profiles in poetics: Maria Garcia Teutsch
Archetypes are universal constellations of human experience. Poet, utilizes these archetypes both consciously and unconsciously. According to Carl Jung, the unconscious assembly of universal patterns, symbols, and character types stems from the collective consciousness of story and myth across culture and time. Likewise, the God archetype is perhaps the soul’s urge to move towards the absolute and inspire. This is the archetype of the Self, the totality of the psyche, and is a non-human force in collective consciousness. In this second interview with Maria Garcia Teutsch
(first interview published March 10, 2015) on her newly released chapbook, What She Saw in the Lotería Cards, out from Bottlecap Press, August ’25, we embrace the Divine and the totality of these archetypal elements, with feelings and understanding. As well as discuss her experimental work in film, theater, and other modes of poetic expression.In What She Saw in the Lotería Cards, we discuss the Loteria’s close historical origin to Tarot, Maria’s process and ritual, and the roots of her Mexican and Southern Gothic Heritage. Here we can see how syncretism works with her Mexican Catholic and Protestant upbringing in a blend that reimagines La Loteria; lyrics of life, of warmth, family, and passion. And valuing, as she states, “its paradoxes of strength and oppression, silence and voice, nurturing and resistance.” These beautifully crafted surrealist non-linear musically pure lines sit solidly within the Loteria archetypes that have become a cultural Mexicano’s mirror, but these stories are her own. In our first interview with Maria, she mentions writing her first poem to God when she was four, before she had many language tools. She intimates, “In truth, I believe I am still writing letters to God. Words have always been the conduit between myself as the seeker and the divine. And I am always seeking answers around social injustices, answers to the ineffable. Poems are how I process my life.” And with a wholeness, openness, and healing determination, a standpoint inextricably important in these times of our current era, she states, “Ending here (with “El Soldado”) underscores my commitment to confronting tyranny with compassion.”
Maria Garcia Teutsch is an award-winning poet, professor and experimental filmmaker whose work merges the lyric intensity of poetry with the visual language of cinema and stage. Her most recent poetry chapbook, What She Saw in the Lotería Cards was published by Bottlecap Press in 2025. Her cinepoem, The Blue Whale of Madness (2025) was selected as a semi-finalist at the Austin International Art Festival, Palermo International Film Festival, and Brussels World Film Festival. She is the author of the prize-winning collection, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, (Minerva Rising Press); and The Swallows of America (Dancing Girl Press). With a career steeped in curating literary journals (Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library), she brings a uniquely cinematic eye to language. As founder of Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd., she publishes and curates boundary-pushing literature and international poetry in translation. In 2023, she wrote and directed two one-act plays, which premiered in Berlin, Germany. Her poetry has been featured in numerous publications. She is known for creating surreal, image-rich worlds and hybrid narrative structures. Her poetry serves as the source material for her experimental performances and cinepoetic work. Her poem, “When I Write by Hand,” was set to music in the audio drama, “Waking Up.”
ig: marialoveswords
to Purchase What She Saw in the Loteria Cards go here: Bottlecap Press
1.) What were the first inspirations that made you desire to become a writer?
My older sister likes to joke that I came home from the hospital crying in iambic pentameter. I recently revisited the interview I did with you in 2014 and didn’t want to repeat myself, but rather to expand upon those earlier reflections. Then, I spoke about writing a letter to God when I was four years old and couldn’t yet write. In truth, I believe I am still writing letters to God. Words have always been the conduit between myself as the seeker and the divine. And I am always seeking answers around social injustices, answers to the ineffable. Poems are how I process my life.
This is equally true of my life as a reader, and as someone deeply moved by music. In Berlin, I am fortunate to witness world-class operas and philharmonic performances. In those moments, whether listening to Kirill Petrenko conduct Francesca da Rimini through Dante’s infernal landscapes, or Vladimir Jurowski guiding us through Beethoven’s Ninth, I feel the presence of the divine. That elevation, that transport, becomes my source of inspiration, manifesting in the cadence and reach of my writing.
2.) Who have been mentor writers in your career?
I have always loved my teachers; perhaps that is why I became one. I know not everyone has been so lucky, and I remain grateful. Ilya Kaminsky continues to be a profound influence on my work. I hear his voice urging me to keep only what is essential, to treat everything I read as a master class.
For my collection What She Saw in the Lotería Cards, the poet Diana García offered invaluable insights into an early version of the manuscript. Her guidance sharpened my vision for the work.
3.) How has your own work changed over time and why?
I’m not sure it has—at least not since I became a professional poet. All of my work is in conversation with itself. Each poem is a facet of the same project: revolution, disruption of complacency, an insistence on compassion in the face of tyranny, and love in the face of cruelty. My life is the poem.
4.) Have you been influenced by different genres, and if so how?
Absolutely. Lately, it’s the operas and experimental stagecraft I’ve encountered in Berlin which have transformed my imagination. Attending a performance here is like entering a dream I would never have conjured had I not bought a ticket.
Of course, one expects to be moved by La Bohème—Cher’s reaction in Moonstruck says it all, but the obscure and overlooked works astonish me as well. Take Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century, which I saw under Simon Rattle’s baton. Brouček wants nothing more than beer and sausages, but he is transported through a kaleidoscope of history and surreal stagecraft, from the 1969 moon-landing psychedelia to the Prague Spring of 1968 and its violent suppression. The absurdity and poignancy linger, even as complacency manifests itself in non-action in folks who are seemingly content as long as they have their sausages and beer, so to speak.
Equally unforgettable was Hamlet, set to Radiohead’s album Hail to the Thief. hough the play itself was truncated, I experienced it as a love story from Thom Yorke to Hamlet. It was strange, flawed, moving, and for me, unforgettable.
5.) What are your plans for the future?
To go where I once believed I was forbidden. I have already written two one-act plays that were staged in Berlin to packed houses, a fact that still astonishes me, given how exacting Berlin’s theater community can be. Yet here I am: the fool on the hill. I have also written and directed two cinepoems: The Revolution Will Have its Sky, in collaboration with musician Ambrose Bye, and cinematographer Natalia Gaia; and most recently, The Blue Whale of Madness, with Claire Uicker as star and film editor, and Aris Pedriolis doing the original score.
My next project is a twenty-minute operetta, The Swans of Berlin, based on my swan poems. I am collaborating with choreographer Jenna Berlyn and composer Aris Pedrioli. It will premiere as part of Speech is Not Free VII at Galerie Z22 in Berlin on November 7th and 8th.
6.) What are your views on writing by women over the past twenty years?
I am in love with Olga Tokarczuk. Her, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead left me stunned. I admire when landscape becomes a central character, when the rights of animals pulse at the heart of the narrative.
In poetry, Joanna Fuhrman, Natalie Diaz, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Jenn Hope Stein, Pamela Sneed, Claudia Rankine, Anne Waldman, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, and Kim Addonizio continue to elevate the art. In theater, Sarah Ruhl astonishes, and Shelley Marlow creates original, compelling work for the stage. The songwriters of boygenius have tapped into a collective heartbeat and have translated it into song.
My greatest influences have always been women. As editor of the literary journals, The Homestead Review, and Ping-Pong, I ensured that women writers comprised at least half, often more—of each issue. Alice Notley’s passing this year is a devastating loss to letters; she was both generous and fierce, and her absence leaves a void.
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7.) Who are promising women writers to watch in the future?
Season Butler is someone to watch. Her writing is magnetic and compelling. I was also introduced to a number of Polish poets through the work of Alexandra Grant. Her artwork often interacts with text in a profound new way of translation. She’s worked with texts from Antigone to, most recently, Krystyna Dąbrowska’s poem.“Ruch. ” But she’s always doing something new, and her exhibit, Everything Belongs to the Cosmos, gave voice to new Polish voices, including Julia Fiedorczuk’s “materia,” for which she painted, Matter, Cosmos III. Women who open doors to other women inspire me.
8.) If you were asked to create a flexible label for yourself as a writer, what would it be?
marialoveswords
9.) On the Lotería and the Tarot
The Lotería and the Tarot are historically and thematically intertwined. Both trace their origins to fifteenth-century Italy: Lotería evolving out of early board games, and Tarot crystallizing into the form we recognize today. Lotería, similar in mechanics to Bingo, migrated first to Spain and finally to Mexico in 1769, where it became a cultural staple—an artistic archive of symbols, figures, and narratives embedded in Mexican and Mexican-American life.
The visual parallels between Lotería and the Tarot are striking, particularly in the Major Arcana, and both traditions employ riddling, metaphor, and archetype. Where the Tarot moves through mythic allegories, Lotería distills everyday objects into luminous symbols. It is little wonder some have employed Lotería cards as a divinatory tool.1 Your book’s title, What She Saw in the Lotería Cards (Bottlecap Press, August 2025), gestures toward this interpretive power. Can you give some insight into this progression? How did you shuffle this chapbook? Is this sequence a sort of divination / journey / parable / song?
The sections do create a journey for the reader. I did not write in any particular order. I shuffled the deck and wrote a poem based on whatever card came up. The journey is part of what I saw when I began to edit the collection. The first section, ‘The Inheritance,’ deals with feminine identity and generational inheritance, namely female experience: motherhood, daughterhood, sensuality, marriage, spirituality, and autonomy, and also with inherited trauma. The voices span grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and sometimes anonymous women who are all grappling with inherited roles and defining their own identities. The speaker often reflects on maternal lineage (e.g., Las Damas) and its paradoxes of strength and oppression, silence and voice, nurturing and resistance.
The second section, ‘Desire and Distance’ is about love, desire and longing. Erotic and romantic desire is a constant undercurrent, filtered through both tenderness and betrayal such as we see in “La Estrella.” Desire, in this section, is often tied to memory and mythology which I hope highlights its ephemeral, dangerous, and transformative qualities. Remember that Desire, as Anne Carson reminds us in Eros, the Bittersweet, is defined by its lack. Desire is always about what we do not have.
The third section, ‘The Seeker’ is steeped in symbols from both my Mexican and Southern Gothic heritage. Icons like La Virgen de Guadalupe, el nopal, Lotería figures, and food (tortillas, beans, peppers) act as cultural anchors while also subverting traditional roles. The poems frequently straddle geographic, linguistic, and psychic borders, which is part of both the richness and fracture of these two cultures. Where they meet is always on the playing field of pre-Columbian iconography. I am forever interested in syncretism.
Finally, with ‘The Surrender’ you see the seeker doing just that: surrendering. Mortality threads through poems like “La Muerte,” “El Rana,” and “El Soldado.” These works emphasize death as a shadow presence, often gentle, symbolic, or poetic. The memory of those who have died, and how grief reshapes identity, and the role of transformation: of body, soul, identity, voice.
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10.) On Playing the Cantor of the Cards:
I used to play Loteria with my cousins at my grandparents’ and aunt’s houses when we lived in California. I had a bi-coastal upbringing, both in California where I was more in touch with the Mexican heritage of my father’s family, and in Virginia, where I was immersed in my southern heritage. My father was Catholic and my mother Protestant, but, you know, raised by Pentecostals. So I had a very ecumenical upbringing. The Pentecosts range from snake handlers to those who speak in tongues and roll down the aisles. My southern grandparents were part of the latter. Both Mexican Catholicism and the Pentacosts have a good bit of magic in their philosophies, and this is where I can be found: in the magic spaces that create the conduit to the divine. I find this in not only my poetry, but in the poetry of those whose work I admire. I find it in art, music, and dance. The collection is very much what I saw as I placed each card in front of me and began to write: the dissolution of my first marriage, the recognition of the inherited generational trauma from both my mother and my grandmother, and the mandate for social justice growing up as Maria Garcia, and various types of institutional racism I faced because of my name.
11.) There are three symbols in your deck that are not included in the original Lotería. El Dedal (The Thimble), El Río (The River), and El Veliz (The Suitcase).
‘El Veliz (The Suitcase)’ unravels with a series of if statements about your family. Amidst them:
If my son were a cradle I’d rock him sweetly, but he’s almost seven and rockets past in a blur, like an arrow, he cannot return to the quiver. He is green feathers in flight.… “If my husband’s head were a suitcase “... A stiff leather suitcase that once held everything, now grown too small for all I have to give: dreams, seashells, cocktail dresses, poems, volumes of journals, and the torn pages of love stories. The monogram is no longer legible… If I were a Phoebus butterfly in this poem, I’d be a cliché, flying without direction, just letting the wind have its way with me. … But I am not a Phoebus, I am the poet hiding in this poem on a zipline through the dense canopy of these words, like trees, something like my life. (10-11)
Why did you add these cards? The imagery here is fresh with sweet juxtaposition and playful imagery, yet the speaker is leaving something of great fondness. Leaving something and heading towards some greater thing, with speed, a zipline. You say, something like my life. Can you expand on this?
These invented cards represent freedom from constraint. They allow for departures from lineage and history, offering imaginative leaps into autonomy. In “El Veliz,” the speaker considers what is carried, what must be left behind, and what cannot fit within the confinement of her marriage: dreams, poems, and torn love stories. The imagery flits between tenderness and departure, until it erupts in the figure of the poet zipping through the canopy of words. This poem is about the difficulty of leaving a marriage in which one finds oneself constrained and bound, ditto for familial inheritance. The poetry frees the speaker. The zipline pulls the speaker out of inherited oppression and into creative freedom. The form itself of the poem is fragmented, polyphonic, mythopoetic, it resists linear narrative in favor of archetype, metaphor, and surreal juxtaposition. This is where I find myself. This is my happy place.
12.) There is a large scope of structural change from poem to poem. How did the field of the page change poem to poem? And can you illuminate why you ended with:
El Soldado (The Soldier) A mother’s womb contracts the day her son goes off to fight, remembers a crown of twigs in his hair, chubby fingers pointing a branch at her, “Bang-bang, Mama, you’re dead.” She tries to tell him, “War is a breakdown of reason.” But he’s a citizen of a world that kills women bent at rivers, children curled in blankets. The weight of metal warming in his hand makes him feel he’s a man.
The book closes on El Soldado which is a devastating meditation on motherhood and war: the mother’s womb contracting as her son departs, the boy once crowned in play now stepping into the machinery of violence. Ending here underscores my commitment to confronting tyranny with compassion.
I wrote the poem when my son was a toddler. I tried to imagine the unbearable: sending him to war. My pacifist stance collides with the inevitability of violence in this world, there’s a palpable tension that surfaces even in small moments, like my instinctive killing of a wasp that stung my son. The poem is a field of contradiction: rejection of cruelty, yet acknowledgment of one’s own reflexive violence.
13.) Lastly, I wanted to ask you about your cinepoem that you wrote and directed based on a poem from this collection. I am a huge fan of this branch of poetic expression and believe it deserves more honour and embrace. Can you speak about your experience? I saw that another experimental film of you recently received several international accolades. How has it been working with this art form in another part of the world in Germany? Can we view these anywhere?
My foray into cinepoetry continues this trajectory. The translation of poems into experimental film is both an expansion of voice and an immersion in a global avant-garde. With films receiving international recognition, I’m trying to position my work at the intersection of poetry, performance, and visual art. My cinepoem from 2024, The Revolution Will Have Its Sky, can be found at The Poetic Phonoteque
To write is one thing; to stage, to film, to set to music is another. Yet across these forms, my work is insisting on the same urgency: love in the face of cruelty, imagination in the face of constraint, and the perpetual search for the divine within the human. At the end of it all, a call to a kind of peaceful revolution, creative and non-violent, but calling out the oppressors. The Swallows of America (Dancing Girl Press 2022), dealt with the separation of children from their parents at the U.S./Mexican border. My latest cinepoem, The Blue Whale of Madness, deals with ecological collapse, using the trope of the mermaid as representative of the commodification of beauty, and turning it on its head wherein she calls on the sea lions and sea birds to revolt. Again, I find myself in the gulf of the absurd, but in it one is forced to recognize that the seabirds and sea lions cannot revolt, they are easily destroyed. We are destroying them now. The question posed is, at what cost to humanity?
✨ Maria is a true champion of women writers & a gorgeous activist of cultural expression, humanitarianism, and ecological preservation. We both attended New England College for our MFA’s and it is my true pleasure to invite her for a second interview and celebrate her new collection. It’s beautiful & I look forward to more. Check out her book, and also her writing exercise next week: on the ordinary, object & portal 🕯️
Jillian possesses more than 15 years of experience teaching internationally at International Schools, Universities, and Businesses. Originally from Colorado, USA, she has taught and lived in various countries, including the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Germany, China, France, Portugal, and globally online. She holds an MFA in Poetry and a second Master’s in Education with an emphasis on Global Education. She has her CELTA certification and is a certified teacher pre K-3rd grade.
Jillian's professional background encompasses teaching both English as a Second Language as well as English Literary Arts, Literature, and Creative Writing. She has worked in International Schools and Montessori settings across pre-school, primary, secondary, advanced literary, undergraduate and graduate programs. Jillian has facilitated poetry workshops in Denver, CO through the Writers in the Schools program, Beijing with Spittoon, the Bangkok Writing on the River series, as well as Online.
Her new project will be starting an in-person workshop series in Lisbon. For more information on this, stay tuned! ✨💛
Thank you for being here 🙏
Jillian
Resource, La Loteria images: Tarot & Lotería — Art & Soul Clinic