Community Spotlight: Deborah

Deborah Meadows and her husband Howie were first drawn to the Arts District in 2009. They were enamored with its vibrant art galleries, the creativity of its adaptive reuse buildings, and the melodies of live music echoing on 3rd Street. Now, 15 years later, Deborah is a prominent figure in the neighborhood’s cultural landscape. She has written over a dozen books of poetry and achieved emeritus status at Cal Poly Pomona.

As a resident, Deborah holds a deep appreciation for the history of the Arts District—her home— and its many layers. When she strolls the neighborhood, she enjoys its architectural heritage and the fossil-like remnants of bygone eras. Her admiration for the neighborhood is rooted in an embrace of the legacy of all the communities, people, and settlements that have come before her—the indigenous and early Pueblo settlements, later trains and orchards, the Bronzeville era, the Japanese-American community, and daring artists. 

“I enjoy the diversity and the claim that all of it matters,” she explains. “Here, there are no efforts to erase one group.”

More recently, Deborah is drawn in by Hauser & Wirth, The Box Gallery, and ICA LA, similar to the artistic spaces that first drew her in. Like all rich works of literature, Deborah’s writing is shaped by her surroundings. Many of her poems pull from a multitude of sources, often weaving across many disciplines from literary, philosophic, scientific, and visual arts. Her works are complex, timely, and easy to revisit.

To enter her work, it helps to know that it is in the avant-garde practice. Her new book Bumblebees is a testament to the mastery of her experimental style. Here is an excerpt:

Ant Hills

Our recent look at how humans inhabit time
disintegrates to images, smoke curling from chimneys,
idea of anteroom, practice of porch.

We drew a box to site windows.

We received no answer when hospitalized, no birthday
or grandkids.

Your face wiped off readily, your phone sends itself
a message, makes a demand, comes loose.

Here's a paper white narcissus you can't dance to, text as
texture, facture: defeated by a bug, late in the game.

What comes next?

Some used walks to resolve a mess by elimination
but when no one was there: caught on a cam,

uploaded hits, archived, retrieved, alienated, infested, nearly
extraterrestrial in its being, barely carbon-based.

Breathing is a way to tell, life support,
tree-respiration and out, so we play in cardboard boxes
appliances come in, visit structure in our mind.

A taller ant hill to snooze through mentally, a house
where we once lived, plans we drafted for one unbuilt
where we won't enjoy rooftop open-air.

Red without sheathing, hang it on the wall: totemic past,
a reduced ornament, our need for stairs, the concealed
page out back.

Letter came, no reply made sense, zipped shut. The way
out of the hive is not the way inside, stuck with oxbow
shape, makes no sense, jingled small change. Price

charged against us, scalloped by wind, patterned—
neither bomb blast nor sea breeze fenced
out Thor, his offspring, but pond-side:

egrets, twilight, diapers, diopter count, soft shoe,
do the whooping crane, moon walk, asemic writing

hardly stuff of family memories, emotive engines, cultured
story of belonging within those parameters.

To learn more about Deborah and her poetry visit DeborahMeadows.com.

Deborah will be reading her poetry at 2220 Arts + Archive on Wednesday, October 23. Click here to learn more.