Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2): Paul Martínez Pompa

Here is our second installment of mini-interviews with winners of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, a collaboration between Letras Latinas and University of Notre Dame Press. Paul Martinez Pompa, it so happens, is currently tweeting for the Poetry Foundation. 

---FA

LL: How, if at all, are the visual arts implicated in your work as a poet? Or, can you talk about the relationship between poetry (yours or the work of others) and the visual arts.

PMP: In the sense that written art and visual art are created with an assumed audience, I see their common ground as texts that depend on their respective readers/listeners/viewers to fulfill or produce meaning. I used to approach the two mediums as mostly dissimilar, but that was maybe because the former, to me, involved a slower kind of meaning-production-process while the latter immediately imparted meaning to its audience. That assumes a lot of passivity on the part of the visual arts’ audiences. In reality, just as a poem isn’t finished until the reader engages with it, so is the case with anything visual. On a somewhat related note, I wasn’t able to title my book until I engaged with the artwork that eventually became the book’s cover. I gave the artist, Lauren Levato, my manuscript, which at the time had a less satisfactory title; she read the poems and came up with the cover image. When I saw her work and thought about its implications, it provided me with the distance and perspective to arrive at a title that better fit what was going on with my poems. In other words, I arrived at the book’s title only after a visual artwork reported/exposed/communicated back to me what I was doing.

LL: Please pick one of the three following topics/themes, and share what relationship it has with your work as a poet:  place, voice, community.

PMP: I suppose the most immediate topic/theme I engaged with in my first book was place, not only in the sense of, say, an imagined city, suburb or bathroom stall as a place, but also the body as a place, as a site that acts and is acted upon, as a place that empowers and disempowers. For most of the poems, voice and community begin with an awareness of place.

LL: What did winning the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and, as a result, having your first book published mean to you? What effect did it have on your writing career?

PMP: Winning the Montoya Prize meant a lot. While I write poems primarily out of emotional and psychological necessity, I have the hope that someone will eventually read the poems, so the Prize and subsequent publication provided an opportunity to reach a larger audience and create further meaning. The Prize has also afforded me the opportunity to travel and connect with other writers and artists around the country who I would not have met otherwise. Writing can be a very solitary endeavor, so the Prize helped me to gain a better sense of community. And considering the historical marginalization of Latin@ voices, the Montoya Prize is an empowering platform that allows us to shape and revise ongoing conversations pertaining to art and politics. Lastly, and unexpectedly, the Prize upped the stakes for me as a poet; the visibility that it provided has served as a welcome challenge to keep evolving as a writer and as an artist.

My Kill Adore Him (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)

was a finalist for the 2009 Book of the Year Award 

at ForeWord Magazine.

Reading Report: Paul Martínez Pompa at louderARTS

Paul Martínez Pompa at louderARTS
Photo courtesy of louderARTS
Originally uploaded by OBermeo

On April 19th, Paul Martínez Pompa graced the stage of one of New York City's most respected reading series–louderARTS at Bar13. Co-curator Marie-Elizabeth Mali* recounts the highlights of his feature for Letras Latinas:

I’ve been looking forward to Paul Martínez Pompa’s  feature for louderARTS ever since reading his first book, My Kill Adore Him, which won the 2008 Andrés Montoya Prize.

He kicked off his 20-minute set by reading from an Exquisite Corpse he participated in along with 11 other poets, coordinated by John Michael Martinez. The poem responds to a question about the current state of Latino letters. He read from his contribution, called “Who?” including the lines, “. . . Mexo-lite so white folk don’t choke. Where my mojados at, black? I pass for snow. Down, ‘cause my asshole is brown . . .”

With that, our delighted audience knew we were in for some good political writing from the go.

He followed with several poems from the book, starting with “Retablos: 10 Deleted Tongues,” a poem about language and assimilation. A moment that called forth moans from the crowd: “I will not speak Spanish in class. I will not speak Spanish in class. I will not speak.”

Paul next joked about how every Chicano poet has to write a poem about each of these three subjects: Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, and his/her grandmother, and read the two out of three that he’s written. Rich Villar, of the Acentos Foundation, called out that it works that way for Puerto-Rican poets, too. I agree, there are some subjects that span Latino/a cultures, especially for those of us in the diaspora.

“A Lesson in Masculinity,” a very short poem, had us all laughing, about his mother teaching him to wipe and his Papi saying, “No–men don’t wipe, they shake.”

He followed with a poem about cops and mistaken identity (“Officer Friendly”), another including the image of marking the parking spot in Chicago you’ve dug out of the snow with an ironing board, milk crate, lawn chair, whatever you can find (“Elegy for Winter”), a moving poem for his sister (“Sieve”), a tongue-in-cheek poem on chain clothing stores (“Banana Republic Politick”), and a poem about El Gato Negro, a transgender bar primarily for Latinos in Chicago that no longer exists (“Men Watching Men”).

He ended his set with a poem sending up the stylistic differences between “academic” and “performance” poets on the mic, called “Ego Slippin’.” Written in two parts, “The Performer” and “The Academic,” he repeated the line “Look at me” in various ways for both parts. He performed them heavily in the first part and stared at the paper in the second. He had our audience, one that bridges academics and performance, in hysterics with that apt commentary.

His skill at bringing subjects relevant to many Latino/as into his poems in an intimate, personal way was in evidence throughout his set. His work, though often pointed, never came across as heavy-handed. To all who say political work doesn’t have grounding in craft, I say you should read Paul Martínez Pompa’s poetry. His writing is well-crafted on the level of sound, word choice, and line, and it’s permeated by the world we live in, finely witnessed.

Check back on the www.louderarts.com website for streaming audio of the reading, which should be posted in a few weeks. You’ll also find our schedule of upcoming features there, as well as audio of other readings and writing prompts.

* Marie-Elizabeth Mali is a Venezuelan-American and Swedish poet who lives in New York City. She is a co-curator of louderARTS: the Reading Series at Bar 13 Lounge and Page Meets Stage at the Bowery Poetry Club and is a poetry editor for TIFERET: A Journal of Spiritual Literature. Her work has appeared in Calyx, MiPOesias, and RATTLE, among others. www.memali.com

LETRAS LATINAS IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE:

The winner of the 2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
is Paul Martínez Pompa for his manuscript, Men Watching Men.

"This is one tough, smart poet. The poems of Paul Martínez Pompa are gritty and visceral, but never cross the line into sensationalism. They are poems that vividly evoke the urban world, especially Chicago, without ever lapsing into urban cliché. They are poems that seek justice for the Latino community without ever resorting to the overheated language that all too often consigns poetry of social conscience to oblivion.

Martínez Pompa is a poet of the image, a poet of strong diction, a poet of meticulous craft. He puts that craft at the service of los olvidados, the forgotten ones, from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys’ bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner’s Office. Yet this poet’s keen eye, sense of humor and gift for irony help these poems to rise above the wreckage of their circumstances. Nowhere else will you find a poem celebrating a Mexican grandmother’s phone call to the local Pizza Hut.

Martínez Pompa’s observation of a garbage truck may remind us of Williams and his poem about a fire engine; his compassion for the damned may bring Whitman or Hughes to mind. Paul Martínez Pompa, however, is very much his own man and his own poet, independent and honest. His is a unique voice, speaking the truth with clarity. Welcome."

--Martín Espada, Judge
2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
*
The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, named after the late California native and author of the award-winning book, The Iceworker Sings, supports the publication of a first book by a Latino or Latina poet in collaboration with University of Notre Dame Press. The Prize provides a space for artists who, while part of the largest and fastest growing minority in the United States, are also increasingly diverse in their modes of literary expression. The Prize, therefore, does not privilege any particular style, subject matter, or aesthetic. While not losing sight of the traditions and conditions that gave rise to that literary expression, the Prize has as its goal to nurture the various paths that Latino poetry is taking in the 21st Century. The Prize is awarded every other year and administered by Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Letras Latinas seeks to enhance the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame with a focus on projects that identify and support emerging Latino and Latina writers. Letras Latinas actively seeks to collaborate with individuals and organizations to more effectively carry out its mission.