José Olivarez’s Citizen Illegal is quintessential reading if you want to read a perspective on machismo, gentrification, and white supremacy that is rooted in a swirling-sort of reality. He engaged with me about expressions of love, language accessibility, and, of course, poetry.
One of the themes in Citizen Illegal is that of the different ways love can manifest: I Wake in a Field of Wolves with the Moon (“i know my love knows when to bite”); Not-Love Is a Season (“love is a season that begins with a leaf”); I Tried to Be a Good Mexican Son (“she asks me if i’m okay. she tells me i’m getting so skinny & i need to eat more frijoles.”)... Why is poetry such a great conductor for the expressions of love?
I don't know the answer to this. I think I'm drawn to writing about the ways love can manifest for the same reason I'm drawn to poetry: both are mysterious to me. I don't quite understand them. Whenever I find one answer, I discover a whole lot more questions. I'm always learning about my capacity to love and receive love and writing and reading. Here's an alternative answer: When I was in second grade I had an unbelievable (for second grade) crush on a girl that was new to our school. I told a couple of friends and one of them immediately promised to snitch and tell the girl. I dove underneath the desks. I think because poetry can facilitate the quick unraveling of a scene, because it can hold the juxtapositions of all of those emotions that might cause one to dive under a desk that it is conducive to writing about love.
On the other hand, you don’t shy away from writing about issues that disenfranchised people face on a daily basis (police brutality, poverty, white supremacy, gentrification, machismo). Why is it important to talk about them through poetry?
Part of my project is to demystify language. I think a lot about language and power. I tell this story a lot, but I think it's a good example. A few years ago, I was listening to public radio talk about whether or not "enhanced interrogation" should be allowed by the United States military. I was like, "what in the world is enhanced interrogation?" Is it the hardest level of trivia? What does that mean? It means torture. They're talking about waterboarding. And what's that? They're talking about making someone believe they are drowning, so let's be honest: they're talking about drowning someone as a way to get information. All of the words that we use have meaning, but some words can hide the true character underneath them. When we say gentrification it's not just a cute mom and pop café opening up on the block. I try to write in a way that gets underneath those terms.
The “Mexican Heaven” poems in your book are some of my favorite poems that I’ve ever read, and when you read them you read them all as one poem. How do you go about deciding which of your poems are meant to be read out loud and which are meant to be read in the comfort of your head, or is there no difference?
All of my poems are meant to be read out loud. That's one of my favorite ways to consume poetry and stories, so I hope that readers will share them out loud with one another. I hope to release an audio book version of the text one day.
A publisher gives you free reins to collab with another Latinx author and the author is free and on board as well, who are you picking and what are you writing?
I'm picking Aracelis Girmay and we are trading letters back and forth. Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz published a series of poems that they wrote back and forth to each other and I loved it. Aracelis is one of my favorite poets, so to get a chance to do something like that would be a dream.
How does your identity affect your writing?
I don't have a concise answer for this. I know my identities affect my writing. How could it not? Our identities shape how we understand and see the world. And because I write poetry primarily and poetry is interested in the shaping of images, there is a relationship between the identities that inform how I see the world and how I write the world.
Who do you write for?
When I write, I am thinking about a very small group of people: my family (I guess it's not a small room), my best friends, and my mentees. When I publish, it's like I'm opening the door to that room. Anyone who wants to come in and hang out is welcome.
What movie(s) would you pair your book with?
Unstop-A-Bulls: The Chicago Bulls 1995-1996 Championship Season; the music video for Flying Lotus- Never Catch Me Featuring Kendrick Lamar, and The Louder Than A Bomb Documentary.
Shoutout a Latinx writer or creator whom you admire!
There's so many Latinx writers and creators I admire. One I'll shout out is Sofía Snow. Sofía is a poet, a rapper, and the executive director at Urban Word NYC. She is an awesome artist and she is also building spaces for the next generation of artists in NYC to shine.
Anything else you can share about your upcoming projects?
I co-edited an anthology of poetry along with Willie Perdomo and Felicia Chavez called The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT. I'm really proud of the book and can't wait to share it with people. It comes out March/April 2020 from Haymarket Books.
Follow José on Twitter and on Instagram @_joseolivarez!
Citizen Illegal is out now!
José Olivarez
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by NPR and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he is co-editing the forthcoming anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods and a recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Poets House, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, & the Conversation Literary Festival. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers.