Luis, this is a question about--
I mentioned a little bit about all the work
that Tia Chucha's Cultural Center is doing.
And one of them is the press.
And I was having a conversation with Rigoberto González
recently.
And he talked about how Tia Chucha's Press, early on,
published some of the first books,
and sometimes the second books, of Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth
Alexander, A. Van Jordan, and Patricia
Smith-- all amazing poets.
And you also have given a talk, previously,
related to this question, at the Art for Justice
conference in New Orleans about the intersection between Black
and Brown communities.
And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that topic
and what drew you to the work, because, oftentimes, we
become classified like the Brown community can only
support the Brown community.
And the Black community-- and it's created a lot of division.
And I just wanted to know if you could
speak a little bit about that topic,
because it's been on all of our minds.
Yeah, because people think, well, it's Tia Chucha Press.
And Luis Rodriguez is the founding editor.
It's going to be all about Chicanos or maybe at least
LatinX.
You know what I mean.
My criteria, Michael knows this because he was there
in the beginning, was the best poets that I could find.
You know what I'm saying?
I didn't look at race or ethnicity.
I just wanted the best poets.
But I also wanted those poets that other people probably
were not going to publish, at least at the time.
And so, both me and Michael were part of the slam poetry scene
that came out of Chicago.
We were both very active in it.
The Guild Complex, which Michael was the founding director and I
helped in the first meetings that we had created,
was really enmeshed with that.
So what I was looking for was the slam poets
that were also not just good on the stage but on the page.
I was looking for that.
That's how Patricia Smith got published
and a lot of great people, Lisa Buscani and Tony Fitzpatrick.
A number of great poets that came out of there.
David Hernandez.
A lot of great poets came out of that scene.
And then, pretty soon, it became people
who knew me were sending me manuscripts
from all over the country.
And including friends of mine that ran--
they were in writing programs.
That's how I met Luivette because Martín Espada,
my good friend, sent me her work.
And I said I want this.
So the people then send me things.
And that's how we became Tia Chucha Press.
And again, the criteria wasn't what race, or what ethnicity,
or whether you were queer or not.
We wanted to hear from everybody.
And we did.
We published so many great voices.
I love all my books.
I have to say that some have risen up faster and so more
than others.
I wish all of them sold as well.
But now we have an editorial committee.
It's not just me making these decisions.
Now we do work with other people who help us bring in
more voices and everything.
That's the way it's worked.
You just wanted to do the best.
And some of them have done well.
Another thing about the nexus of Black and Brown was--
I think Black Scholar magazine called Tia Chucha Press
one of the best African-American presses,
only because of the fact that these African-American poets
you talked about have risen up.
Terrance, Patricia, of course, and Elizabeth.
They've all risen up and done very well.
So people thought that we were an African-American press.
But, again, I don't mind any of that.
For me, I've always lived in Black and Brown communities.
To me, Black and Brown is the urban world.
I think the White media world doesn't understand this,
so they're always separating Black from Brown.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, hip-hop is Black and Brown.
I mean, Luivette knows this because I actually
went to the Bronx in 1981 when it was happening everywhere,
when there was all over the place.
I don't know if you were even born then.
Luivette, I think you were.
But, anyway, the point was, it was all over the place.
I went there, and it was all Black and Brown.
It was African-American, but also West-Indies, Black,
and also Puerto Rican.
In other words, that was the heart of it.
And the same thing with low-riding culture.
The same thing with urban-- almost all urban culture
in the United States is Black and Brown.
But what I find is that the media tends to separate it,
tends to say, this is Black culture,
and here's Brown culture.
And it's like, wait a minute.
I grew up in these barrio ghettos all my life.
That's all I know.
And even Pacoima, where we're at now, is a barrio ghetto.
Housing projects, [gangs ?].
It's Black and Brown.
In a way, I think that's the point.
In Chicago, where we were at, me and Michael,
we lived in Black and Brown communities.
That's what it was.
So that's the only thing I could say.
People got to think about urban culture.
They shouldn't leave out the Brown part.
I totally honor the Black.
It couldn't be urban culture for whatever--
Black culture, Black music, Black rhythms, and Black
voices.
But you can't leave the Brown part out.
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
Thank you.
I now have a question for everyone.
I'm going to just unmute you all.
I now have a question for everybody in the group.
And you can go ahead and unmute yourself,
for some reason, that did not do it.
So it's kind of a large question,
but much of world history that we're taught, or that we see,
is about who belongs and who doesn't, who decides and how.
Can poetry be an art that teaches us
how we belong to each other, to community, to places,
and to our own histories?
What does that mean?
Well, I think I'm--
Sorry.
I'm going to jump in.
No, go ahead, Luivette.
Just based upon, even, this reading,
there was a sense of belonging and commonality
in many of our poems.
And we didn't plan it.
It's not like we got together before this whole meeting
and say, hey, I'm going to read this.
What are you going to read?
And it was not a-- it wasn't an act or anything.
And so it wasn't premeditated, but it was just--
even going from the top, Peter, and listening
to his poems, which I've heard many times beforehand,
but revisiting them again.
And him speaking about the erotic.
And in my head, I was like, I already
have poems like that going on right now.
I was already planning that.
And then listening to Michael's poems,
and especially, the last one he read.
It's like-- And then, listening to Luis's--
we all belong to each other.
If anything, our poems, really, to me at least,
connect me with everyone in this room.
And any time I'm in a poetry space,
I tend to walk away with connectivity.
And in a positionality of, we are all coming from--
granted, we could be different, coming
from different generations and geographic locations.
But there is a connectivity that poetry provides.
And especially from Black and Brown communities.
For good or for bad, we do, unfortunately,
sometimes have traumatic experiences
that kind of interweave our stories together
in this beautiful way.
So I definitely agree with that statement
that poetry can definitely create a sense of belonging.
I mean poetry, or any other art form in and of itself,
doesn't do anything, in my opinion.
But it can.
I think the consciousness behind it,
or the cultural imperatives behind it
are what govern the outcomes of the sense of belonging.
I mean, I've been, for a long time, a volunteer.
I'm like an OG among the OGs at the world stage in Los Angeles.
But even there, I always remember that in the community,
there's a vitality that it's not--
I guess I'm saying that belonging is not
one note, so to speak.
True belonging allows for individuality
within the community.
And I remember some of the moments when we--
I think I got started at the stage in '89, no,
sorry, '90, '91, '92.
And I remember just listening to all the different work.
And I had just come from the East Coast, Washington DC,
my hometown at the time.
And I remember just realizing the variety of voices,
all of it vital, but the distinctions of the voice.
And I think that's what's important to me,
particularly at this age in my life, this season in my life,
is I'm really listening for the virtuosity that touches me,
reminds me that we are all in a family, or a community,
or we're all human beings fundamentally.
So I am always interested in community and belonging,
but I think it has to be an inspirational enrollment, so
to speak, so that people aren't in and of themselves made
into generic beings.
Because if you're made generic, or if your work is generic,
for that matter, frankly.
Frankly, I don't want to be in a--
I don't want to belong in a generic community.
I want to belong in a community that's vital
and where people are bringing their whole selves so that we
can really, really engage with each other,
and learn from each other, and teach each other.
So, for me, that's what poetry at its best can do.
Thank you for that.
I think that's a really interesting point.
And this is the part of the panel
that I love is that we can take the same question
and people have different points.
And, to your point, Peter, one of the things
is about community--
It can both be uplifting, but it can also bind in worst cases.
Keep people bound to this idea of what it means
to be part of that community.
That's a really amazing point.
Yeah, I think that the thing about your question
is that it's rooted in social relationships.
It's how we belong to each other, to community,
and our histories.
And so the impact of Arts really does
depend on the social relationships
once it's created.
As an individual artist, I agonize over the words.
You know, I spend most of my creative time reworking
what I've written.
And as difficult as that creative process is,
it's far more difficult distributing
the art that emerges out of it.
The planning, the cultivating, the harvesting,
the sharing of what's been created.
And so for our art to reach beyond our individual selves,
beyond our own nourishment, it has
to be experienced by others.
I totally agree with everything that's been said so far.
And so, to me that interaction of art in society
creates the potential for change.
Not all art has to do that.
Not all art has to engage in societal change.
The personal transformation is just
as critical as a social transformation.
And, in fact, I don't think there
can be social transformation unless there's
personal transformation.
I mean, we can really see that in our country today.
There is a lot of personal transformation
that is going to be needed for just
the level of social transformation that we need.
And, as an artist, I choose to pursue both the personal
and the social.
But I don't dictate that any other artist
has to approach it that way.
No, I think that's-- yeah, that's a really good marker
and distinction between-- it starts with the self.
And then you kind of move outward
for certain individuals.
Hey.
May I add?
Yeah, Peter.
I'd like to say, I consider this stuff what I call,
or what my core community would call grown folks work.
So I really think it's important.
I mean, listen, we clearly have communion.
I'm just meeting Michael.
I know some of your work with the Complex.
But when you mention Ms. Brooks and stuff--
Ms. Brooks used to come to Baltimore in DC
when I was there when I was a young poet.
And just so generous.
Yes.
Word.
But this notion of just grown, ethical, serious, you
know, courageous communion and participation--
That's what guides me when I think about poetry
and belonging.
Community.
I mean, when you read Luivette's bio, she's now the editor--
what is it, executive director or something, Luivette?
The publication that you invited me to participate in.
I mean, as soon as she got leadership,
and I've watched her do work at Avenue 50 Studio in LA,
she said, come on in, because that was her politics.
You know, she didn't say come on in because I like you,
or come on in.
So I just think that this is about being grown ass people.
And that includes, on a technical level,
which is what we used to emphasize
during the workshop at the stage,
take the work seriously, not yourself, so
that you are always honoring the best of a tradition.
And if you look at that circle concept,
when you get in the circle and you're the soloist,
you only stay in there long as you can bring it.
And then when you exhaust your creativity, or your virtuosity,
you honor the belonging by getting your ass back
in the circle and be ready to support somebody else
while they're doing what they're supposed to do.
Yeah, thank you for that additional--
Yeah, that's for sure.
Some of you have answered this already
in talking a little bit about your poems,
but this is for the group.
Can you share a little bit about your own relationship
to the idea of creating belonging through the language?
What is that?
Does that resonate?
Does that not resonate?
Creating belonging through language.
Let me just say, when you don't feel like you belong,
you have to build a greater ground,
because that narrow ground you're not going to belong.
I never belonged in America.
I don't care if I was born here.
It doesn't matter.
I never belonged.
I never belonged in certain neighborhoods.
I couldn't walk in certain neighborhoods.
I couldn't be--
And then, even when I lived in my poor ass neighborhood
in Las Lomas in South San Gabriel, which Diana knows
about, I didn't feel like we belonged
because we didn't own anything.
It wasn't our land.
It was just-- so you have to build a greater ground.
To me, poetry, and art, creation--
it gives you a bigger ground where you feel like, hey, I
can belong anywhere.
I don't have to fall into the boundaries and the borders
that other people have created.
And so, therefore, you can feel like you can speak to anybody,
go to any community.
I remember, again, speaking of the Black and Brown,
Amiri Baraka invited me to be--
And I heard at the time that I was the only non-Black person
to read at the Black London Poetry Festival
with West African Jamaican poets.
And Amiri, he invited me to be there.
I read.
Nobody made a big deal about it, you know what I'm saying?
It was fine.
And I don't know if anybody else was invited
that wasn't so-called Black.
But I will read it any--
I was reading in Japan.
I don't know Japanese, but it didn't matter.
I'm there reading.
The world opens up to you.
The ground is bigger.
And we have to create that ground.
It isn't just going to come.
You have to work at it.
But that's what, I think, makes it possible for me
to belong anywhere, any time.
Yeah, one thing I've come to understand
about this question of belonging that if you think
of any movement today to improve our condition in this country,
they're all about belonging-- people
trying to be acknowledged and to belong.
Two of my projects that are really about,
and I've spoke to this earlier speaking of people,
but, particularly, Black people being
able to belong without fear of being executed
by the police for driving, for sitting, for talking,
for walking, for running, for sleeping, for just existing.
In the anthology of poetry and protest that I edited,
one of the things I talk about in there
is about how the book can serve as a tool
in a toolbox of many tools.
And so, one of the things that I realized once the book was
published by Norton, is that something
I wish I had done that I didn't do
was to actually include a tool book in the book.
I mean, not one that you carry around with you,
but a graphic tool book, tool kit,
that could direct readers to like
a digital extension of the book where artists and activists
could upload their content on the theme of unjust police
killings, where users could digitally access action
steps for mass engagement, for connecting individuals
to organizations, for connecting organizations
to other organizations, to serving
as a portal that includes collective legal legislative
and creative ways of ending those killings,
of fighting against those killings.
So I'm trying to create that digital extension now.
But when I think about belonging,
I try to think of tools that we can
use to struggle for what gets called "belongingness."
And, as far as my own work is concerned,
that's one of the goals I have.
And just on the poem, "What Not To Do."
I have a similar thing where want to take that
to the next stage as well.
That these are works that are unfinished in a way.
When they get to the point that I
feel they need to be out in the world,
I put them out in the world.
But I have the intention of doing something else with them.
So with that poem, for instance, one
of the ways it's already changed,
it's going out to editors who are
being told that this poem has already
been published elsewhere.
But because it's a serial poem and is being revised,
editors are actually accepting publishing it,
even though it's been published elsewhere.
So that's not typically the way it happens.
And lastly, that I want to do a digital version of that poem.
I want a site where the updates that I'm constantly making
to it are actually online.
And that the poem is not only being changed,
but that is being incorporated with images and art
on the issue of police killings.
So, for me, this is a way of having actual tools to struggle
for belonging.
Thank you.
I've been thinking a lot about the acquisition of language
in different languages.
Sometimes we pick up different languages when we're kids.
If each of you can just share a little bit about
who taught you to read?
If you can.
What is your memory of that?
For me, I mentioned her earlier in when I was reading.
It was my abuela.
Who, again, I want to shout her out.
She's 91, and voted, and was all about her selfie
with her sticker and her pen.
And, Maria Virginia Garcia Lozada,
who, again, just remains to be one of my inspirations
to this day.
It was her tenacity and her initiative
to matriculate me when I got to the States,
even though my mother wasn't here yet.
She was still on the island.
She was like, no, we're going to do this.
And again, my grandmother was the one
that convinced my principal at the time
to accept me in kindergarten, even
though I didn't speak English.
Sister Catherine did not want to accept me because I
didn't speak the language.
But it was my grandmother, in her limited English, politicked
for me and said, she's smart.
And I was only four too.
And on top of that, I was only four.
So I wasn't five like everybody else.
So Maria said, no, no, no, she's smart.
You know, she knows her colors.
She knows her numbers.
She knows her alphabet.
It's just in a different language.
But she knows all of this.
Give her a shot.
And so, my grandma, she won that argument with Sister Catherine.
And here I was in the middle of kindergarten
with a bunch of kids.
I didn't speak the language.
But she paid for my tuition at the time,
which was $75 a month.
And I'll never forget that.
And so, she was the one that really, in my memory bank,
was the one that pushed me to read in English
and in Spanish like I said.
When I started to forget my Spanish,
she would buy me children's books in Spanish.
And when we would go to Puerto Rico every summer.
We did this summer trip.
We would be there for two or three months.
And so, my grandmother, abuela, was definitely, has been--
when I think about reading, and writing, and being a writer,
I think of this woman who didn't go to college,
but went to secondary school, because that's what
they called it at the time.
And was the most educated of her four siblings.
Yeah, I think of her fondly.
And I'm extremely grateful for her.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
My mother taught me how to read, I think.
Her name was June Harris.
She was a secretary too.
But my first Spanish teacher was an African-American woman
named Ms. Evans in the third grade in DC.
The problem was DC was so stratified.
It was just basically Black folks.
And then the few folks who spoke Spanish were more diplomats.
And I never saw those folks.
You know what I mean if you lived in that world.
But I think that it's interesting
as I study like brain research and whatnot.
I mean, of course, our country is so one note.
We're the only country where folk literally
think it's like they're geniuses because they only
speak one language.
How ridiculous.
And they're all colonial languages anyway.
But I do think that the thing for me--
And this is why I'm happy.
And, Luivette, I think I knew that Edward was also
publishing some work that you have coming up.
But this book that Edward at the FlowerSong Press
is going to publish, I always wanted it
in Spanish and in English, English and in Spanish.
And I modeled it after the Neruda book, "Twenty Love Poems
and a Song Of Despair".
And I tried, and tried, and tried,
and finally, Francisco and I, who I've
known now for over 10 years.
But I forgot, Francisco is from Chile,
and is a very conscious and conscientious poet
and artist himself.
And so we had just a marvelous time on the phone
as he read back to me.
And he was really, really doing fine tuning.
He'd say, well, in Chile we say this word.
Sort of what you were saying earlier, Luivette.
But if you come through the prism of Mexican-Spanish,
or Mexican-American, or Chicano Spanish, it's this.
So I kept pushing saying, well, look,
bro, you go with what's Chilean, because that
was the original reason for trying
to do these love and erotic poems and whatnot.
So I've learned-- one more thing I love to say is,
one thing that I've loved about living in Los Angeles
and getting to know people like Gloria Álvarez, and Ms.
Esparza, and the Esparza family.
And, of course, Luis and I have known each other since 1980,
is how, if you're not going to really do
the work, as I said earlier, then shut up and listen.
And so I'll go to a reading where I know most of the poets
are going to speak in Spanish.
And I just turn myself off.
Turn my ego off.
And I don't necessarily know everything that they're saying,
but I embrace the sound.
And I embrace the power of the voice.
And even back--
Luis, I don't know if you remember.
This even back when I had this radio show on KPFK many years
ago, I would always brief the upcoming guests
by saying, among other things, and you
are free to read in whatever languages you want
to read in while you hear it.
So if you hear some music that I'm playing,
and all of a sudden, you want to move in and out
of English, and Spanish, or Armenian, or whatever,
or you just want to go cold sounds, I don't care.
Just do the work that you feel honors
the poem or honors the thing that
inspired you to begin the poem.
So let me just add to that because I was on his show.
But one of the things I noticed about language
is that you may not even have to understand the words to get
the rhythm, to get the poetry.
I've heard Russian poets read.
I'm there.
I'm even falling in tears.
I don't know why.
It's just the way they move.
Or Japanese poets.
I don't know Japanese, but I've got them in stage,
and they're reading, and I'm there.
So I think language has also got another ultra-dimensional
aspect to it that it's important for people to get.
Plus Spanish and English are colonial languages to me,
not that I don't love them.
I speak Spanish and English.
And I want to dominate those languages.
But it's obviously got this history.
And I'm learning Indigenous languages.
I'm learning Nahuatl.
I know some Nahuatl words now.
I went when I was with the Tarahumara.
I learned some of their words, and the greeting
they give which is "kwira va."
I say it all the time.
It means we are one.
That's what they greet each other with.
We are one.
Somos uno, kwira va.
So I think that it's good to think of language and more
languages, and learn the power of language
even beyond the actual understanding of the words.
Yeah, that, what Luis says about using those languages makes
me think back to that quote that I used from Adrienne Rich
that, "This is the oppressor's language
yet I need it to talk to you."
I just want to say about my own work,
this question was kind of very difficult for me
because, first of all, I have an awful memory, or, at best,
a highly selective memory.
So I don't even recall a single children's book
from my childhood.
I have photographs of myself in kindergarten
in the first grade in Bayview-Hunter's Point in San
Francisco, but I have no memory of what
happened in that classroom.
And I must have learned the alphabet there.
My earliest book-related memory is pasting blank paper
over the pages of Reader Digest articles to create my own book.
So I had the desire for a book early in life.
And after reading, I can say with certainty,
that the tag team teachers were the Bible and comic books.
And there weren't very many books in our home,
but my mother did make it a point
to buy a set of encyclopedias.
And I spent a lot of time in those encyclopedias concerning
the acquisition of language.
For me, it's the acquisition of language
beyond pedestrian language, or the language
we need to function every day.
I do think that the Bible was the first kind of text to have
kind of an inescapable influence on my sense of lyricism
and words.
The passages in the "Song of Solomon."
I'll just share a few words from that.
"You are paradise that produces pomegranates and the best
fruits, henna flowers and nard, nard and saffron,
calamus, cinnamon, and all kinds of incense, myrrh, aloes,
and all the best spices.
You are a spring for gardens, a well of living water flowing
from Lebanon."
I mean, it's just sitting in the congregation of the Jehovah's
Witnesses, as Luis knows, that's how
I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness,
and just reading all the time.
But I think that that lyricism, it had to have an impact on me.
That kind of poetry in the Bible.
But it wasn't until about 13 years old
when reading, and writing, and music kind of
took over my life.
And The Last Poets were my heroes.
And the Black Panthers were distributing
outside my high school.
Those things I can remember.
But, boy, for the life of me, I have
no idea how I learned to read.
But I think you have a good idea of what happened after.
That's what it sounds like.
I do.
You were like, I don't need Reader's Digest.
I need my own book.
I'm super impressed.
Luis, do you remember-- as a final question--
Do you remember who taught you to read?
I have to say, I taught myself.
I hate to say that.
But I did not speak English going into the schools.
And as I mentioned, you were punished for speaking it.
I didn't learn English very well because they weren't teaching
it in the schools very well.
And I remember, the only thing that
helped me is that I love to read books.
When I first got into books, I would just be reading it.
And so the story that I told Mayor Eric Garcetti when
he gave me this Poet Laureate thing,
he didn't know the story.
He gave it to me at the central public library
with a lot of media and other people in my family was there.
When I was 15 years old, and I was in the streets.
I was homeless.
I was on drugs.
I had a .22 handgun to mug people to get money.
I was sleeping wherever I could.
I would go to that library.
That was my refuge.
And I read book after book.
I read Ray Bradbury like crazy.
I love "The Martian Chronicles".
I read "Charlotte's Web" like twenty times.
And I picked up Malcolm X. I picked up James Baldwin.
I picked up Piri Thomas.
I picked up all these amazing African-American
and Puerto Rican books because there was no Chicano books.
They spoke about my experience, even
though they were in Harlem, or they were somewhere else.
They spoke about my experience.
And I thought, if they can do that, couldn't I do that?
What an idea.
Who would think of that?
But that's when I started thinking, maybe I could do it.
And if you walk down those shelves now,
you can see my books--
Luis Rodriguez, all my novels, and short stories,
and children's books.
You can go there now and see them there.
So that's how that worked for me.
Wow.
Well, we're going to be finishing up,
but it's been beautiful spending time with all of you,
hearing your work, hearing your thoughts behind your work.
And just appreciative for you taking the time
and being with the Poetry Center to talk more
about our Institute, about poetics, inquiry, and thought.
And I just want to give a final thank you
to everyone for just being very present, and for your work.
So gracias.