>> I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't know who I am.

>> No matter what happens in life, that the sun will always, you know, rise and set the same way.

>> As you can tell, I love using my language.

I love seeing how language can really change the world.

>> Build on community because that's what makes us strong.

[Music] >> Hey, I'm Bobby LeFebre, Colorado's poet laureate.

I'm excited to welcome you to Cuentos de Colorado, a new interview series I am hosting with poets of color from across our state with support from the American Academy of Poets and Rocky Mountain PBS.

For the last few months, I have traveled across our state, meeting with poets in their homes, communities, art spaces, and more, asking them important questions about themselves, their work, and of course, the nature of poetry.

As the world continues to navigate multiple hardships, transitions, some joys, and new beginnings, I feel it's important to listen to the poets as we work together collectively to create and imagine new things.

Poetry is an indestructible bridge connecting us all across the man-made barriers we impose upon one another.

The poet, when effective, is a cultural worker, a conductor and conduit of a world begging us to see and celebrate our relationship to it.

The poet is more than a writer.

The poet is more than literature.

The poet is a cultural translator, a communal visionary, a steward and servant of humanity and emotion, a dreamer and a realist, inseparably entwined.

The poet manifests, evokes, and makes tangible the visions, and love and life that exists within us all.

Through these conversations, I wish to activate a practice by which we realign our orientation to what we know about poetry and maybe even discover something we don't.

From the hood, to rural communities, and everywhere in between, we connected with Colorado poets creating in contemporary times.

This is Cuentos de Colorado.

>> Whoo.

Okay, let's do this thing.

[Laughs] >> What's up?

I'm Nate Marshall.

>> My name is Crisosto Apache.

>> My name's Adrian Roberto Molina.

>> I am Mika Io.

>> I am Susie Q Smith.

>> Yeah.

Oh man.

>> I am Ashley Cornelius.

>> My name is Katarina Jane.

>> My name is Meta Sarmiento.

>> I have many identities, as I think most people do.

>> I'm seventh of nine generations here in Antonito.

Grew up on a ranching family, which is not my work anymore, but my family still ranches and farms, so that's part of who I am.

>> I am an immigrant.

More so, an undocumented immigrant living in the United States during the past four decades, where we have seen so much historical change and political, I would say playing or scapegoating of the immigrant identity for personal political gain.

>> I'm a mother, I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I'm a granddaughter, I'm a cousin, an auntie.

I do a lot of those things.

So, those are all parts of my identity, but I think that I joke sometimes like my last name Smith means no maker of things.

>> My people are Mescalero Apache.

I'm also Chiricahua Apache.

On my father's side, I'm Dineh Navajo.

My clans on my father's side Salt Clan, which is Ashiihi, and also born for Towering House Clan, which is Kiyaa'aanii.

>> I grew up in New York.

My mom is from the Philippines, my dad is from Taiwan, and they met in New York City.

I have always loved writing.

In college, I studied English and music.

Then, I fell into marketing.

As your typical Asian American, got a really fantastic job working in tech in San Francisco.

>> My people are all people.

Whoever wants to be now.

My mother's Chicana.

My father's Mexicano.

I consider myself a spirit, first and foremost.

An artist before identity, and I think about culture before I think about race even though race plays a dominant role in impacting how we live, and how we function, and how we move.

>> You know, when people ask, "Who are your people?

” I feel like definitely the Filipinos are my people.

You know what I mean?

Asians, Pacific Islanders, those are my people, but I think really if you were to try and surmise it, it would be like, you know, my people are the people who are like me, right?

The people who didn't grow up with much, who wanted more for them and for their families.

>> My people are the BIPOC community.

It is the queer community.

It is the art community.

Living in Colorado Springs can be difficult looking the way that I look.

I think the way I have survived is being in these pockets of people who understand what it means to feel othered, to understand what it means to not have your voice heard, but then using art and then people listen.

My people made me.

I always say I'm not self-made, I'm community made.

There is no way I would be in this position, even having this opportunity to sit with you if my community did not support me and lift me up to this place.

>> Who are my people?

You know, I love that question because it's both very easy, and in certain ways, kind of difficult, right?

I think it's easy because in certain ways, there's a kind of clarity for me, like my people are black folks, more people are people of color, we're people in the margins, what have you, but the thing about writing and the thing about making art is that you never really know where the work is going to go and where it's going resonate.

So, I've often been very surprised with the people that are really excited about the work and who are really like-- build relationships and connection with because of that.

>> How do you define poetry?

What is poetry?

When you think about that word and all it encompasses and your approach to it, what is poetry.

>> The one thing I've associated poetry with is the idea of truth.

Poetry allows us to sort of identify the truth of whatever situation that may occur or situations that may already be existing.

It allows us to go look at that and sort of come at it as a sort of witness.

Your own witness to what you see, you write it down.

And if you're able to get that work published, then it has a house that it sits in, and then can best represent that over time.

>> I would say my identity as a poet is pretty new.

I started writing poetry in the summer of 2019.

I went through a really traumatic breakup and poetry just came flowing out of me.

So, I always say that the genre chose me and it wasn't something I set out to do.

It just sort of happened that way.

Tomorrow, I don earrings of the Doña Heather sculpted last time I needed to be reborn.

Illustrious matriarch loops my lobes.

Bends of women adorn my fingers as my body drips heavy with protection.

Tomorrow, I summon my bloodline, the mothers who shape shifted to survive.

And then, for the next, like, twoish years, I took workshops, I read as much as I could.

I just really absorbed all that I could find about how to write poetry.

Very recently, I would say, my poetry practice has transformed from academic and studious to more of a spiritual practice.

>> My relationship to poetry, I was indoctrinated with poetry and I didn't even know it was poetry.

We're up there going to the sheep camp or the cow camp and I'm listening to these stories that the [foreign language] would tell, that my grandpa would tell in this oral tradition, the storytelling.

I think that's where I got to the music of poetry vicariously by listening to them and hearing the way they would tell stories, the same stories over, and over, and over again, but that they would change details, little details, but they would essentially alter the story and transform it in ways I wasn't expecting.

That's where I learned the art of surprise.

I didn't know any of this as it was happening, but as I have a little bit more perspective of this high hill of actually being a poet, I realize that some of the things that make good poetry and things are going to my poetry I learned when I was a little boy listening to the sheepherder, listening to my grandpa in that oral tradition.

I am looking for scattered sheep in the wilderness.

The herder has fallen ill.

I am on foot.

The horse is in the wind, the horse is smoke, the horse is pollen, the horse is ghost and the dogs have no loyalty to me.

I am walking the meadows of [foreign language].

The old men call the spruce at the meadow's edge [foreign language].

Translated, the name means arms.

The ancient meaning is shadow and silence.

I must enter the spruce.

My abuelito's voice tells me I must get the count.

We must know how many have died, how many will not return to the Llanos south of home.

We must know how much of our winter work has been lost here in this late June.

>> My relationship to poetry is an old one.

I was raised on poetry in a lot of ways.

I was raised by my grandmother and her father was a poet.

So, we were-- It was very, very normal for us to quote and recite poetry around the house pretty commonly right alongside scripture.

My grandmother is a pianist.

We went to church five times a week.

She's a very religious woman.

So, if it wasn't bible study, then we were reading other books.

So, poetry has been part of our language as a family for a really long time.

It was very, very normal for me to write poetry.

I think also, I grew up in a really crowded house, big family, small house, so I didn't have a lot of privacy.

So, I think that poetry also gave me the space to write in code language, right?

If I'd kept a diary, hundred percent my cousins and my siblings would have been in it.

There would be no way for me to keep any secrets.

But again, I also have to express as part of, like, just my ability to live my life.

So, I could write in code, in metaphor, in imagery things I couldn't necessarily say out loud or things that I didn't want to write plainly.

So, poetry gave me this, like, cloudy way to say all the things that I needed to say and sometimes got extremely abstract in ways that I had to write myself back from later on in life.

>> How did you come to poetry?

What is your relationship to poetry?

What has it been-- Yeah, tell me about your relationship to poetry.

>> It's funny because when I first started understanding what poetry was, I hated it.

Six grade language arts, we would read the traditional classics that are being taught in Americanized school systems like Frost and Shakespeare.

Not that they're bad poets, it just, like, I don't see myself in that work so I hated it.

I also hated the cryptic language.

Like, what does this mean?

I don't get it.

Miss, can you explain?

But we always have this daily journal assignment and in six grade, Mrs. Regulos, my language arts teacher, handed me my book back, my notebook.

She said, "Mr. Sarmiento, you write beautifully and if you keep going, you'll be somebody.

” That's when I was-- I woke up to this potential I didn't know I had.

And so, when I read that, I had a meeting with her and I talked to her about it.

What did you mean by this?

She was trying to get me to understand writing is a serious thing.

Look, we're teaching you these great writers, and maybe one day, you can be a great writer too.

So I like, "All right, cool.

” I started writing short stories.

I started with fiction.

I remember a lot of the stuff I wrote was about sci-fi, and just like aliens, and just like changing the way humanity thought.

I don't know.

Six grade me was just-- I hated humanity.

I was like, how can I create stories that speak to that?

Aliens, aliens visiting earth and changing things.

I hated poetry all the way up to high school.

Have you ever seen the ocean climb a peak?

Have you ever heard water kiss the sun?

My sizzle roars through a mountain range.

I am everything they said I could not be.

The jungle's spell that conjured a house with cupboards full of everything I once could not afford.

Here inside these walls, I churn a recipe for bravery.

I cut, and cook, and speak, and write, and dance, and teach, and dream, and dream, and dream of one day dying deeper than any ocean I could've risen from.

But in my junior or sophomore year, my English teacher, she busted through my chemistry class and was like I need to take Mr. Sarmiento to a presentation.

I was like, for what?

I'm failing chem.

I need to pay attention, Miss.

Don't take me out.

She was like, no, you gotta come with me.

She dragged me to the library.

It was the first time I was exposed to spoken word poetry.

A bunch of spoken word poets on the island got together to visit all the high schools and they were launching a new program.

It didn't have any catchy name.

There were just like, we're trying to launch a poetry program.

I was sitting there thinking, poetry?

I hate poetry.

Then he started performing.

They did the Grillo.

The poets were spread out in the room and they just started with no warning.

We're just like what the heck is happening?

Oh my goodness.

And that was the first time I felt connected to the art form of poetry.

>> So, my artform, that is spoken poetry and written poetry both in English and Spanish, came to me as a way of healing trauma.

Really.

When I started thinking about it, when did I first start writing poetry?

How did all of this come about?

My oldest memory I have is when my father died.

I was nine years old and we had just been moved to Mexico after being grown up in the United States for all of my infancy, nine years, the first nine years of my life.

After being born in Mexico, we were brought to the US and my entire childhood was here.

Then, when we go back to Mexico, my father dies within the year.

The very first poem I wrote was for him at his death.

The reason I know this is because I have seen that nine-year-old written old piece of paper from where it was kept in his tomb with his ashes as we've regained those ashes now that we have established ourselves in Colorado.

It was so special for me to realize and have that recollection of probably one of the first times that I started writing and using writing as a medium in this way that is healing.

>> Talk to me about your relationship to poetry.

This is a poet heavy series that I'm hosting.

So, what is your personal relationship to poetry?

What does it mean to be a poet and how do you utilize that in your life to make sense of this place that we call home?

>> So, poetry came to me through hip hop.

I'm very grateful for that gift.

As a young boy walking through my neighborhood on the south side of Rollins, I'd hear this boom bap sound with something that feels familiar like my father's music from Mexico.

It's Kid Frost.

It's La Raza.

That's my first introduction to hip-hop was this.

Of course, that leads into a lot of the West Coast gangsta rap and all the different forms of hip-hop.

I'm very grateful that that came to me because I didn't have any other form of creative expression.

Where I grew up and how I grew up, there was not cultural center, community center, studio, all of the classes even that were available in the schools just felt like, as a person of color, that wasn't for you.

I didn't have any instruments in the home.

So, really it was through the gift of lyricism that I started to really connect with my past, and also my present, and my future and gained a sense of power for what's possible with words, the words that we manifest, the words that we live, how we can define reality through the living word.

So, really poetry came to me without knowing it.

I didn't think as rap music as poetry.

I didn't intend to be a poet.

I didn't intend to be an MC, but I spent so much time under the headphones and really trying to understand the lyrics that were inspiring me.

Lyrical meditations.

Earth, moon, and drum.

Revelations of a champion my words have become.

Scorpio's son on a redeeming run.

Resurrection of the ancestors, redness of blood.

I'm from the winds of the West.

Hummingbird in my chest.

Know the force of the source.

Moving south to the north.

From [foreign language].

From the Gypsies in Spain.

From the pyramid math.

From Mexicanos in the fields.

From hustlers and dealers.

Rivers and railroads united farm workers.

Pan indigenous mestizo making the future.

Blessings from the spirit world.

My breath is the root.

>> How would you describe your relationship to poetry?

>> It's interesting.

It's been changing.

So I started this doing a super young.

I started kind of writing on my own just as a thing to do, a thing to kind of process in middle school.

Then, around that time, also got into poetry slam.

Had a teacher who kind of pushed me into it.

So, this one time, I was finna gonna say finna in an academic context and a voice in my head said, "Shouldn't you be worried about using a word that ain't a word?

” I was like, "Word.

” For a long time, that was how I let my life happen.

I let my mind tell me a million nos that the world had implanted in me before I even formed questions.

I let my power be dulled by my fear of fitting, but I remember a million finnas I avoided to get here like the day them dudes jumped me off the bus and I was finna gonna get stomped out like a loose square.

Or they got to shooting at the park and I was finna to catch one like an alley oop.

Or the day my grandma died and my grades dropped, and I was finna not finish high school, except I had a praying mama, and good teachers, and poems to write.

Now, being a poet is my job too, and that's weird.

>> When you think about your work as a poet, what do you like most about what you produce?

>> I think I really like artifacts.

Especially as a person who kinda doesn't feel like there is a place where I definitely belong.

I think artifacts have become extremely important.

This world is moving so fast.

Things just keep passing and clicking down the feed and becoming obsolete like that in less than a blink of an eye.

Artifacts are important, I think, because-- Not I think.

It's really just how my life has been.

Familial artifacts have disappeared.

>> When did you begin to call yourself a poet?

>> I still don't call myself a poet.

>> You still don't?

>> No, not really.

>> How come?

>> I don't know.

To me, it's a thing with cultural competence.

It's a thing with [foreign language].

To me, it's just bringing attention to myself and that's not how I feel I'm comfortable.

I feel that I'm more of a conduit.

I don't even write the poems.

They write me.

They come to me from the people that I'm writing about, the stories that I'm trying to convey, the people that I'm trying to represent.

They're the poets and I'm just the writer.

I call myself a writer.

>> Okay.

I love that.

>> What's it going to take for your voice, our voices, to be more regularly included and change the idea of what the American canon is in regard to poetry?

What's it going to take and how long will we see before it's really woven into the paradigm?

>> I think to start, it's recognizing what the work-- the work that people have done before us because that has a lineage.

That has a legacy.

Once we recognize what has come before, we can then develop who we are and we can project that into the future.

For me, writing has always been that.

Reading has always been that.

Doing research has always done that for me.

Finding out all the nuances that influence.

So, for me, it is sort of encompassing this whole idea of life that is very circular, that is very cyclic because we always have to come back to a point where we started and do the process again.

Emergent emanation of birth like a costed lamb.

He is placed inside a shoebox, no constitution of place toward [foreign language] cradle board.

Toward [foreign language].

Towards [foreign language] homelands.

Toward [foreign language] language.

Life acquisition of identity towards X.

A pew to Masco gatherers, wood burnt gatherers, sheep harvesters after salt is extinct.

>> We've all collectively gone through so much over the last couple of years.

How do you think that that's changed poetry or has it as an entry point for more people to experience it?

What has all the things that we've gone through over the last couple of years, how has that contributed to our understanding of poetry, or even your practice or engagement with it?

>> I think it remains to be seen.

I think it's still early.

We're still isolated in a lot of ways.

I think that poetry is introspective and right now, people have a lot of space for introspection.

I think also, of course, collectively, we've endured and continue to endure a tremendous amount of grief, more grief than we've probably ever seen for most of us in our lifetimes.

So, that is something that will lead people to poetry often for comfort.

When a seed is planted or buried, abandoned to the soil, it may not know this is a gift.

Yes, sis.

Cry, wail, moan.

Tear your hair and mash your teeth.

All of that then wash the dishes.

For much of the year, Ocotillo appears to be an arrangement of large, spiny, dead sticks.

With rainfall, the plant becomes lush with green leaves.

When water is scarce, the leaves turn brown and fall off.

Every earth cracked thirsty yearning is a seed.

Plant it.

Let it crane toward the sun and bloom.

Do seeds, the small ones, say mustard, get jealous, or pray to become bigger seeds?

Do they ever wish they could fill themselves up with air?

Is that how they imagine growth?

Sometimes, I press my fingers toward the invitation of sky and say yes, bend my face to the sun and laugh, remembering how I once clung to the shell I believed was me.

I think it's very difficult to create change when we haven't engaged hearts.

I think a lot of times, we come for the minds.

We present so much data to people.

We give them all of this information and are stunned when they are unchanged.

And they continue to hold the same opinions, perspectives, and behaviors that are harmful because we haven't engaged the heart.

I think about Sonia Sanchez said that for any movement to be sustainable, it has to be rooted in love.

I think that's really accurate because love is that primary motivator that really, really makes change possible, sustainable, and impactful.

I think poetry has the power to comfort people's hearts and that's my goal every time.

>> Are there moments in your life where you can point to, maybe, maybe not, that you realized that poetry has power, that poetry has that power?

>> Yes.

Yes, there's a couple moments.

Both, if not all of them, are moments when I have been inspired by other poets who, like yourself, I like to call you elders and mentors because I feel like I'm so new in this field, at least when it comes to presenting to such large crowds and really sending such a big message hopefully to large crowds.

Those months have been so powerful to the point of cracking my heart open and shedding all of these, I would say, barriers that I put on myself so as not to be wounded.

Showed me that they had the power of healing those wounds through the art form, through speaking the realities and naming them, again, in such a beautiful way which is poetry.

I wish I could tell you what it is like to love a true woman.

I wish I could help you understand how to love a true woman, a woman who knows love, who for so many, creates, nurtures, and feeds love.

I wish I could tell you what it is like to love such a woman, a Michiko woman, a mestiza woman, a warrior woman.

I wish I could tell you what it is like to go deep into the pain of a many centuries old civilization to feel in your own blood the sacrifice of many generations, to see the resilience of a conquered indigenous people with reverence, to see the steadfast battle for present survival and yet feel in your court the living, ancient, spiritual wonders.

>> When you think about where your work is headed or where poetry in general is headed, what do you see for the future of your work as well as the future of poetry?

>> Something I'm excited right now about is seeing a lot more queer, trans, non-binary writing happening, but I don't always feel like I'm part of those conversations because I'm not like, I'm this or I'm this.

I feel like I'm fluctuating all the time, but it's really exciting because these conversations are happening and they're becoming more organic.

I'm really excited about-- Gosh, I just read the new poetry magazine and it was centered around youth and those poems were so powerful.

There were so many powerful, jaw-dropping poems in there and that gets me really excited about the future.

Would you take the wings from birds so that they can't fly?

Would you take the ocean's roar and leave just a sigh?

I sing love ballads through the wall because it's much simpler to pitch screaming tantrums right back at them.

Their fights are not unfamiliar to me.

I've thrown lamps, furniture, a man against brick only to hear them all break.

I sing because she cries in the tub every night and he tosses his hands, eyes following her upstairs and into the apartment.

The door slams, clicks locked.

Something heavy thumps hard on the floor.

They love one another so needfully they choke.

She is inside an embryo floating in the bathtub.

He batters the door sobbing.

Let me in.

Take your heart away from mine and mine will surely break.

I like pushing poetry into places it doesn't belong like news, I've had some editors get mad me, and fiction.

I really like when poetry sneaks in there and I like when the lines are fuzzy.

I mean, that's kinda how I am, right?

So, I like throwing in all the genres and figuring out how you can have a story arc in a catalog.

>> I think a poet's job is always to observe, and to be honest, and to communicate what they see in the world.

I think, particularly in this moment of time, we're at such a juncture of moving from a very traditional way of thinking, thinking about hetero patriarchy, and capitalism, and white supremacy, and all of these traditional forms of power that don't allow people of marginalized communities to thrive.

I do think that the poet's job, the artist's job is to help usher into this new paradigm where we can all live in collective liberation, we can all be safe, we can all be healthy.

I feel like art is such an amazing way of touching people's souls and that's truly what is going to change the world that we live in.

We can't just keep operating under the same cycles that we have been.

Clearly.

Look at where we are in society.

We need to imagine a completely different world altogether.

Isn't' that what art is is just completely building something new?

I think, as poets, that's what we do with our work every day.

>> Obviously, the world over the last couple years has been a wild one.

>> Yes.

>> Global pandemic, revisiting of white supremacist.

White supremacy shows up in our country and our lives.

We're currently watching a war break out in Russia and Ukraine in Ukraine.

We're also seeing the fallout of what that means and how we're viewing people who are leaving those countries versus people who leave other countries for other reasons.

What is the role of the poet in society in general?

>> Yeah.

I think that's such a beautiful question because I think art comes out of destruction.

I think it's the antithesis of pain and hurt, we create.

In that respect, I think our responsibility is to capture and to orate.

If we go back, back, back, that's how we got news, that's how we understood things.

It was the facts, but it was also beautifully told.

There was music, there was this communication and storytelling.

As we know right now, there are systems in place that are trying to stop history.

There are people in places who don't want us to be taught.

So, I think it's our job to continue that work, right?

I always say we may not get the things that we want top up to come to us, so we have to do it.

So, as poets, I think we're the leaders to say, "I see this.

How can I share this with other people?

How can we make it understandable, relatable?

How can I infuse myself into this work?

” because sometimes people won't get it in certain ways, and art might be the way that they get it.

Or a poem about what's happening right now might unlock something in someone.

I think poets are activists at our core.

How could we not be?

To share our words, and process them, and deliver them in a way where it's meant to impact.

Exposure your inner thoughts to willing participants.

Burn down the stage and leave it smoldering.

May the ashes of your words permeate this space you will be the main suspect in a series of fires.

Your arson tongue has no plans of stopping.

Snap attention and edges, steal gasps, rob the audience of their misinformation.

Replace it with your premeditated experiences.

Murder the mic and bury the body in the back of your mind with the rest of your trauma.

Do not go quietly.

Scream, "Not guilty!

” with your fingers crossed behind her back.

Aggravate society with the assault of your sound.

Arm yourself with literary devices.

Shotgun similes and musket metaphors drop symbolism bomb and teargas vulnerability.

Throw your fist in the air as a warning shot.

Distribute your voice like dime bags.

Be the plug the community needs.

Get high on your own supply.

Know the value of your product, the way the consumer feels when they take in each line.

Your stuff is pure.

Take the money and skip town.

Wash it clean.

Lauder it out to dry.

Use it to buy back your hostage voice and your insecurities.

Assume a new identity.

Cut your hair, change your name, and walk with the confidence of a mediocre white man.

Hustle your speech, disturb the peace, insight vernacular revolution, riot in between the lines of your sheets, picket with your pen, disrupt policing of expression, resist silence, vandalize the history books and rewrite our narratives, and commit poetry.

>> I think the idea of poetry, because words are involved, can be a tool for being a stand for justice, being a stand for individuality, being a stand for just about every disparity that we have experienced because life is a struggle.

Poetry is there to justify our experience.

I think that's what the strength is in poetry is that are you're able to see something, use words as knowledge, use words as power, use words as experience, and then present the words so that everybody can hopefully involve themselves in that.

>> I know that throughout history the poet has served multiple roles in society.

Its function is different, but in this moment, what do you see the role of the poet in modern society and even into the future?

What role do you want the poet to play?

What role do you see the poet as playing?

And why is that important?

>> I think right now, the role of the poet is to be the heart bringer.

We have got to deal with our emotional and psychic selves, our spiritual selves and I think we have to center that as a people, as a globe.

I think that we have not been able to for a very long time.

I think that these external ways of being, and materialism, and capitalism have really, really restructured the ways that we function and it's not healthy for any of us, right?

So, I think this-- which is why so many people have gone into real crisis and panic mentally, emotionally, and spiritually being alone now during this period of time and not having the tools to process now all of the feelings they have to feel, all the thoughts they have to think, all the questions that they need answers for, right?

Just having that space to really meditate.

I think guiding people through their emotional experience, guiding people through their observations, helping people to ask questions and answer them, and really, really connect to their emotional and spiritual beings.

I think in a lot of ways, I think that's the role of the poet.

>> When you think of the words and you hear the words American poetry, what do you think of?

>> When I hear the words American poetry, what do I think of?

I guess on some level, maybe I think of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson being like I contain multitudes and we need-- a great country needs great poets and all this jazz, but really critiqued the country and really tried to like critiqued the logics of American Empire.

I'm not ever worried about American poetry.

I do teach it and it is a thing that I want students to have a kind of working knowledge of some of the contours of because that's where we happen to be, that's where most of them are from, or where they want to stay, where they presumably want to write and publish if they do want to do those things.

>> Poetry and just the living word in general, it can be welcoming.

It can also be off-putting and divisive, even if we don't intend it to be.

I think that the broader that we can make the tent of poetry for people to come in and experience themselves and find themselves, I think that's really important.

I'm really interested in where we go as poets when come out of this pandemic.

What are we gonna do with our open mics?

What are we gonna do with our events?

What are we gonna do with these spaces that we call poetry that makes it more inviting for people?

Also, how are we gonna bring poetry into new spaces that aren't specifically set up for poetry?

>> What is your hope?

What is your hope for poetry into the future?

>> I want to see visual art collapsing into poetry.

I want to see poetry becoming music.

I want to see music taking us on a journey and then bringing us back into the living word, into a meditation, and then bringing us back to our bodies where we can just be free, and move, and vibe, and then taking us back to an experience with the land, with the water, with the air.

So, I see a lot of potential for fusion and for elements of art, and nature, and people converging in new ways.

>> Talk to me about what you believe the role of the poet is in society, in the world.

What is the poet here for?

>> For me, how I define that is the poet is here to bear witness because of the capacity and the strength to rely on words.

To me, that's what the poet is for, to sort of sacrifice themselves, to bear witness.

That's the way-- That would be the only way you would move people, to change people's minds, to encourage people's feelings, to not forget that you're there to inspire, to move.

>> What do you say to the people who don't understand poetry or they have no relationship to it?

The folks I don't see themselves in it or don't understand poetry, what is an entry point for those folks to poetry?

How would you get them to engage in something that they feel not connected to?

>> Connecting to poetry and understanding poetry can sometimes be very hard, especially when us as artists, we like to be abstract sometimes and we don't always have to be very concrete about this is who I am.

This is exactly how the experience looks like.

It can be hard to understand or feel attracted to poetry if you've never been exposed before.

So, my answer to that would be people need to be more exposed.

They need to have more opportunities in different environments where you wouldn't expect a poetic element to it.

That falls under the responsibility of the organizers of the events, our museums, or our libraries, or again, unexpected scenarios to integrate the art form.

There is always a way and I'm sure there's always local poets willing and wanting the opportunity to share their work.

>> What even is poetry?

Do you have a working definition for what it is?

>> Saving lives.

To me, that's-- I had a student ask me many years ago, "What's your purpose for writing?

” I'm like, "I write to save lives.

” I believe, and I don't mean this as negatively as it may sound, but all human beings, we need to be repaired in some way.

There's parts of us that are wounded that we don't even know are wounded.

Here in Antonito and surrounding communities, your place, my place, because we're poets, because we're writers, we see better, we see differently.

We know those wounds, but as writers, we just don't know them, we inherit them.

So, we've got to fix them.

We gotta repair them.

We gotta do our best to heal our world and our communities through our words.

So, as negative as it may sound, what fuels me is the brokenness of the world because I think that's what poets do.

I think we repair.

We're repair women and we're repair men.

>> I think the world exists because of poets.

I think the dreams that are often realized in society come from the greatest poets.

Now, that to say poetry cannot do physics.

You know what I mean?

I can't build rockets literally with my poetry, but-- How do I-- It's so hard to explain.

I was in Paris during COP26 during the climate negotiations.

The president, I think, of one of the organizations for me put it best.

Poets are proof of our physics.

I think that's the hope of the poet is to usher in the world we so need, and not even because we're like magicians or whatever, I think it's because we're the ones that give dreams language.

We're the ones that give the fantasies the language.

Without language, you can't accomplish anything.

>> What are some things that you have seen that we, the black indigenous people of color, the queer folks, the trans folks, the people on the margins, what have you seen in your personal practice?

What does it mean to create poetry in this country as someone who is a part of those marginalized identities also knowing that we're the global majority connected together?

What does it mean to create poetry as a marginalized person in this country?

>> I think that there have been so many forces really dedicated to silencing us and untelling, mistelling our stories, if at all.

So, I think that it's incredibly important to speak for ourselves.

I teach young people all the time that if you don't speak for yourself, the world will do it for you.

They're very good at it.

They pay a lot of money for the privilege to define you, and tell you who you are, and to tell the world who you are, and there are significant consequences to that untruth being the story that lives.

So, it's incredibly-- It's not only empowering to own your truths, to name yourself, to create your own narrative, it's also your responsibility to do that.

So, I think it's my responsibility.

I think it's everyone's responsibility, especially for those of us whose stories haven't been told properly.

To be sure that we do.

That we own our own language, own our own stories, and tell them, and tell the truth.

>> What are you working on right now?

What are you excited to be building or to share?

Talk to me about that.

>> Okay, yes.

Thank you.

It's exciting to say that I have created enough number of poems, and I've been sharing them for a while, receiving great feedback from my community, that I do feel ready to write my very first book and publish for the very first time a book, a big dream I've had for many years of hopefully some compiled poems that I know have been beloved by many already.

Maybe some new ones, and perhaps some short stories that talk more about the experience that made that poem come to life.

>> You're the mayor of Antonito, you're a writer, you're all of these things.

What is with the intersection of poetry and politics for you?

How do you see them as related or not?

>> They're totally related.

Serving my community, just different ways.

One's way more boring.

I won't tell you which one.

[Laughing] It's a campaign slogan, but it's true.

To love is to serve.

>> What are you working on now?

Any poetry?

What are you focused on right now?

>> Some of it is a little bit of cuttings from identity proleptic, the book that I published this year.

The identity proleptic talks about familial estrangement, being in between things as a mixed race person, and moving towards reconciliation, not knowing if it's too late.

>> I'm just writing loose poems and sort of seeing where they head right now.

It's been about a year and a half since the book came out.

So, I'm working on that and then working on this sort of collaborative sort of radio drama piece that I've been developing with this theater company.

For me, there's always a bit of a refractory period after a project, especially a big project where I kind of have to, not learn how to have fun again, but I just have to have some fun with the work, figure out what the work is doing in the direction it wants to go, and then I start to follow.

Then I start to say, "Okay, I think this is a collection.

Let me try to put it in the world."

>> I'm working on something that has-- a poem that has been in my head for a long time, which is about black hair.

We talk about black girl magic and that truly black real magic is between our legs, like when you're doing someone's hair, someone is sitting in front of you, and your braiding, and how that is like a beautiful practice in magic.

So, I'm trying to look at what are the rituals that we have?

I think I shared earlier, I don't really have a connection to my past.

I'm from the lineage of enslaved people, so don't have a lot of traditions, I don't have a lot of culture.

So, how can I capture that and create rituals for myself?

How can I see that is already exists, there that we have created what we were given and turned that into something powerful?

>> I am writing book.

I'm writing a book of poetry.

In the beginning, I thought I'll start with a chapbook, but this year has just been so transformative for me that the writing has just been flowing out of me.

So right now, I'm just focused on the writing and I'll figure out the rest once it's time for that.

>> I'm working on a personal collection of poetry that I'm not seeking to publish.

It's just like memoirs and reflections of familia.

Someday, it'll be out.

Thinking about how these systems have impacted our families and our conceptions of families.

Just really going into a deep space within.

I am working on a memoir of my time making music.

I've been making albums for about 13 years.

I'm exploring race, class, and creativity through that journey.

>> Tell us a little bit about what you are working on right now.

What are those things that you're juggling?

What do you have going on?

>> The first book I have, I've pushed that out and I've tried to circulate it and get people to engage in that.

The first book for me was very challenging because it is very experimental.

I experimented with the page, with the language, the format, the structure.

For me, that was probably the furthest I've ever gone with poetry and writing.

So, after I got done with that project, I had to scale myself back.

I've been carrying this manuscript that I've been working on over a number of years, and it was a professor at Metro that sort of kicked me in the butt and said, "What are you waiting for?

You need to get this out.

You need to work on it.

” I did work on it a number of years.

It's really kinda just following the work of this modernist Japanese writer in the 20s who wrote his last manuscript called A Fool's Life.

I was introduced to that work back at the Institute of American Indian Arts when I just accepted the creative writing as my major.

One of the instructors, Arthur Z, had given us a carbon copy of this book.

I carried that around for number of years because 53 entries of this book was sort of the last will and testament of a writer.

What are you gonna say in the moment of your dying?

For me, that really got me thinking that if I was ever challenged to do that, what would I say?

How would I use that to inspire others?

This was-- I'm talking about the 1920s, and here we are in 2022.

His work survived.

The words survived.

The words still feed.

So, I took that challenge, and I sat myself down, and I was like we're gonna do this.

I'm gonna respond to these 53 entries.

Of course, I failed, but it was that practice that got me thinking that this could turn into something.

So, I made the manuscript into three stages, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

>> What I'm working on right now is actually not poetry that much.

I'm still writing poetry a lot, but I don't anticipate releasing another collection for a few years.

I am working on an album, music album.

I haven't released an album for 10 years, so it's time.

I'm working on some music.

Also writing a memoir, so that is where a lot of my writing is living right now.

I am spending some time inside pros, which is not my first home, but I'm experimenting.

I'm learning a lot.

>> Poetry is a powerful vessel that helps us understand who we are, where we come from and, where we are headed.

Poetry is a living, breathing art and it is thriving here in Colorado, in our hearts, and in our minds.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Cuentos de Colorado.

I hope you enjoyed hearing from a group of brilliant writers living, working, and creating across our state.

I want to extend my deep gratitude to all of the incredible poets who participated in the interview series.

It was a great pleasure being invited into your homes, communities, and minds to talk about poetry and more.

A special shout out to the American Academy of Poets and Rocky Mount PBS for providing support for this project, and to Colorado Creative Industries and the Center for the Book for supporting the Colorado Poet Laureate program.

Poetry is everywhere.

If you look, you will see it.

If you listen, you will hear it.

Blessed be the poets.

I'm Bobby LeFebre.

We'll see you next time.