Interview with Cincinnati Poet Laureate Manuel Iris
Manuel Iris (1983). Mexican Poet and an educator recently named Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati, Ohio. Iris received the National award of poetry Merida (Mexico, 2009) for his book Notebook of dreams, and the Regional award of poetry Rodulfo Figueroa for his book The Disguises of Fire (Mexico, 2014). Recently, three different anthologies of his poetry were published: The Naked Light, in Venezuela; Before the Mystery, in El Salvador, and Translating Silence/Traducir el silencio, published in New York, by ArtePoética Press
GERALD PADILLA: Thank you, Manuel, being with us on Latino Book Review. First of all, I would like to congratulate you for becoming the 2018-2020 Cincinnati Poet Laureate! This is an important step forward for Latino literature in the U.S. and it is an accomplishment that should be celebrated.
IRIS: Thank you so much. As you can imagine, I am very thankful to the Queen City. I have said many times that all that I do during my laureate tenure will be returning, with love and poetry, that act of generosity.
PADILLA: You have lived in Cincinnati for over 10 years, but your story begins in Mexico. What brought you to Cincinnati, and what was your experience as an immigrant?
IRIS: I came to Cincinnati in 2008 to begin my doctoral studies at the Romance Languages Department of the University of Cincinnati. There, I met many people that forever changed my life and view of poetry. Almost all of them were poets: Armando Romero, Maria Paz Moreno, Carlos Gutierrez, Floriano Martins, Pedro Lastra, Oscar Collazos, among my professors; and people like Arturo Gutierrez Plaza and Paola Cadena Pardo, among my peers.
For several years I felt like a very fortunate foreigner: I was enchanted by the city and its history, by the snow and the people. I made many wonderful Cincinnatian friends. A little after 4 years I completed my PhD and, when I was making plans to go elsewhere, I met the woman that is now my wife: she is the reason I decided to stay in Cincinnati. Then, my daughter was born and now, because those two centers of my heart are from this city, I am a Cincinnatian, too. Poetry brought me here and love made me stay. And I believe poetry is a form of love.
IRIS: Thank you so much. As you can imagine, I am very thankful to the Queen City. I have said many times that all that I do during my laureate tenure will be returning, with love and poetry, that act of generosity.
PADILLA: You have lived in Cincinnati for over 10 years, but your story begins in Mexico. What brought you to Cincinnati, and what was your experience as an immigrant?
IRIS: I came to Cincinnati in 2008 to begin my doctoral studies at the Romance Languages Department of the University of Cincinnati. There, I met many people that forever changed my life and view of poetry. Almost all of them were poets: Armando Romero, Maria Paz Moreno, Carlos Gutierrez, Floriano Martins, Pedro Lastra, Oscar Collazos, among my professors; and people like Arturo Gutierrez Plaza and Paola Cadena Pardo, among my peers.
For several years I felt like a very fortunate foreigner: I was enchanted by the city and its history, by the snow and the people. I made many wonderful Cincinnatian friends. A little after 4 years I completed my PhD and, when I was making plans to go elsewhere, I met the woman that is now my wife: she is the reason I decided to stay in Cincinnati. Then, my daughter was born and now, because those two centers of my heart are from this city, I am a Cincinnatian, too. Poetry brought me here and love made me stay. And I believe poetry is a form of love.
PADILLA: Poetry is a deep and intimate process that emerges for many reasons. What is your relationship and philosophy regarding this art form?
IRIS: I believe poetry is a human right. We need poetry like we need water and air. It is a necessity, just like music and any other form of art. We use poetry to open a door into our own heart and find what is in there. It offers us the possibility to enter someone else’s heart and to receive visits in our own. As you said, I do believe that any poem is a love poem, because we write about the things we love, about all the people and moments that we don’t want to be taken away by silence, by oblivion. Believing that art is not necessary is one of the major mistakes of human history: art is the shortest distance between two strangers.
For me, the most important allure of poetry is its ability to say with words what we can’t say with words. Poetry is a translation of silence. I believe it has the power of using words to express feelings or situations that are beyond language. To speak what is unspeakable is the work of poetry. It is not a minor act of magic.
Every person needs, at some point, to communicate deeply with him/herself, with the others, and with Transcendence: that is what poetry does. Putting the invisible in the hands and hearts of any person, in any moment.
PADILLA: You are not only an award winning poet. You also write essays, you translate and you are an educator at Depaul Cristo Rey High School. How do you balance all of these endeavors which each require so much work?
IRIS: I believe poetry is a human right. We need poetry like we need water and air. It is a necessity, just like music and any other form of art. We use poetry to open a door into our own heart and find what is in there. It offers us the possibility to enter someone else’s heart and to receive visits in our own. As you said, I do believe that any poem is a love poem, because we write about the things we love, about all the people and moments that we don’t want to be taken away by silence, by oblivion. Believing that art is not necessary is one of the major mistakes of human history: art is the shortest distance between two strangers.
For me, the most important allure of poetry is its ability to say with words what we can’t say with words. Poetry is a translation of silence. I believe it has the power of using words to express feelings or situations that are beyond language. To speak what is unspeakable is the work of poetry. It is not a minor act of magic.
Every person needs, at some point, to communicate deeply with him/herself, with the others, and with Transcendence: that is what poetry does. Putting the invisible in the hands and hearts of any person, in any moment.
PADILLA: You are not only an award winning poet. You also write essays, you translate and you are an educator at Depaul Cristo Rey High School. How do you balance all of these endeavors which each require so much work?
IRIS: You forgot to mention that I am the father of a seven-month old! Haha. It is, indeed, very difficult to do so many things. I have a very rigid schedule and I am I learning to say no: sometimes there is simply not enough time to do everything. I need to save time to read, write and to just to think and take walks. I need time to be in my house with my daughter, which is my main priority and, right now, my main source of poetic inspiration.
I also have the continuous support of my colleagues and students at DePaul Cristo Rey. They all understand that my poetic career is part of my teaching persona. As a literature teacher, I teach about something I live and practice, about my personal passion and essence, and they value that. At school I am co-coordinator of a very active poetry club, and the co-coach of a two-time city-champion spoken word team. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that poetry is part of the school culture.
When talking about literature with my students, I come to clarify to myself my own literary ideas. For me, teaching and writing are the two sides of the very same existential coin. They feed off of each other.
PADILLA: Your work is available in both English and Spanish. What is the translation process of your work? And what does it mean to be able to navigate between these two languages?
IRIS: Poetry is one of the very few activities that I still have to do in Spanish. Then, when the poem is written, I translate myself into English. This process has become more and more organic and fluid: many times I prefer the way I expressed something in English version and I go back and change the original Spanish. Every day, the process of translation becomes more a part of my writing and editing process. Also, I am now reading in English many authors that I’ve only read before in Spanish, and sometimes I like them better in English. It is a much more synthetic language and sometimes I want to be synthetic, though I love how exuberant, how sonorous, how musical and voluptuous Spanish can be.
Working in more than one language makes you realize the sound, the melody, of your own ideas. I write singing: I walk around my house mumbling sounds that later become words, then later become syllables, then later become words, verses, poems.
For me, appreciating languages is gaining a better knowledge of the raw materials with which you work: feelings, thoughts, and words.
I also have the continuous support of my colleagues and students at DePaul Cristo Rey. They all understand that my poetic career is part of my teaching persona. As a literature teacher, I teach about something I live and practice, about my personal passion and essence, and they value that. At school I am co-coordinator of a very active poetry club, and the co-coach of a two-time city-champion spoken word team. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that poetry is part of the school culture.
When talking about literature with my students, I come to clarify to myself my own literary ideas. For me, teaching and writing are the two sides of the very same existential coin. They feed off of each other.
PADILLA: Your work is available in both English and Spanish. What is the translation process of your work? And what does it mean to be able to navigate between these two languages?
IRIS: Poetry is one of the very few activities that I still have to do in Spanish. Then, when the poem is written, I translate myself into English. This process has become more and more organic and fluid: many times I prefer the way I expressed something in English version and I go back and change the original Spanish. Every day, the process of translation becomes more a part of my writing and editing process. Also, I am now reading in English many authors that I’ve only read before in Spanish, and sometimes I like them better in English. It is a much more synthetic language and sometimes I want to be synthetic, though I love how exuberant, how sonorous, how musical and voluptuous Spanish can be.
Working in more than one language makes you realize the sound, the melody, of your own ideas. I write singing: I walk around my house mumbling sounds that later become words, then later become syllables, then later become words, verses, poems.
For me, appreciating languages is gaining a better knowledge of the raw materials with which you work: feelings, thoughts, and words.
PADILLA: Your poetry includes an array of themes ranging from politics to love. Some may say that these topics are distant from each other or even opposing at times. What do you think?
IRIS: There is no contradiction: every poem is a political act, in the sense that every poem is a choice. The person that writes has chosen creation over destruction, life over death, love over hate. I believe that a love poem in the middle of a war is not the denial of war but the affirmation that love is possible under the worst circumstances. It does not matter what the poem is about: the act of writing in itself represents a life choice, and all life choices within a society have political consequences. Also: I am a Mexican poet that lives in Cincinnati and writes in Spanish. Am I not, just by writing in Spanish, by unapologetically being what I am, declaring my identity? Is this not a political stand? |
The day I was officially appointed as Cincinnati’s Poet Laureate I was given the opportunity to read, for the Cincinnati City Council, one of my poems. I chose one that I don’t believe is openly political. But I read it both in English and Spanish, so the Poet Laureate of Cincinnati was Mexican, and he was reading in Spanish. Was this not, especially in these political times, a declaration of human understanding and of the possibilities of poetry to create bridges between people that seem to be apart from each other? Was this not a declaration of the universality of human nature?
Poetry is a practical and political endeavor. It is just not practical in the same sense that engineering is. If we understand usefulness in the common way, asking for the practical uses of poetry would be as inadequate as asking for the poetic uses of plumbing or masonry (even though virtually any human activity can be seen as an allegory of the poetic process). However, if we understand usefulness in a wider sense, poetry is useful to help us find ourselves within ourselves and within the hearts and minds of others. Doing that, helping us to realize that we are not as different from each other as we believe to be, could be the reason an engineer that knows how to build a rocket missile or a thermonuclear bomb decides to not do it, just like another man could have decided to hold a pen, instead of holding a gun.
Poetry is useful to help humans become humans and that is a transcendental, unequivocal political act.
Poetry is a practical and political endeavor. It is just not practical in the same sense that engineering is. If we understand usefulness in the common way, asking for the practical uses of poetry would be as inadequate as asking for the poetic uses of plumbing or masonry (even though virtually any human activity can be seen as an allegory of the poetic process). However, if we understand usefulness in a wider sense, poetry is useful to help us find ourselves within ourselves and within the hearts and minds of others. Doing that, helping us to realize that we are not as different from each other as we believe to be, could be the reason an engineer that knows how to build a rocket missile or a thermonuclear bomb decides to not do it, just like another man could have decided to hold a pen, instead of holding a gun.
Poetry is useful to help humans become humans and that is a transcendental, unequivocal political act.
PADILLA: We are currently facing difficult social and political times in the United States. There is constant turmoil within our communities. As a Latino poet, how do you address these realities in your work.
IRIS: The political upheaval you mention is part of my life in many private and public ways, and it is now more and more a part of my poetry. However, I wouldn’t say I write poems against any political ideology or character, though I reserve the right to write about anything whenever I feel the need to do it.
I write only about the things I love. I have written poems about my language, about belonging, about my family in Mexico and my family in Cincinnati, poems about my daughter being a beautiful colored girl oblivious to the idea of racism, about my fear of the moment she will find out, and about my impossibility of sheltering her forever from that realization. All these subjects are, I repeat, political in their own way. Many times, when I read my poems, I am the only Hispanic person around, and I still read them in Spanish. I do not hesitate in showing others the beauty of my language and the possibilities of Hispanic poetry. Being what I am as a man, as a teacher, and as a poet, right now, is a political act.
PADILLA: What are some of your plans as the Poet Laureate of Cincinnati?
IRIS: Besides a good number or poetry readings and some talks and lectures, I plan to continue hosting a poetry reading series I created, called All We Have in Common. It is a monthly poetry reading series created with the intention of using the power of poetry to bring people of any social status, skin color, race, religion, sexual preference, nationality, or any other kind of diversity together on the basis of empathy and human understanding. Here is how it works:
It is a nomadic poetry reading series: we don’t have an official venue. Readings are held in a different space each month. Whenever is possible, they will be held in non-traditional spaces.
I am also planning a bilingual anthology of Cincinnati Poetry. My plan is to compile the work of many poets of the city and translate it into Spanish. This is a very ambitious project that I plan to complete by the end of my tenure.
IRIS: The political upheaval you mention is part of my life in many private and public ways, and it is now more and more a part of my poetry. However, I wouldn’t say I write poems against any political ideology or character, though I reserve the right to write about anything whenever I feel the need to do it.
I write only about the things I love. I have written poems about my language, about belonging, about my family in Mexico and my family in Cincinnati, poems about my daughter being a beautiful colored girl oblivious to the idea of racism, about my fear of the moment she will find out, and about my impossibility of sheltering her forever from that realization. All these subjects are, I repeat, political in their own way. Many times, when I read my poems, I am the only Hispanic person around, and I still read them in Spanish. I do not hesitate in showing others the beauty of my language and the possibilities of Hispanic poetry. Being what I am as a man, as a teacher, and as a poet, right now, is a political act.
PADILLA: What are some of your plans as the Poet Laureate of Cincinnati?
IRIS: Besides a good number or poetry readings and some talks and lectures, I plan to continue hosting a poetry reading series I created, called All We Have in Common. It is a monthly poetry reading series created with the intention of using the power of poetry to bring people of any social status, skin color, race, religion, sexual preference, nationality, or any other kind of diversity together on the basis of empathy and human understanding. Here is how it works:
It is a nomadic poetry reading series: we don’t have an official venue. Readings are held in a different space each month. Whenever is possible, they will be held in non-traditional spaces.
I am also planning a bilingual anthology of Cincinnati Poetry. My plan is to compile the work of many poets of the city and translate it into Spanish. This is a very ambitious project that I plan to complete by the end of my tenure.
PADILLA: Are you working on any new projects at the moment? What can we expect in the near future?
IRIS: A book of mine called “Cincinnati, A Personal Story” was recently published in Mexico City, and a new Anthology of my poetry will be published in Lima, Perú, in the following months. I am also working on a new book of poems and a book of essays about poetry. I hope to translate them and publish them in the United States in the future. PADILLA: Manuel, thank you for sharing your work and passion with us. |
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