To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, Anomaly is featuring interview profiles with poets participating in our forthcoming bilingual broadside collection Puerto Rico en mi Corazon, which is raising money to assist Puerto Rico in recovering from Hurricane Maria by providing health services to low income communities of color, women, and LGBTQ Puerto Ricans. Today, we spotlight Kenyatta JP García. They are the author of Slow Living , Yawning On The Sands, Enter the After-Garde, and This Sentimental Education.
What have you been working on lately? Can you tell us more about your latest projects?
Kenyatta GarciLately, I’ve been caught between two projects. I’m working on chronicles/cronicas. I’m very concerned with capturing my daily sensations and sentiments. I’m trying to allow myself the freedom to observe and to write without the very harsh poetic standards that I place upon myself. OK. I’m working on diaries. Lol. I’m letting myself write like a kid, if I can. It’s pretty goth/emo but I’m alright with that. The other project is a series of speculative poetry. It’s a coming of age story involving a zombie and a fairy.
What writers or artists have shaped your work, the way you approach language, and the way you look at the world?
Marcel Proust and Jean Toomer are the two most obvious answers. They helped me a lot in gaining a voice and vision. But, I’d be remiss not to include Beckett, Garcia-Lorca and Breton. Still though, my work is really closely related to Claes Oldenburg’s soft sculptures. I draw a lot from removing the function from a form. Stylistically, comic book writers, like Scott Snyder, Brian Azzarello, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore have helped me to tighten up my language and to just do, instead of describing. I’ve been moving away from imagery which at one point felt so essential to anything poetic but I’m not into it anymore. I’d rather have imperatives and conditionals that speak to ideas over allusions. Plus, if done well, a reader will always create their own image.
3. What newer writers are you most excited about?
That’s tough. I’m really just super excited about my friends’ work. Here in Albany, I can’t wait to hear about what Stephanie Kaylor and Laurin DeChae are working on. They inspire me so much. But, I’m also all about jj hastain, Bin Ramke, Shannon Barber, Rosebud Ben-Oni, William Lessard, just to name a few. Oh, and if Cullen Bunn, David Walker or Gail Simone are working on a comic, I’m all about it.
4. What’s on your mind lately? How are you?
I’m never well so what’s on my mind is always what did I do wrong? Sadly, the only respite from what did I do wrong has been what did this country do wrong? I’m so angry about how PR and USVI have been treated by this government (yeah, not just Trump, I’m blaming Congress too) and I’m upset about white supremacists marching through our streets. Furthermore, I wonder if there are any good answers, a decent fix, and so I think about how folks are centering more POC and I just know that that centering eventually leads to appropriation and a re-marginalization. But, I could be wrong I am an Afropessimist after all. My default setting is skepticism.
Hispanic Heritage Month Spotlight: Kenyatta JP García was originally published in Anomaly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.