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Buy: Syndrome by Éric Morales-Franceschini | Anhinga Press | January 1, 2024 | 96 pgs. | $20 | ISBN: 9781934695814 What living poet/writer had the biggest influence on your book? If I had to pick only one, it’d have to be Craig Santos Perez, which is to say, his from unincorporated territory series; it’s a kindred project, thematically, pedagogically, and politically, if not stylistically. It’s uncanny just how many grievances and peculiarities Guam and Puerto Rico share, each knowing well the enigma that is “commonwealth” status and what it means to feel “small.” I came to his work somewhat belatedly, after having already written a draft of Syndrome, but it quickly became an interlocutor of mine, a fellow traveler I could turn to in times of uncertainty, outrage, or grief. Other honorable mentions would go to J. Michael Martinez’s Museum of the Americas, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes’ The Inheritance of Haunting, and the obras of Ada Limón and Daniel Borzutzky—whether for their vitality or virtuosity. What non-living poet/writer had the biggest influence on your book? I’d answer this two ways. First off, there’s the work of Mahmoud Darwish, who, as a Palestinian poet, writes with a collective urgency and forlorn history that I, as a Boricua, can’t help but find beautiful and resonant.  Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy, which is difficult to classify, is easily one of the most stunning works I’ve ever read—at least in its original Spanish (i.e. can’t vouch for the English translation!); he and that project are a referent for me. But the truth is, many of my biggest influences come from studies in history, psychoanalysis, political economy, theology, and critical theory. I’ll go months where all I read are in these “non-literary” fields, without which my poetry would be far less analytically acute—less politically dangerous, too. In this respect, Marx, Freud, and Fanon rank amongst the most influential. What are some key themes present in your book? No doubt, militarism, racism, and colonialism are decidedly at stake, they and their psychical repercussions.  The notion of a syndrome is not, after all, purely metaphorical. “Puerto Rican Syndrome” was the name for what was considered a culturally unique nervous disorder. Psychoanalyst Patricia Gherovici has pointed out that its symptoms are strikingly similar to classical hysteria, with schizophrenic complications, and argues that its best understood as an idiom of protest against a psychologically unbearable situation, namely coloniality of power. Syndrome reckons with this and other “disorders,” like impostor syndrome (for those of us in the diaspora) and Stockholm syndrome (for those of us coerced to identify with our captor), and with major cultural referents, such as West Side Story, Hamilton, and the Columbus monument in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, the largest monument to Columbus in the world! In fact, it’s the largest monument (base included) in the western hemisphere, larger than Rio’s El Salvador and New York’s Statue of Liberty. Does that not speak volumes!? What’s your favorite line(s) from your book? That’s easy, the epigraphs!  I won’t give them all away, but here are a few of my favorites: Fuera de tu canción soy ala seca, Julia de Burgos; To whom shall we sing when salt poisons the dew?, Mahmoud Darwish; Que la historia huya de los museos y respire a pleno pulmón, Eduardo Galeano. None of my words can rival these in their depth and beauty, but maybe I’ll take some credit for the selections and where they’re placed! That said, if I had to choose my own line, I’d go with the final line: Our work here is not done.  At the risk of sounding overly dramatic (or just quintessentially Boricua!), that line comes with the cumulative weight of not only 33 poems but also 500 years of (de)colonial history. If you could organize a reading with any writers living or dead, who would be in the lineup? Where would you host the event? I love this question. And do forgive me if this comes across as coy, but Che Guevara. Fidel famously eulogized Che not as a heroic guerrilla or revolutionary cadre inasmuch as a poet. By that criterion, I’d invite Queen Nanny of the Jamaican marrons, Rosa la Bayamesa of the Cuban mambises, Tupca Amaru of the Inca, and Emiliano Zapata of Mexican glory. The guest of honor would, however, be Toussaint L’Ouverture, that world-historic Haitian revolutionary, and the event would take place outside the frigid Fort-de-Joux prison in France where Toussaint was left to die, his remains unceremoniously and secretly buried.  I’d like to hear it from their mouths, their poetry, neither mythologized nor demonically caricatured.  Afterwards, we’d have a Catholic priest and Vodou priestess officiate Toussaint’s last rites and burial. Che, whose remains weren’t exhumed and properly buried until the mid-1990s, would give the eulogy. What would they say, in retrospect and in verse? Do you have a new project that you’re working on? Could you tell us a bit about it? Yes, my new project was inspired by the summer of 2020, that ecstatic summer when so many Columbus statues in the US were, as it were, “decommissioned.” Syndrome finishes with what I call an “anti-ekphrastic” poem about that colossal Columbus monument in Puerto Rico, but I feel the need to delve deeper into Columbus (counter)memorials across history and throughout the Americas. This has taken a fair amount of research. I draw on papal decrees, travelogues, court cases, epic poems, paintings, and sculptures and on indigenous, Black, and populist rebuttals. For this project, documentary poetics, (anti)ekphrasis, odes, and prose poetry are my expressive tactics of choice. With some luck, I’ll finish it this year! Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Tampa, Florida, Éric Morales-Franceschini is a former construction worker, US Army veteran, and community college graduate who now holds a PhD from UC, Berkeley and is Associate Professor of English and Latin American Studies at the University of Georgia. He is author of the chapbook Autopsy of a Fall (Newfound 2021), winner of the Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and the scholarly study The Epic of Cuba Libre: The Mambí, Mythopoetics, and Liberation (University of Virginia Press, 2022), winner of the MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize.  Syndrome, selected by Juan Felipe Herrera for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, is his debut full-length collection.

Bochica by Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro | ISBN: 9781668062579 | Atria/Primero Sueño Press | May 2025 “Antonia was surprised to feel an odd flash of excitement washing over her. Could she reinstate the equilibrium and fulfill the destiny Estela was too weak to realize? Finally have a role in this town besides babysitting girls at the escuela? . . . But what would I owe the house in exchange for my freedom? ” — Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Bochica Journalist Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro’s debut novel Bochica follows Antonia, a young woman whose parents built a house on sacred land to protect it, as she investigates the hauntings of her past: her mother’s death, the house now transformed into a hotel, and the spirits that bind them together and bind Antonia to a fate she didn’t know was hers. Rife with commentary about colonialism, women, ambition, and power, this debut novel draws from Colombian history to tell a story whose themes are ever relevant today. Brittany Torres Rivera (BTR): Can you talk about how you approached the editorial process with Bochica  and how similar or different that was from working on a piece of journalism? Are there things that you brought from your professional experience into this new genre? Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro (CFC): As a journalist, I have to research a lot and read a lot. That’s the skill that I used the most for Bochica because it's not a historical fiction novel, but I did have to do a lot of research so the reader has a backdrop of what was going on in Colombia in the 1930s.  When you go to journalism school, you also have really tight deadlines. You have to create things overnight and you have to be used to working under pressure, which is something that really helps in publishing We authors, have deadlines, but sometimes we don't know how to manage our time because they tell us, You can turn this in in two months  and you're like,  This is great, of course I'm gonna have time , but then the day comes and you're like, Oh my god, I still I have, a hundred pages left . So being able to work under that pressure of looming deadlines and knowing how to balance my time doing other things, that's something that I brought from my experience as a journalist. Being able to handle critique is also a key one. Writing is such a personal thing and you put so much of yourself on the page, whether that's intentional or not. It's hard because you want to be the kind of person who gets things right the first time around. But even established writers and people who are super successful are still getting feedback, they still have to do edits, they still have to improve. I allow myself to feel whatever it is that I'm feeling and then I move on. It's hard getting feedback, but at the end of the day it's for the best and it's still a negotiation. It's not like the editor is telling you, You have to do this, or else we won't publish the book . It's more of a dialogue; Maybe what you're telling me is right, there's something wrong with the book. But maybe the thing that you're suggesting is not the way that I want to go about it. And then we start a conversation. BTR: I appreciate that perspective. Sometimes the solution the editor is offering is not the right one for the book. Could you talk about a big piece of feedback that you had to process or some suggestion that ended up not being the right suggestion for this book? CFC: A big one was Antonia's mother’s journals. They weren't there when we sold the book, and we were on the last round of developmental edits and there were things we still wanted to address, but we didn't know how to go about it. I think we had like a month left to do line edits and then it was up to production. I came up with the idea and then I was like, Maybe I shot myself in the foot , because my editor was like, Yes, that's a great idea, but you're going to have to do it in like five days . So it was really hard. I want to do this, I know it's the best thing that I can do for the book right now, but I only have a month to come up with these journal entries, and not only come up with them, but integrate them into the story. It was a different voice, a different style, and it was hard, but in hindsight, those are my favorite parts in the book. BTR: Speaking of those journals, Antonia has a reputation as the daughter of Estela and as an educated and unmarried woman, which is frowned upon in the story. People like Madre Asuncion make her aware that her reputation needs to be saved. On the other side of that, Estela is motivated by her own  power; She tried to have someone else inherit the role of Lideresa when she questioned her daughter's ability to take that on. Can you talk a little bit about the complex relationships here between reputation, legacy, and power in this novel?  CFC: Whenever people talk about Bochica , it's a Gothic horror book. But at its core, I think it's more about women trying to navigate the world a hundred years ago, and in a very Catholic and conservative society like Colombia. Antonia doesn't really grow up Catholic. Her mom has these views about the world that may or may not resonate with everyone else. And her father goes with whatever her mom does, he’s sort of worshiping her. So Antonia gets kicked out of Catholic school because of her mother's beliefs, and then she is reluctantly drawn back into this world because she needs a job that helps her pay bills because her dad is sick. She's navigating these spaces as a woman who's ahead of her time and has a different view of the world. She’s also resentful of any form of religion, whether that is the cult her mom was part of or religion and how it treats women. She’s navigating these spaces while trying to gain some sort of control over herself and her life. And of course, that's not an easy thing. We not only see that through Antonia, but also through her mother and through Doña Pereira, who is one of the antagonists of the story. But Doña Pereira is also a victim of this same system, she's also trying to find control of herself and of her life, trying to gain some sort of power, which is how the cult came to be in the first place: To what lengths is this group of women willing to go to get some sort of control when women had everything but control and autonomy? I wanted to explore that and how horrific it is to not have control over yourself, over your life, which is the most basic thing a person can have. BTR: That definitely comes across, even in the way that Antonia thinks about her life; Her perspective is disenfranchised, but she has this desire to move up. Antonia, Alejandro, and León all bear the weight of their mother's actions to strikingly different outcomes. This implies a matriarchal structure, but Antonia is constantly railing against the limitations imposed upon her by a patriarchal society. So, can you describe the hard and soft power of men and women in 1930s Colombia and the different spheres, whether legal, social, or spiritual, in which these powers are wielded? CFC: Women’s power was pretty much nonnonexistent, at least in Colombia. We didn't have any women in any sort of position of power in politics or in society. Women weren't even allowed to go to university. Antonia complains about it a lot throughout the book. It's like you were meant to be a daughter, a wife, and if you weren't lucky enough to secure your husband, then maybe you became a nun and that was it. You were an object that people would use. So women were trying to find this basis where they could gain some sort of control and that's where the cult came. In El salto del Tequendama, there was a lot of talk about witchcraft, and I found a lot of registries of people saying that there were women that came in the witching hours and locals tried to get rid of them because it was really bad for the hotel’s reputation. The hotel was gaining a lot of importance around the country. So that's how the cult came to be for me; there needed to be a device for me to start this conversation about women trying to find these spaces where they could feel some sort of control over anything.  With men in the book, I feel like they are victims. We see it with León, with how the book ends especially, and I didn't do it intentionally. With Alejandro, I wanted Antonia to have someone she could trust and someone who knew more than she did. Because you really don't know if she's seeing things, remembering things, if it's all in her head. Doña Pereira was the woman in power in that family. But that was not really something that happened in Colombia. It was always a man taking charge of everything, so I needed León to be her puppet. Everyone knew she was in control, but he was the face of the family. I think the men are a response to what I needed for these women, and telling their story more than it was me trying to make them the victims. BTR: I was really intrigued by the colonial overtones in Estela and Ricardo’s treatment of the Muiscas’ land. Antonia’s parents have this combination of good intentions and ambition (because Estela admits that she wanted that power) that leads them to take land that does not belong to them. In the end, Antonia has to destroy the symbol of that action, the house, to restore order. We often see the Spanish or the English depicted as colonizers. Can you talk about the decision to make Colombians themselves the perpetrators of colonialism within their country? CFC: In Latin America, we believe that we've been colonized, but that we're not necessarily colonizers. I feel like colonialism is very much a modern thing, it still happens with us, and it happens with these places that are not meant to be protected, invaded, or saved in some sort of way. The house is very much real. I made the story up, but a lot of the things are real. There was this architect who wanted to build a house for his wife, and they ended up not living there. Then it became a hotel, this very touristic place and a place for aristocrats in Colombia in the 1940s and 1950s until it was shut down and abandoned in the late 1950s. People want to live outside of cities and take land that has some sort of significance for indigenous cultures. And people don't acknowledge that, they just see it as a beautiful place. But what is that beautiful place? Is it hiding a legacy of bloodshed? There's a point in the book where I say something like, The beauty is a good disguise for bad things . And it is. We make up excuses like,  This place needs saving or restoring or it needs to be taken care of . Which is why the book ends the way it ends. People read the ending and they're like, But the house is still there! And I’m like, Maybe it shouldn't be .  Antonia realizes that, even though Estela wanted to protect the place, it was almost like an altar to herself, so it's disrespectful. That’s something I want people to take away from the book. It's not that the place itself was haunted necessarily. It was us who haunted the place and who have been haunting places that should have been left alone. When she burns down the house, you see this thing that's forming in the flames like a monster being killed off. That's the monster of colonization. That's what I wanted the book to end on. Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro is a Colombian author of genre bending speculative fiction based in Bogotá, Colombia. She is the author of Bochica , a Latin American gothic horror novel pitched as Mexican Gothic meets The Shining . She’s always been passionate about stories, whether her own, fictional or not, or those that belong to others. Her work is fueled by curiosity, her love of history and the supernatural, and the desire to give voice to traditionally marginalized perspectives. When she’s not writing, she can be found sipping black coffee, puzzling, and listening to audiobooks. Find out more at CarolinaFlorezAuthor.com . Brittany Torres Rivera  is a bilingual, Puerto Rican writer. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Brittany is an alumna of the Fulbright Program and currently works as an Editorial and Administrative Assistant at Graywolf Press.

Buy: Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf | Nightboat Books| September 10, 2024 | ISBN: 9781643622385 What are some key themes present in your book? Consider the Rooster explores nature, nurture, rebellion, and transformation within the context of queer ecological thought. It’s about searching for a sense of home and self in a fraught world, amidst the impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and transphobia. At the same time, I wanted to portray a vision where, despite systemic violence and environmental peril, joy persists… expression persists… care persists. The poems dwell in the interconnectedness of all living things, as a source of guidance and strength. They also navigate the necessity of resistance and the continuous path of becoming. I hope the book encourages readers to honor not only their own neighborhood rooster, but also the rooster within. Can you describe the environment(s) where you wrote your book? I wrote Consider the Rooster in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on the native land of the Potawatomi people. My writing environment included an ever-evolving garden, where I grew a wildflower meadow and kept chickens. The crowing of my pet rooster, Walter, woke something up in me, inspiring the book’s themes. This period was also pandemic quarantine, widespread demonstrations against police brutality, and major societal upheaval. Complaints on the basis of the city's stringent grass height regulations and the rooster added to the tension. That summer of CantoMundo teach-in’s (virtual, of course) inspired me and raised my consciousness. These experiences, along with my academic work and the broader political dumpster fire, shaped what became this book’s awakening to alternatives. Writing from that contentious yet blooming environment allowed me to go deeply into these questions of peace and belonging– who is permitted such things, and where, and at what (whose) cost? The book mirrors the perpetual motion that I’ve come to know as one characteristic of trans life under the United States now as we seek ever safer ground. What’s your favorite line(s) from your book? Here are a few of my favorite lines: “When the song crashed into glass as invisible waves / at last I began to vibrate.” (from “Becoming Particulate”) “I step out / to the deck in my trans masc robe / because in the end, no one will / remember. All that I’ve named / has a life outside of me.” (from “All I Have is the Woods Inside My Head”) “Who reminds all in earshot that like it or not another day has come and gone.” (from the title poem, “Consider the Rooster”) “I’m done being good!” (from the poem “Michigan”) Outside of writing, what are some of your passions or hobbies? When I’m not writing, I love drawing, painting, playing basketball, watching basketball, talking about basketball, and doing jigsaw puzzles. I find solace and inspiration in colors, shapes, patterns, statistics, the stories behind statistics, making, and movement. Going for walks is another favorite activity, as it gets me fresh air and helps create a rhythm for things to happen. I also love catching up on the group chat with my coven. How did you get into writing? Can you pinpoint a memory where it all began for you? Born and raised in Iowa City, it could be in the water. My parents brought my sister and I to the public library frequently, and I was allowed to check out as many books as I could personally carry. I clutched towering stacks of them, from comics to chapter books. Also, I was a young keeper of sketchbooks, which taught me early the pleasure of keeping a notebook. I loved to draw, especially haunted houses. More than anything specific I drew, it was this practice of turning toward the page that began it for me. Reading was my other true friend. That and basketball. Have I changed at all? I love rhythm and repetition on a visceral level. So, yes, poetry sings to me. Even now though, I go in and out of writing. Language sometimes moves away from me and comes back when it wants to. So it is almost like I’m beginning again all the time. What are you currently reading? I’m currently reading Have You Been Long Enough at Table by Leslie Sainz, which recently was awarded the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award. It’s an immersive, insightful exploration of what it means to be a Cuban American woman. As a collection of poems, it stands out for me because of its resonant voice and innovative forms. A few additional books I’ve been keeping nearby recently: Faltas by Cecilia Gentili, Poem Bitten By a Man by Brian Teare, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return by CAConrad, Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha, and Song of My Softening by Omotara James. Do you have a new project that you’re working on? Could you tell us a bit about it? I’m over the moon that Consider the Rooster is coming out this September. This book is an offering to the idea that we can transform the landscapes of our lives into the ones we dream about. I'm excited to learn about how readers connect with its poems. Looking ahead, I’m working on a manuscript tentatively titled what to do w/ this freedom. This collection asks what it truly means to be free. Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of Consider the Rooster, forthcoming from Nightboat Books in September 2024, and two previous collections of poems: Advantages of Being Evergreen and The Spectral Wilderness. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Publishing Triangle, CantoMundo, Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His poems have been featured across various anthologies including Best American Poetry, Latino Poetry: A New Anthology, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Born and raised in Iowa, he now lives along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado.

Buy: Yaguareté White Univ. of Arizona Press Feb. 20, 2024 What living poet/writer had the biggest influence on your book? Rigoberto González. Hands down, full stop. As a writer, teacher, mentor, and friend, Rigo has helped dozens and dozens (hundreds?) of emerging poets find their voice, navigate the business of poetry, and land on their feet. I consider myself lucky to be counted among them. What’s your favorite line(s) from your book? This morning, my favorite lines consist of twelve tiny syllables tucked into a tidy tercet that comprises the shortest poem in the book, “Yuyos”: cashew for good measure cayenne and petunias Yuyos are traditional herbs added to beverages for their medicinal or flavorful qualities. The words “cashew,” “cayenne,” and “petunia” all derive from Tupí, from which contemporary Guaraní evolved. I like to imagine sprinkling each ingredient into a cauldron to make a cacophonous broth of leaves and bark, flowers and language. I hope readers enjoy the concoction, as well. What is your current obsession? Short lines, slant rhymes, couplets, trees, etc. I’ve long been interested in inconsistency, contradiction, and asymmetry. These traits have defined my experiences of Latinidad—as someone who didn’t grow up speaking Spanish or with a Latinx community, but who nevertheless visited Paraguay every few years for months at a time—and it feels unavoidable that I seek these haphazard imbalances in poetry I read and write. This will sound funny, but I’m especially pleased with the Table of Contents for Yaguareté White. The list includes many poems with one or two-word titles, but is then punctuated by these long, gangly titles that sprawl awkwardly across the page. I like that a lot. In life, I’m drawn to stability, security, and predictability. I think my aesthetic preferences counterbalance those risk-averse impulses. I love poems that expand and cinch wildly, or wiggle and zig-zag all over. It feels so wild and fun and free. William Carlos Williams is synonymous with plums. If you had to choose one fruit and one animal/plant/celestial body that would forever remind people of you, what would you choose and why? The fruit is easy, but I’m gonna cheat and choose two: pineapple cut with jalapeño (*technically* fruta tambien). I’m a sucker for heat paired with sweet, like I cannot get enough of it. My preferred spiciness level is “bordering on regret.” On pizza, in Thai food, my salsa, throw peach, mango, or piña in with the hottest pepper you can find. That’s my jam. As for an animal, plant, or celestial body, the jaguar seems like an obvious choice, since it’s both native to Paraguay and an important part of Guaraní cosmology. But I’m gonna go with jurumí, the giant anteater, which makes an appearance in the book. They are so wide and strange looking, but I’ve yet to see one in the wild for real. What role does the poet play in the 21st century? I look around and wonder, rather, what roles don't poets play in the world today? I see so many poets engaged in unique, important work. We lead vital arts organizations, like Ricardo Maldonado at the Academy of American Poets or Jacqueline Balderrama, Norma E. Cantú, Willie Perdomo, and Pablo Miguel Martínez at CantoMundo. We edit major literary publications, like Carmen Giménez at Graywolf or Javier O. Huerta and León Salvatierra at Huizache. We engage literally millions of followers, like Yung Pueblo, Rudy Francisco, and others. We serve our communities in so many ways. Jordan Pérez helps protect children at the nonprofit Safe from Online Sex Abuse (SOSA) and has featured on the TV show Undercover Underage. Kinsale Drake founded the NDN Girls Book Club and has been recognized by Time magazine for her efforts. Antonio de Jesús López is the new Mayor of East Palo Alto. Name another profession with such breathtaking range and diversity of positions available to its practitioners. This is of course not to mention our many roles as teachers, organizers, and activists. As intellectuals and artists. As students and parents, siblings and children. As neighbors and bystanders, as strangers and future friends. In the end, I believe we are caretakers, of language, of each other, of the planet. We have to be. Otherwise, what else is there? Diego Báez is a writer, educator, and abolitionist. He is the author of Yaguareté White (Univ. Arizona, 2024). A recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, the Surge Institute, the Poetry Foundation Incubator for Community-Engaged Poets, and DreamYard’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Diego has served on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle, the International David Foster Wallace Society, and Families Together Cooperative Nursery School. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Freeman's, Poetry Northwest, and Latino Poetry: A New Anthology. Book reviews have appeared at Booklist, Harriet, and The Boston Globe. Diego lives in Chicago and teaches at the City Colleges.

I quickly wrote some haikus about the portraits for my job interview.

day, I might be working on outreach, communicating with partner institutions, setting up readings and interviews poetry reading with invited guest poets, a film screening and discussion, a writing workshop, a live interview

Pre-order: Quererme En La Luz by Farrah Fang Abode Press | April 15, 2024 | ISBN: 979-8-9900598-0-1 How did you get into writing? Can you pinpoint a memory where it all began for you? It started in elementary school. I was very young, six or seven years old. Either my 1st or 2nd grade teacher spoke with the school to move me into Vanguard G/T classes. They saw how fast I was completing my work, how bored I was getting in during lessons and tested me to see if I qualified. Once in the Vanguard program, I had a new teacher. She eventually gave the class an assignment asking us to write a story. It was a free prompt and I wrote about a leprechaun. I think it was inspired by the Lucky Charms cereal I would eat for breakfast as a kid. My teacher adored the story and praised my writing skills. She spoke with the school and they created an assembly for our class to read our stories to some of the students. I remember being on stage in the front of our cafeteria, reading to rows of kids with their legs crossed just staring at me lazily. This was my first time in front of a mic, first time in front of an audience but I don’t remember being scared. In fact, I was going on and on about this leprechaun even adding more sentences that I hadn’t written. I was dramatic even at that age. Ever since then I've had a passion for writing. I wanted to grow up to be an author and eventually an English teacher. The latter dream isn’t something I care about now but I’m proud to call myself a published author. The child in me is screaming at finally having our dream come true. What are some key themes present in your book? This chapbook was written within the past five years and so much has ignited during this span. The latter years of a Trump presidency, the pandemic, the surge of restrictive propaganda and legislation, as well as the rise in murders of trans individuals…all of these subjects have weighed heavy on my soul during the construction of these poems. The conversations streaming within Quererme En La Luz range from being political to nightmarish, from speaking on desirability to talking about overt and subtle violence. This chapbook explores trans philosophy, trans liberation, trans mysticism and sisterhood. I write about how as trans women we get to live in multiple realms, some of brutal realism. Inside other dimensions where we are divine and revered. The text that speaks so confidently and dreamily about our power is not so much a “fake it until you make it” mantra but a legitimate truth. I do hold my community in high regard, as angels and sirens and pioneers but I also recognize the relentless abuse we face. There is the world we are subjected to and then the world we created for ourselves because we had to. My poems advocate that while we can recognize our pain and trauma as having an influence on our character, we can also craft spaces where we can heal, thrive, mesmerize, retaliate, even transform. The setting of Quererme En La Luz revolves around images of gardens and darkness. Trans women are roses basking under moonlight ready to grow and reclaim space where we have typically been denied access. The title of the chapbook is a declaration that we will no longer be regulated to the shadows for the comfort of others. We will no longer exist in silence. We will no longer accept that our love and the ones who love us should be secretive or ashamed. We will never forget where we come from or the ways it has shaped us but we will choose to live authentically, to advocate for our rights as humans, to fight anyone who attempts to eradicate our existence. This chapbook is very upfront about these messages but I do not find it to be intricately hopeful. This is a pessimistic, morose unraveling. The skeleton of Quererme En La Luz is made up of poems speaking on different seasons of a trans woman's life, often invoking the concept of transformation via death. There is a recurring theme of having integral parts of one’s identity killed in order to become the authentic, desired self. This can be done by the individual or it can be a consequence of being trans in a relentlessly violent world. It's intentionally dark and emo because I think ignoring the negative aspects of our lives would be so disingenuous and I naturally gravitate towards those tones. Yes, we shed our cocoon but not all of us transform into butterflies. Quererme En La Luz is about how some people are constantly transforming, from chimeras to mud to a yellow excavator. What are you currently reading? Ocean Vuong’s Time Is a Mother. Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things. El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez and Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada. Can you describe the environment(s) where you wrote your book? This could be the room, the desk, the city, an MFA program, a fellowship, or any other environmental factor (you only wrote when it rained, you always wrote with fresh flowers in the room, etc.). So much of this chapbook was written in the Northside neighborhood of Houston, where I’ve lived most of my life. I can read certain poems and travel back in time to lounging and loathing in my bedroom, depending on the apartment as I went through so many evictions. Some poems bring me back to sitting at my desk while incense burned, as an episode of Ancient Aliens stirred in the background. Most of Quererme En La Luz was written during the lockdown and the years that followed. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom smoking alone, scribbling into my journal or using Instagram captions as an opportunity to write something compelling. As the pandemic progressed and things started to open up, I took my chihuahua to nearby parks a lot. A good chunk of poems were written at Stude Park, in a spot far away from people so my dog could run around while I wrote about the chemtrails lingering above or the haunting view of the Houston skyline. The environment played a huge role in what I wrote about. It had its own way of bringing out certain emotions and giving them perspective. One poem I think about in particular from the chapbook, called “Worm Moon Ritual”, shifts me back to a particular night in March of last year. I remember walking my chihuahua on auto-pilot, traumatized and half-alive from some harm that occurred a few weeks prior. The full moon was gigantic, orange-red and it was calling me. I would find out later what this particular moon symbolized but in the moment it felt very spiritual. Our conversation felt necessary and therapeutic. The poem would eventually describe this provocation to change myself and the path I was traveling. It was very fitting for my journey. It has been a year since that night and now my chapbook is being published and this poem is a part of it. I take all of those interactions with the world very seriously. What non-living poet/writer had the biggest influence on your book? Her name is Esdras Parra. She was a Venezuelan writer and poet (1937-2004). She was a trans woman just like myself. A friend of mine gave me a book of her poetry, The Collected Poems of Esdras Parra, which was translated by Jamie Berrout. We met up one night in 2021 and he just knew these poems were going to have a great effect on me. I would take this book with me everywhere I went. I vividly remember sitting in the Japanese Garden in Hermann Park, reading her work and feeling so connected to her style and voice. Every poem, although terse, felt so profound and relatable. Este suelo secreto (To be human once more) was a book of poetry included in this collection and that collection of poems in particular is what I felt closest to. Each poem was a prayer, an affirmation, a warning, a song to hum as I walked to my car avoiding the whispers and stares that followed me. Quererme En La Luz is a response to all of these experiences, the transphobic encounters, the simple days reading in the park and all the stale air that filled the gaps between them. Parra’s work reminded me that I was not subhuman during a time when the world was treating me as such. She inspired me to reclaim my divinity as well as my personhood. I needed to hear these words from a trans woman, a creative with her particular sense of self. Her poems were not numerous compared to that of other authors but they definitely shaped how I approached writing this particular chapbook. I even made sure to include an epigraph of hers at the beginning of Quererme En La Luz to honor her influence. What role does the poet play in the 21 st century? We speak truth when the world is on fire. We have to. We create anti-propaganda. Through us history is not forgotten. Poetry is not dead so long as it remains authentic. If poets close their eyes to the world while it is screaming and dying then we have failed. We are the branches that remind people of their roots. We are the waves that crash into your shores, pulling your voice out into the ocean and slamming back with more ferocity, more words that need to be said. As long as there is water, we are never-ending. How did writing this book transform you? Transformation was essentially what Quererme En La Luz was all about. Besides that I think writing it actually made me a better poet. I was very adamant about making this a coherent and accurate portrayal of my artistic capabilities. There was lots of reading involved, lots of editing, and changes employed. This is a debut collection of sorts for me so I wanted to put all of my energy into making it an iconic Farrah Fang piece. It allowed me to really understand what kind of writer I was and could be, what styles I was drawn to, and how I wanted to share my creative voice. I would even say that it affected other forms of art that I was making. So much regarding the philosophy behind Quererme En La Luz was incorporated into my performance art, my digital collages, and even my advocacy. Spiritually, this chapbook acted as a set of warnings, visions, and prayers. These poems were written over the past five years and marked my journey throughout that timeline. I am a very different human being now than I was when I wrote the first poem from this collection. I feel more aligned with spirituality, more attuned to the symbolism and energy behind everything. I come back to these pieces and remember who I was and how far I’ve come. They made me have more of a stake in my future. I was raised Catholic and I’ve been deprogramming from that for years but writing Quererme En La Luz shaped me to be more appreciative of rituals, ancestors, and divinity. When I started to perceive trans identity as having a holy connection, I became more secure. I evolved my interpretation of self-love into something that didn’t feel corny or unrealistic. To me spirituality is connected to that and it felt more tangible as I finished this collection. On a more personal level, during the process of writing this chapbook I think I became more mature and sure of myself. Five years is a long time and I wrote this at a very interesting point of adulthood where I left my 20s and entered my 30s. Quererme En La Luz is something I can turn back to and feel a calming relief, a sense that I’m on the right path. The first poem I ever wrote for this collection resurrected my love for poetry and each step, each poem along the way truly solidified in my soul that I was meant to do this. There are still integral parts of me that will always remain. I’ve always strived to be authentic and unapologetic but now I feel as if it is so ingrained in my behavior that it doesn’t require much effort. I’m a lot happier than I used to be prior to writing this chapbook and I’ve grown to hold onto that feeling as long as possible, to appreciate it when I have it in my embrace. Farrah Fang (she/her) is a Latina trans woman, born and raised in Houston, TX. She is an artist, writer, and the author of the poetry chapbook “Quererme En La Luz '' published by Abode Press. She has poems published by Raspa Magazine and Odessa Collective and work that will soon be published by The Texas Review and Defunkt Magazine.

I make it a habit to read every book twice for these interviews, and At the Park  was so breezy; I was

Maps You Can’t Make Audiobook version available Publisher: June Road Press Release Date: September 5, 2023 Link for purchase for paperback and audiobook How did your relationship with your family influence your writing? My mother encouraged my writing. Since I learned to write, I have been journaling and writing free-verse poetry. My family emigrated to the U.S. in 1994 from Peru, and as can be expected with such a big move, my parents struggled financially and in their relationship, along with adjustment to life in the U.S. Since I experienced feelings intensely, my go-to was always writing. To process difficult parts of life, I wrote. I wrote about my parents. The fights. I wrote about being undocumented. I wrote about my love stories. I wrote about how I felt stuck. I wrote about how my family, despite our flaws, was united and uniquely here. How did writing this book transform you? It helped me to separate myself from my work. I did it, it’s done, I am separate from it. The editing process, and trusting someone to read and provide edits to my work was a vulnerable process. Once I adjusted to it, it became easier and I enjoyed the feedback and finetuning. Editing is the fun part. Fun and hard. Writing is the catharsis. What was the impetus for this body of work? The opportunity presented itself. I saw an open call for submissions by June Road Press (the editor and publisher is a fellow Bread Loaf School of English alum!) and knew that I had to submit a selection of my work. The hard part was coming up with the courage to actually write the email and select the poems. I knew that once I had those two things lined up, the universe would help as needed. My goal was to accomplish that. Everything after that was done step-by-step with self-imposed deadlines and structure to keep myself on track. You can often tell a lot about a book by how it begins and how it ends. What is the first line and last line of your book? That’s an interesting premise. The first line of the first poem is “after trauma/ you walk with your eyes/ dead-like in a forward direction” and the last line of the last poem is “are you ready yet/ for movement,/ for a lasting change/ of place?” I hadn’t thought of it, but these lines do tell a lot about my book and about my process of change, the evolution of the book and its arc. It’s about confronting trauma, through any means you have access to, in real life, in dreams, through people, through love and loss. It’s about disorientation, fragmentation, searching for rivers that guide you, and realizing that change takes time, that memory is reimagined, that there is no static place, and movement is all there is- movement and a change of place. Outside of writing, what are some of your passions or hobbies? I absolutely love going to art museums. I am inspired everytime I go. I love learning about the artist, where they lived, how fast they lived, how that fastness or slowness shows up in their work, how their lived experiences influenced their work and the mediums they chose to represent those feelings and experiences. I like seeing massive works that make me feel my physicality on this earth- how small I am. I am inspired by these artists’ creativity and it makes me want to create as well. William Carlos Williams is synonymous with plums. If you had to choose one fruit and one animal/plant/celestial body that would forever remind people of you, what would you choose and why? I would say pomegranates. I like how they’re hard to eat, how they get stuck in your teeth, how the seeds stain easily. They’re complicated and beautiful and not scared of shining their bright stainful light. I’ve also recently learned that there are ways to cut them that make them much easier to eat. Which is a nice twist.  All my life I never ate a pomegranate. It wasn’t until college that someone gifted one to me and I was surprised at its beautiful shape, like a statue. How curvy and strong it was. I had it in my room as more of a decoration, not knowing how to cut it open or eat it. It wasn’t until my friend reminded me that I could eat it and how, that I decided to. I didn’t know what to make of the insides, so many textures and such patterns, and the staining- everywhere. I like to think that I am like that. I feel intensely, I love intensely, I am sometimes hard to understand, but there are ways, once you learn me, that make it easier. They’re art. I like to think humans are art, that I am art. What are you currently reading? I recently finished Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I take time to read things. I read for about 15 minutes in the morning. It’s such a fun part of my morning routine. I really enjoyed that book because 1. I am a big fan of Dostoevsky’s works, Tolstoy’s too. 2. I like getting lost in the elaborate story and Russian names. 3. It’s a very psychological book and it’s tense and it’s visceral. I like how I could feel Raskolnikov’s distress and descent. I have just started Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me— I’ve been wanting to read it to hear her story in her words. I think the media misportrayed her during her rise to fame and subsequent mental health issues. I am also reading Natalie Gutiérrez’s The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color— it’s a more intense read as it has me reflecting on my life and the trauma I’ve faced. My partner and I actually went to a reading of hers in NYC. We did an activity that had us address somatic symptoms of sadness and anxiety. We went with our nieces and were later able to debrief about the talk— we discussed how trauma affects the body, how it’s passed down generationally, how difficult lived experiences stay with us. It was nice to have these open conversations. Mariella Saavedra Carquin has practiced as a licensed mental health counselor in New York City in clinical, higher education, and middle school settings and now works in integrated primary care at Children’s Hospital Colorado through the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She is a graduate of Middlebury College, holds an EdM and an MA in psychological counseling from Columbia University, and recently earned an MA from Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English. In addition to writing poetry, she has published in various academic journals on the psychological impact of microaggressions experienced by undocumented immigrant youth. Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Miami, Florida, she currently lives in Denver, Colorado. Maps You Can’t Make is her first book.

In the text, “gun-shaped speculum” implies violence, and, in our interview, Myers emphasized the speaker process to which we women subject ourselves voluntarily , Zapata wrote me in our Spanish-language email interview

Portrait of Us Burning: Poems by Sebastián H. Páramo | ISBN: 9780810146488 Oct. 15, 2023 | pp. 112 | Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books Can you describe the environment(s) where you wrote your book? This could be the room, the desk, the city, an MFA program, a fellowship, or any other environmental factor (you only wrote when it rained, you always wrote with fresh flowers in the room, etc.). For many years, I wrote in bed on a laptop. When I started my MFA in 2010, I didn’t have a dedicated desk, I’d find myself in the Sarah Lawrence College library basement in the computer lab. Later, when I was juggling three jobs to live in my six-floor walk-up in Harlem, I’d find myself in diners or coffee shops open late because my apartment was oftentimes not comfortable. Think Coffee on 8th Ave was fairly consistent. Mudsmith, a coffee shop/bar open until midnight became my staple when I moved back to Texas and became involved in the Dallas literary arts scene. Finding a routine was important after the MFA and I started to develop that when I did my first writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Two weeks wasn’t enough time but it was the the perfect way to frame my writing routine as part of an artist community. It was March and still snowy then. I could see outside my studio window and take writing breaks. I could lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling. I had to learn that was okay for me. Eventually, when I started my Ph.D. in Denton, Texas, Aura Coffee and the occasional bar that served kombucha and coffee on tap would become my offices. I was fortunate to have the support of funding my program and an editorial fellowship that provided me with the time and space to write. I don’t think if I chose to make it in the private sector I’d have the same opportunities to pay attention to myself and my work and I feel lucky for it. I’ve also benefited from having a partner at times and family and therapy to place me in a much better mental space to write and challenge the questions I found myself asking. When I was finishing the book, I was also at the University of Texas at Austin’s Dobie Paisano Fellowship program, where I spent four months and some change on 250 acres learning how to establish a writing routine after the Ph.D. During the pandemic, this work became an environmental reckoning for my writing process, mental state, and the questions that would help bring me to my next book. I like this question because environmental factors for me are not just physical spaces, but also small rituals that we give ourselves and also can gesture towards saying something about our positionality. My parents immigrated here to provide better opportunities for me and I must acknowledge that I’ve likely benefited from being a man and white-passing (or as one person has put it, ambiguous ethnic), which is something I’ve been thinking about with my recent project. What was your writing process? Your editing process? Did you adopt a unique process for this book, or do you have a “go-to” approach for all your writing? How did writing this book transform you? The earliest poem dates from nearly twelve years ago. But I’ve been writing since high school and I had no patience for much revision early on. Workshops in undergrad and grad school definitely helped me pay attention to patterning elements in my poems, but I was very slow to revise the book or even treat the poems as a book for a long time. I remember receiving the advice that I shouldn’t rush a book during the MFA. It’s better to wait for the poems to come and see what you have after writing them. In New York, I felt that pressure. Everyone seemed to have a book or be publishing a book. I had to learn to follow the language and give myself permission to become obsessed with a subject. When I started to search for my obsessions, my poems were more successful at being placed for publication. I wrote and revised poems based on submission deadlines or whenever I was invited to readings or participated in open mikes. I became part of the Spiderweb Salon, an arts collective in Denton and I learned to collaborate and open myself up to writing that wasn’t so academic. I gave myself permission to become more experimental. Through the collective, I had the opportunity to participate in projects that stretched my imagination. I also attended workshops at Sewanee and Bread Loaf and met with other poets as an editor which helped me think about new ways of looking at my poems. From these friendships, I frequently found myself in 30/30 challenges. Focusing my practice and learning my obsessions helped me focus on the subject of my manuscript. It actually took me a long time to find a way to write about my family and share the vulnerable voice of the poems. While I don’t write every day, I found the challenge of 30 poems in 30 days useful and for the past few years, these 30/30 challenges have given me more and more poems that are not so terrible. I’m pretty flexible about the rules, but I frequently ask friends to join me in accountability groups and will now take on 30/30 challenges sometimes more than a few times a year. It helps when you have a book project and a deadline. Mine was defending for my dissertation defense for my Ph.D. and submitting to book contests. I finally had enough pages of material when I reached this stage and started to find the shape of my manuscript. One of my mentors, Jehanne Dubrow, recommended I try to use two sections for the book. Because I started to treat the family poems, wherein, memories were portraits, I used that to frame the first section “Portrait of Us” as a title. The second section is titled, “Burning.” Together the first section establishes the sense of family trying to hold it together with their dreams and ambitions. The second section starts to ache and burn and complicate that struggle. Because it relies on semi-autobiographical material, I also decided to use creative nonfiction techniques and speculative, surreal fiction to inform how these portraits have “memory gaps.” Some of the poems also comment on the unreliable narratives that come from remembering complicated childhoods. Some of the poems like “Footage of Me Tomorrow” use erasure to more explicitly play out these memory gaps, but the poems also comment on these shifts in memory like “Portrait of a Reunion” in the first half and “Portrait of the Unsaid.” Ultimately, I consider my writing process as an evolving one, but I like to frequently challenge how I’m writing my poems and I’ve come to appreciate the active cultivation of writing as a ritual for myself to process the world and make myself think harder by asking myself to pay attention to what I’m seeing and understanding. Did another artform influence this work? Painting, music, dancing, etc. Portraits are an obvious influence. I mentioned a little about this when discussing the editing process, but once I found the obsession or framing for the book, I leaned into it. Thankfully, I had poems and memories to latch onto. I mainly wanted to reference Mexican painters and artists. I started with Diego Rivera because my family had this print of his in our kitchen growing up. I remember really admiring ekphrastic poems a lot, but I find myself gravitating towards cinema and borrowing visual elements and breaks in my own work. I also expanded ekphrasis to include film and have some poems that are in conversation with The Lion King and Paris, Texas. I also mention Norman Rockwell as a contrast to the Mexican artists. For this reason, I considered how memory could be unreliable and I used erasures on my own poems to gesture or hint at this idea. I was lucky to have “After El Hombre"by Rufino Tamayo" on display at the Dallas Museum of Art for an exhibit I did with the Spiderweb Salon collective. We had a huge group of participants find art in the museum and write poems inspired by the artwork. We recorded them and had them on display for a month and attendees could dial our poem in a special rotary phone that we pre-programmed with a number that corresponded with our selected artwork. People could then listen to the audio recording. I challenged myself to see if I could use these ekphrastic poems to comment on the art but also have them converse with my own questions and way of seeing the world. What role does the poet play in the 21st century? The poet will remain important because language is important. I believe in the power of poetry to give voice and names to things that we find hard to say. Others may see poetry as a hard space to enter because it seems lofty or inaccessible or it’s siloed inside institutions. But I’m glad for any space that gives people an opportunity to share their voice or say something they didn’t know they could. I understand why people may feel that poetry doesn’t have the power to save democracy or stop wars, but teaching poetry has a lot of power. Poetry is our oldest form of storytelling and I believe people need to feel empowered to speak out for themselves or for those who cannot. I find Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” a text that my students readily connect with. Recent data shows that more people are actually reading poetry these days. In the U.S. we have more MFA programs, writers in the schools, and more magazines and presses than ever before. Art becomes harder every year because poets continue to raise the bar with what language can do. I wouldn’t say it’s important to read every poet who’s writing today, but I believe it’s important to pay attention to the world and to continue to find ways to articulate what that world looks like. We have more writers than ever and sometimes they need to say something familiar, but I always ask myself and my students, how can I say this like only I could say it, right now? Sometimes that means retelling the same stories or the same feelings that people always have about the world. The world is overwhelming because of how much information is out there and poets are trying to make sense of that information like they always have and they want to speak for themselves and their communities. I believe anyone thinking about the urgency to say something meaningful about their people or their community has the spirit of a poet. As a poet, I’ve chosen the medium of language to say something about my world. My book comes from that thinking and the questions I ask come from thinking about what it means to live in the 21st century in America. I’ve carried those questions into my writing life too. You can often tell a lot about a book by how it begins and how it ends. What is the first line and last line of your book? “We lend each other tools. We learned the American tongue.” and “What if / I’m like him? Lighting the last of a cigarette—becoming night.” Community and friendship are sustaining factors for many writers. Give a shoutout to some of the folks who have held and supported you in your writing life. I’m very grateful to friends like Anthony Cody, who have been supportive from the beginning and rooting me on. I’m grateful to Diana Khoi Nguyen who has been very supportive and inspiring through her own work. I’m grateful to my friend courtney marie for inviting me many times to participate in Spiderweb Salon events. Ángel García, Sara Borjas, Eduardo Corral, Greg Brownderville, Mike Soto, Dorothy Chan, and many others have been people who have supported me through their work and feedback. Many more are listed on my acknowledgments page. I’m grateful to have met them in the community and to continue to be in the community with them. I’m a big believer in the writing community. For me, writing is a social practice. Whether I’m reading other authors or wanting to say something about the world, I want to feel like I’m having a conversation with the world. Reading these poets and having conversations with them about their work has been sustaining. I’m very glad I’ve decided to edit a magazine and start a reading series because they’ve kept me in the community even without a writing program. I’m a big fan of the poets I get to publish or invite to participate in events. While my roles may seem like they hold power, I believe anyone can start a magazine or series and I always hope some of my students will invent their own scene or community! Do you have a new project that you’re working on? Could you tell us a bit about it? My new project is searching for a title and has had a few. I won’t share it here, but it does follow a character I’ve named the Tejano. I’ve written over 100 pages of poems and drafts. Some of them are published and others are always being revised. It’s a love story for the end of times and it explores the history of Texas by way of speculative literature. I’m re-writing Texas folktales and considering the mythologizing that happens when it comes to the history of Texas and Mexico. There’s a love story, creation stories, apocalyptic stories, and stories about identity. My family didn’t share a lot of stories growing up. I had to dig for them. My first book came from asking about these origin stories. My project expands on those questions by going beyond my own personal history and asking about the stories we tell. Right now, it’s finding its shape. But I’m expanding the speculative portions by writing about cowboys and Mars and outer space. Sebastián H. Páramo is the author of Portrait of Us Burning (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books, 2023). His poems have recently appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Poetry Northwest, The Arkansas International, Prairie Schooner, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and elsewhere. Sebastián received his MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. He is the founding editor of The Boiler, Poetry Editor for Deep Vellum, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. Photo credit: Paxton Maroney

Amor entre aguaceros/Love between downpours | $20 | Alegría Publishing | November 2023 DM author through @poetatico on Instagram for signed copies. Copies available through publisher here. What is poetry for you? Poetry is a window and a mirror. It enhances our senses through the challenge and invitation of reading someone else’s life experiences. It is a door leading to empathy and understanding. Poetry gave me a voice when I was undocumented, helped me speak from such place of adversity and armed me with opportunities to learn from my immigrant experience. What are some key themes present in your book? The key themes in my book are nostalgia, homesickness, family, memory impressions, and identity. What was the impetus for this body of work? My friend and poet, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, brought up the topic of memory migration during one of our conversations about poetry. He mentioned the power memories have to shape our imagination and how poetry feeds from this intention. I kept thinking about my reliance on objects, photographs, family, stories and nature reinforcing memories that keep me close to Costa Rica. I found myself traveling back in time with the intention of piecing together as much of my past as my memory allowed and my poetry could show. Throughout my collection, the rain is used as a catalyst for some of my deepest moments of contemplation. What was your writing process? Your editing process? Did you adopt a unique process for this book, or do you have a “go-to” approach for all your writing? Some poems came to me after speaking with my family members, remembering through them and some others arrived during instances where an object, such as the coffee mug in my first poem Time in a coffee mug/El tiempo en una taza de café, took me on a journey of introspection similar to Proust’s madeleine. I wrote some shorter poems as prologues to longer pieces and included photographs that I took during my writing process. I wanted the reader to have more windows to look at my book from and share places that inspired my writing directly. One of the most important decisions for this book came with making it truly bilingual. I would write one version in Spanish and then approach the same idea in English. While they are presented in both versions and translated, each poem is its own experience once read. I want my poetry to be as inviting to those readers who speak one language and to those who can speak both. How did writing this book transform you? English is my adopted language and sometimes I feel like there’s glass between my words and my voice. Writing this book definitely helped me face that feeling and embrace the fact that such vulnerability leads to authenticity. I’ve performed poetry from this collection live in different environments, from film festivals to open mic events, and there’s this feeling of community when I hear a snap from someone’s fingers after a line in Spanish and then another one when I read an English one. I feel like the glass is gone when I read in front of people and I let poetry translate what I’ve experienced. What are your favorite lines from your book? “The moon has brown eyes and they look at summer with curious delight” “My teacher molds a tiny copper bird with clay of words” “Antes de retirarme, Nostalgia abre sus manos y me muestra el corazón de mi infancia diciéndome que seguramente se me cayó en algún lugar entre California y de donde vengo” “Y le otorgaré un anillo de agradecimiento a la melancolía que le permite a mi país ser un colibrí esmeralda de cola blanca mariposeando en el bosque lluvioso de mi corazón” Jean-Pierre Rueda is a Costa Rican poet and writer based in Compton, California. Jean-Pierre released his first Spanish poetry collection Herencias through Alegría Publishing in 2021. His book discusses love, family, heritage and celebrates historical Latinx figures as monuments of artistic and cultural success. Jean-Pierre released Amor entre aguaceros/Love between downpours on November 2023 through Alegría Publishing. Jean-Pierre Rueda writes poetry to build bridges between his experiences as a Costa Rican immigrant growing up in California and the importance of art in the Latinx community to maintain their heritage alive. Photo credit: Juan Escobedo