Barbara Jane Reyes is a Bay Area poet, author, and educator. She is the author of Wanna Peek Into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality, Letters to a Young Brown Girl, Invocation to Daughters, To Love as Aswang, Diwata, Poeta en San Francisco, and Gravities of Center. She teaches Pinay Literature and Diasporic Filipina/o/x Literature at the University of San Francisco. Huizache nominated her poem “Ambahan: Araw ng mga Patay (Día de los Muertos)” for a Pushcart Prize.

You wrote “Ambahan,” which is a type of poetry indigenous to the Philippines. Can you tell us a bit more about this poetic form and what inspired you to write this poem in this tradition?

The ambahan is a poetic form composed by the Mangyan people of Mindoro, a Philippine island south of Luzon. I have to confess I actually do not have any (known) connection to this area or the people. But the form is so irresistible to me, the musicality of a long(ish) poem with its seven syllable lines, traditionally sung or chanted. According to Anya Insik Postma, the ambahan is “recited for the purpose of verbalizing in a metaphorical way certain human situations,” and it is carved in pre-Hispanic script into bamboo.

 Tell me about your process in writing “Ambahan” – it feels full of lush imagery, what did you want to convey to the reader in this poem?

I wrote this poem after attending a Día de los Muertos event in the Fruitvale District in Oakland during the pandemic, after the death of my mother. I was there to witness, to pay tribute, and to grieve. The ongoing drumming and dancing, the offerings, the fragrant smoke – all of what I wrote down was that sensory experience, combined with my own familial traditions and memories, much of which are kitchen centered – matrilineal, culinary, and communal.

What is your writing process in general? What do you feel you are some things/people/places you are drawing inspiration from currently?

I tend to step back and witness human interaction and body language, to listen to spoken language, find places where folks translate and code switch – how, with whom, and why. I focus on details in the natural world, textures, colors, smells, micro-climates, and perspective – I mean, human “problems” versus 2000 year old trees.

Is there anything you are working on currently?

I am trying to write about and for my mother, which is just difficult. So I am writing slowly, thoughtfully, very deliberately. These are centered around or culminating in my poem “Daughtersong Diaspore,” a multilingual abecedarian about learning and depth of loss.