Ariel Francisco is a marvel. Francisco’s poetry stirringly strikes the balance between the colloquial and the traditional, the hip and classic, the witty and the mournful. In his newest collection All My Heroes Are Broke, Francisco examines the worlds of the wandering poet, immigrant families, the lure and grittiness of South Florida and New York, and the appeal of our heroes, whether they are canonized writers, parents, strangers or rappers from Minnesota and New York. With warmth, swaggered grace, and searing stanza, Francisco’s poetry envelops you, makes you ponder and root. Francisco’s work takes you to the heart of why poetry matters: because enduring language and accessible truths matter. He is also a teacher, an ardent literary citizen, and an advocate for poetry in all its forms. 

Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). He was born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, and completed his MFA at Florida International University in Miami. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2016, Gulf Coast, Washington Square, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in South Florida.

In this interview from 2017, we talk about assembling a poetry collection, finding your voice, music, and “broke-ness” amongst other topics. 

Dustin Pearson’s poetry is next-level. In his newest collection Millennial Roost, Pearson shocks, comforts and thrills, digging into challenging relationships with heart-wrenching, fresh, and often delightfully satirical language. With sly turns of phrase and a punch-in-the-gut command of the emotion, his poetry commands attention. 

It’s always a pleasure to engage with passionate writers who are literary advocates and boundary-pushers, in their writing and in their outreach. Jon Marcantoni, a Colorado-based writer of Puerto Rican and Corsican descent, has committed himself to emboldening experimental writers of color, and challenging readers through his publishing programs and through his own genre-bending novels, plays, and short works. In 2016, he founded La Casita Grande Press, an imprint dedicated to Caribbean and Latino writers. He is the author of four novels, all dealing with Puerto Rican socio-political concerns. In 2017, he won awards from the Mexico International Film Festival, the Oaxaca FilmFest, and El Ojo Cojo Film Festival for his screenplay El festejo de San Sebastián. He has appeared in Huffington Post, LA Times, Latino Rebels, Washington Post, NBC Latino, Publisher’s Weekly, and El Nuevo Dia, amongst publications. He lives in Colorado Springs, CO, and teaches at the University of Colorado.

In this interview from 2017, we discuss bilingual writing, the power of plays, multi-genre works, and running a Latino press, amongst other topics. 

I was a child on the south side of Chicago during the late 60s/early 70s – a time much like this one – when politics and social change is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. My father was a civil rights activist and I marched with him against the Vietnam War when I was five. My sister and I sold bumper stickers for George McGovern’s presidential campaign when I was nine. 

Critically, too, my neighborhood, my schools, my choir, my church were what we used to call “integrated”: I was a middle-class white girl who grew up surrounded by Black people, who had Black friends from nursery school on, who was frequently the only white person in the room, in the house, at the party, on the bus, who had no idea this was unusual for a white person in America. 

There’s this sense that there’s abject poverty for Native people, that their lives are always a plight, tragic and dark. Then there’s the romanticizing of the environmental Indian, the wise, the “please teach us your ways,” the spiritual Indian. I’m interested in the continuum, all of the spaces in between those two false extremes. 

I'd say everything about my origins has affected me. Growing up in the south and being made aware of social injustice has influenced my activity as an artist activist. Growing up in a space where there has never been a long line of black male poets has influenced my productivity. I always feel like I have to write more, that I'm writing for more than one poet. Growing up in the projects, poor, raised by a single mother who was also a Pentecostal minister gave me lots of material, and motivation to create work that showed the beauty and dignity of my origins and shattered the stereotypes as often as possible. 

I often feel disconnected with the ways in which native academics talk about Native Americans and native literature. Sometimes I feel like native academics (and often native writers, to be fair) are performing being Indian for a non-native audience. They seem to present natives not only as if we are (only) natural and spiritual, but also in this deeply ambiguous way, a way that’s not particularly realistic or reflective of our lives.

I tell my students that it’s most important to find your specific voice, find your truth and write about that. I used to think I wasn’t Black enough or that my upbringing was too this and not enough that, but when I just wrote my story, I realized that lots of people identified with me, and that my existence was valid, and that the honesty I brought to the page was ringing true for many readers all across the country. Being specific to your own story creates work that can reach people on a universal level, and that’s what’s most important! 

I was trained to be afraid that my words could be used against me in a court of law. That still holds true, but now I refuse to do the state’s work by self-regulating. I know this puts me in a precarious position, but I’ve lived a closet-free life for this long, and I plan to defend that with all I have. 

Being a feminist author means taking women’s subjectivity, accomplishments, desires, interests, and difficulties seriously. Making them primary subjects of narrative, exactly as men’s subjectivity, accomplishments, desires, etc. have always been. A feminist writer explores this subject matter without worrying whether that portrayal dovetails with our culture’s stereotypes about women. 

Poetry and the arts are effective tools for social change. They keep alive the opposition to the status quo. Poetry documents events for the collective social consciousness as an alternative to the “official” version, which most of us know is under tight, corporate control. Poetry records how we feel, and in doing so, reminds us of our humanity, of what we still share and have in common. Through poetry, I can proclaim my individual self but do it in such a way that allows the reader/listener to make connections based on personal experience. This allows us to consider how we may be different while also having so much in common. I truly believe that poetry is a powerful force of social change. I’m one of those people who believes all art is political. I’m not saying that poetry alone can create change, but yes, it is a tool.

"We shouldn’t let society degrade or scare our weirdness out of us. I think of queer as an idea. I also think about “queers” as a marginalized population. They’re the emo kids in the classroom. Or the weirdos. Or the artist or the hippies. All of those subpopulations are queer. Instead of saying that’s an artist or an emo, and using those terms as insults, saying those terms are awesome. That’s an artist. That’s cool. For me there are important populations that are suffering creatively and intellectually. Because a lot of people are scared of interesting, creative people who tend to be far out and goofy. 

There’s also a difference between weird and queer and being a lunatic. Sometimes they coexist. Like me. I’m queer and I’m a lunatic."

I have made a conscious effort not to confine myself to writing about the India of the past. That would be an exercise in nostalgia and I would soon run out of material. I’m more interested in exploring the “dual-time” that immigrants inhabit, in which I’m here in America with India hovering like a ghost in the back of my mind.

Writers tend to be the quiet observers, the ones who take note of the strangeness of their worlds while most everyone else is happily going along, either complicit or in denial of the absurdities and cruelties. In the last ten years, however, the United States has been forced to face itself—first with 9/11 and the endless wars in the Middle East, then with Occupy and increased awareness of inequality, and now with Black Lives Matter and the increasing awareness of systemic racism and violence toward minorities. Not to mention LGBTQ and women's rights. All of this is hard to ignore if you are a writer today, though I do see a lot of oblivious submissions and can't help wondering, "what time period are you writing in?"

"Who says we can't cross genres? Who says a painting can’t be spoken and poetry can’t be total silence?

In various indigenous cultures there is rarely a distinction between such forms. Poems are dances are songs are food. These delineations, or dare I say, borders, are first world concoctions. Ultimately, for me, art is a free space. A space of total possibility. And it is the last place I would ever want to be stifled by limitations."

"What I’ve noticed that has helped me as a writer – and a critic – of fiction and genre fiction is surrendering to the idea that I’m not an authority. There’s a quote from a Katherine Hepburn movie that I’m using in the book which is basically states that we all make the rules. The truth of this stuff is in flux, and we all deal with that flux by making a bunch of rules ourselves, and surrendering to that is really helpful."