I started to take some continuing education classes with UNM and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and eventually one of the teachers encouraged me to apply for the IAIA’s MFA program in creative writing. But  I didn't know if I was good enough, I didn't know if I had the credentials. My Dad also went to IAIA in the 80s for Studio Arts. He's a sculptor and a painter. And so eventually one of my poetry teachers from the Continuing Ed classes pushed me a little: ‘Come on, you should have already applied!’ So I did, was accepted, and started the program in 2022.”

Image credit: Santana Shorty.

It was fascinating to listen to Santana. “It was the best decision of my life, I found my people and my community in that cohort. I had started a novel, and the program helped me finish the novel, I finished the first draft in February of last year, and I graduated in May. After getting my MFA I really wanted to have my writing passion mimic my day-to-day existence. It felt as if I had split personalities, my big-girl banking job in the daytime, and then writing at night. What job could I do that would enable me to do both?”

“And then two weeks after my graduation the president of NMSA (New Mexico School for the Arts) here in Santa Fe called me and said that they had an opening for the Creative Writing Department chair position! I applied, started the interview process, and they offered me the job at the end of June last year. So I gave notice to my banking job, moved to Santa Fe, and started as the department chair. Now I teach creative writing to high school students, run the department, and I still get to work on my own creative projects and writing. Life has really shifted in the last year to align with my ultimate dream job.”

​Doesn’t this sound  fantastic? We often have to work jobs simply  to make money, jobs that are not ideal. But Santana could give up her banking job and now pursue her passion. She can work in a field that is most dear to her heart and that supports her. That's so  impressive.

Image credit: Santana Shorty.

Santana agreed. “For a long time, I didn't think of it seriously. I just thought of writing as my hobby. For many years, especially after graduating college, I didn't know what my dream job would be. I knew what my dream or my passion was, but to turn this into a job that would support me? I didn’t think that was possible. But I tried new things and pushed myself out of my comfort zone,  and that’s how I found out what my dream job could be. Yes, I'm going to take a big pay cut from the fancy tech job, but I'm going to be so much happier.”

What are some other goals, I asked her.

“My short term goals: over the next five years, I want to grow this department and bring it to the next level. During my first year I made a lot of changes, and I'm excited that I have the experience now to improve even further. And I'd really like to finish revising the novel I've been revising since last summer. Starting a new job takes a lot of energy, and I had less time to dedicate to the novel during this school year. I want  to find a better balance with that for the next school year. Revise the novel and find a literary agent who is aligned with me and my writing values. And eventually get the novel published. Plus, I have a lot of poetry that I'd like to compile and edit into a collection.”

​“And I want to do smaller writing projects along the way,” Santana went on.  “I have an essay that'll be coming out shortly with resilience magazine, it’s a creative non-fiction essay. I’d like to take on some journalism projects. I'd love to apply for artist residencies and make space for professional development in that area. And, personally, I love Santa Fe, I was born here. I went to middle school and high school here. I lived here for a little bit in 2019 before I moved to Albuquerque, and then came back last year. I'm excited to build my community here among my circle of friends.”

Image credit: Joan Davidge.

“I want to buy a house, that's a dream I have.  I'd love to have a place in
Abiquiú, but it's gotten so expensive there. It’s sad that people who grew up there can't afford to live there. Santa Fe is also very expensive, but there may be more opportunities.  I keep my hopes open and keep thinking good thoughts about it.”

​The revision process for Santana's current novel sounds very intense. She’s rewriting everything, a big task indeed. At the same time, she’s working on smaller projects, to keep her sanity, she said – essays, poems, maybe short stories. Actually, short stories are the hardest to write, she told me. One  has to be very efficient and precise, and that is really challenging.

mage credit: Joan Davidge.

After she got her Master's Degree, Santana did a residency, I read on Facebook. I wanted to hear more about this.

“I applied to the Aldo Leopold Writing Program early last year. They used to only have the Tres Piedras residency at Aldo Leopold's house, and last year was the first year that they added a second residency location which is in Lany in the Galisteo Basin. There was a casita there, donated by a wonderful woman who runs a Horse Sanctuary out there. Usually the Leopold residency program is offered to people into nature conservation, just like Leopold was. Non-fiction botanists,  or people who are writing books about birds or land conservation. I applied although I’m a fiction writer, because my whole story takes place in New Mexico, and the landscape is a big central theme of the story. So I applied, but didn’t feel confident about it. And then I was the first fiction writer they selected! That was one month last year, in July, that I got to just work on the novel, which was really special. I had never done a residency before, and I loved being out there.”

“You're really on your own out there, but I was, I am so lucky that the Institute of American Indian Arts program is so supportive, so loving. I still have great relationships with many of the teachers and can ask any of them for help. So I did reach out to some of them, asking, how do I make the most out of this time? And they gave me a lot of great advice.”

​I hope Santana will find a skilled and talented editor soon. I can’t wait to see her novel published. What a strong and powerful voice she has. I found a YouTube video from fifteen years ago, of Santana reciting one of her poems, which is deeply moving in the current political climate when children are snatched out of schools and babies are torn from their mothers. With poignant opinions such as Santana’s, maybe all is not lost…  Thank you, Tana, for talking with me, so that our readers can learn about you, your poetry, your life.