An interview with Francisco Márquez

Francisco Márquez

After my transformative experience last summer at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, I was fortunate enough to forge/foment a pilot partnership between Letras Latinas and the Community of Writers. The result was the Letras Latinas Scholarship at the Community of Writers poetry workshop. What follows is an interview with the inaugural recipient: Francisco Márquez. 

Márquez is one of the poets whose work will be performed by a stage or film actor this coming Monday in New York at “Every Day We Get More Illegal,” a collaboration between CantoMundo and Emotive Fruition. Márquez was also recently chosen by Douglas A. Martin for the Emerge-Surface-Be fellowship, an initiative of the Poetry Project.

—FA

October 25

FA:  Francisco Aragón

FM:  Francisco Márquez

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FA: 

Thank you for agreeing to answer a few questions in your capacity as the recipient of the Letras Latinas Scholarship for the Community of Writers gathering at Squaw Valley last June. I experienced the gathering for the first time in 2017. I'll save my impressions for my headnote to this interview, and I don't want to bias your own response! What was it like for you, having to write a new poem every single day for a week?  Had you ever been to workshop of these characteristics? If not, how did this experience compare with other types of writing workshops you've attended?

FM:

And thank you for all the work you do with Letras Latinas! It means a great deal to me to have received the scholarship, not only for allowing me to attend but also as a validation of my work within the Latinx literary community. In regards to your question, I have been in workshops where I have had to write a poem every day and I usually don’t enjoy it. This is because the work feels forced, and then, after trying to edit it, becomes abandoned. This was very different.

I think some of it had to do with the endless Californian landscape, the silence, the poets I was lucky enough to attend it with, and the liberal amount of free time. It also differs in that most conferences or residencies will pack the experience with readings, seminars, craft talks, etc., and even though CoW did include these activities, it never felt overwhelming or like the main purpose of the conference. In fact, after workshop, I had most of the day to walk around, nap, eat, have a drink, and write throughout the day, so at night and the next morning I could organize my thoughts into something presentable. It’s rare when from a week’s worth of poems more than a few, or one, seem possible.

Finally, the community in the title definitely held true in that there wasn’t as much a hierarchical divide between attendees, or even faculty members, as I have experienced in other places. It wasn’t too difficult to get to know our teachers and I think, in turn, it made for a more trusting work space. A final detail that added trust was, because our work was often not even a draft but a fragment or simply a page of writing, we weren’t allowed to give critiques but instead gave mostly observations and reactions to the work. It restored a kind of faith in my voice when I had been feeling, previous to the conference, a bit discouraged with my work. That was definitely a huge lesson I gained.

FA: 

You were kind enough to let me a have a look at 10 pages of your work before carrying out this interview. Could you share with our readers some context for this work? In other words, were these poems produced while pursuing your MFA at NYU? And speaking of NYU, how's that been for you? I've met a handful of terrific Latinx poets who have come out that program in recent years. What were some of the highlights of your time in the program?

FM:

Yes I can, and thank you for asking for them! Three-ish of the poems were written during my time at NYU and the others after. Actually, one of the poems in the packet, “Citizen,” was written while at Community of Writers. I owe a lot to NYU. It was one of the first times where I truly felt seen in a space filled with other imaginative, sensitive, good people (and poets) who didn’t seek to compete but, instead, grow as a community. I was also fortunate enough to work at the creative writing department for the two years I was there as well as at Coler-Goldwater Hospital with their fellowship program helping elderly patients with disabilities write poems. Those were highlights, particularly Goldwater, because it allowed a glimpse into why we write poems in the first place—that is, as a way of being witnessed, a way of discovering what we think we know about ourselves, what we don’t, of telling our significant stories. Working with Sharon Olds, Catherine Barnett, Yusef Komunyaaka, Matthew Rohrer, Rachel Zucker, Meghan O’Rourke, Edward Hirsch, and Terrance Hayes, among other stellar poets—those are other invaluable highlights I can’t forget. And to add to that, it’s more than the names; it’s really how intimate my time with them was. I’ve heard of cases where it’s hard to access or reach out to a certain renowned poet but these were all caring professors who made themselves available in genuine ways. Finally, I actually met some of my closest and dearest friends and that is irreplaceable. Yes, like you said, so many incredible Latinx poets have come out of the program and done brilliantly in the world like Ada Limón, Christopher Soto, Diannely Antigua, Javier Zamora, and many, many more, and to think I had a place in the school where they wrote drafts of their first books humbles me every day. 

FA:

In your poem, "Citizen," you reference Venezuela when talking about the speaker's background. How do you see Venezuela, or other Latin American countries, figuring in what I hope will soon be your first book? Is this something you give much thought?  The sense I got from your sample, which I loved, is that you are invested in cultivating a variety of poetic modes, and that your writing and your exploration of language is more your muse than your subject matter. How do you see yourself navigating this, as you forge ahead as a literary artist?

FM:

That’s a big question! And thank you, I’m so happy you enjoyed it. I have tried over time to navigate the nuances of why I write poetry in English and not so much in Spanish. I have written in Spanish before, but there seems to have been a choice made at some point after I moved to the US. I always return to texts like Dura by Myung Mi Kim and Dictée by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, among others which explore the connections of lineage, identity, history, and language, and I aspire to explore that facet of my relationship to it more. However, I think a reason I write more through language is because of my training as a pianist when I was a child. I studied musical theory, piano, guitar, and composition, and I think it informed my ear’s antennae and choice. Much in how the same way we are drawn to certain paintings or movies, there are times, and I’d say most of the time, that I can’t un-hear the way a line sounds. It’s imperative to write it as such and then also imperative to betray it. As I move forward, I am consistently interested in ways of using my work and the space I take up to interrogate super-structures of power—through performance, hybridity, risk in content and form, queerness, and language, how sometimes you have to question the muse, its comfort within you, and, like any relationship, be wary of the power they have over you, in order to deepen. Is it healthy? Are there lines of meaning I am writing over and therefore ignoring?

Venezuela comes into the book because of my relationship to exile and home. Like most matters concerning belonging and desire, there is a certain unreachable quality to how Venezuela (mis)fits into my work, much like trying to speak on love, queerness, family, or immigration—other themes I obsess with—it will never be fully reckoned with and will remain undefined. However, this is how Venezuela in particular fits into my work, poetry remains to be a way for me to gain power from, or at the very least create my own space for, a situation that at times, in reality, feels unable to be resolved. Poetry resists conclusion and, therefore, to me, remains somewhat a comfort, albeit terrifying and real. If imagination and language is our superpower as poets, then I can, with the most careful of choices, reveal what oppression keeps hidden. The deeper I delve into the question of home and exile, the more similar it looks to my relationship to myself, to my family, to my past lovers and constructed family, to other things we try to get closer to and then find ourselves away from all over again.

FA:

I didn't get a clear sense of your relationship to the Spanish language in your poems. Could you comment on this?  Do you envision literary translation (Rightly or wrongly, I'm making an assumption here) as an activity you might cultivate as part of your artistic practice, if you aren't doing so already?

FM:

You are right in the observation that I don’t really integrate Spanish into my poems too much—only once in the packet I sent you. I think Spanish enters into my poems when it comes to the long construction of the sentences, and my baby influences of Lorca and Neruda. Moreover, I lean heavy toward the lyric in my work and even though Spanish sounds like that in my head, I feel it is easier for me to break English given its somewhat mongrel history. This makes American English more comfortable for me to break, to blend with Spanish here and there. I’m fascinated with how American English isn’t one stable music but a constructed and evolving fraught sound. I guess most languages are. But working in New York City restaurants, for example, you encounter Englishes that have evolved from, and mixed in with, Dominican or Colombian colloquial dialects, for example, that make for a new and electric music. If anything, these are the kind of words I’m wanting to put into my poems. I would love to use my poems as a way of showing the world the Maracucho dialect from where I grew up. To give a glimpse to how people actually speak and live. Spanish is still a first language for me and it’s how I talk to my family and some of my friends. But it doesn't feel as breakable as English sometimes. I’m not sure how that sounds but I think it’s how I feel. Perhaps it’s how I came to know them that determines how I use them.

As for translation, to tie it back into Community of Writers, speaking with Mónica de la Torre, a faculty member there, was a kind of a revelation for me. I have translated before, specifically my friend and poet Daniel Arzola’s work, but more recently I have become excited by the prospect of using it as another writing tool. Perhaps, in the future, I could perform literary translation of another work, particularly if that work is one I feel needs to be salvaged and preserved, translation then being a way to care for. So much of writing in English, not to return to this, feels murderous. Translation could be a way to turn that around. I am, however, more interested these days in alternative methods of translation that question the naming of translation vs. interpretation, or fact vs. truth, and translation is definitely a way to get to the heart of that. Texts like Jack Spicer’s After Lorca and Carolina Bergvall’s Via inspire me, as a project, to write the texts of the dead whose words I’d like to preserve and translate—the apocryphal question, and the poem’s mode as finding truth, suddenly blurring. The uncertainty, futurity, and possibilities within translation are necessary and so thrilling.

FA:

Finally, what advice might you offer to a poet who is slated to experience the Community of Writers for the first time, now that you've had the experience of attending?

FM:

I would advise taking the daily writing challenge seriously. By that I mean do it. But if there’s one thing I learned from that structure, and I learned it from the reinforcement of the faculty, was to not see them as unfinished poems, or as not worthy enough. Everyone is turning in something at the same level and the best way to succeed at the challenge is to take risks, to do something you wouldn’t normally do, to change modes each day and see how it affects your work, and to accept some days you’ll turn up with what feels like a more finished poem than on another day. I would also recommend taking advantage of the natural landscape, to do the wildflower walk, to draw and take notes and know the earth, to dive into Lake Tahoe, and get to know the landscape deeply and thoroughly. It is quite invigorating, especially for someone who is used to New York, and I do believe it is what allowed for the work to flourish. I was fortunate enough, and I’m sure this is the case every year, to be surrounded by poets who not only took challenges with themselves, but challenged the problematic name associated with the valley, or certain comments made by attendees of the conference, or ongoing socio-political issues—you then have the chance after workshop to discuss this even further and foster the opportunity for growth and collaboration. We don’t, as poets, often get the chance to be only among other poets. It’s such a special circumstance. Make it the community you want it to be.

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Francisco Márquez is originally from Maracaibo, Venezuela. He received his MFA in poetry from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow. The recipient of grants from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Brooklyn Poets, and Letras Latinas, he was a finalist for the Narrative 30 Below Contest. His poems have been published in Bennington Review, The Offing, and Nepantla, among other publications. He works at the Academy of American Poets and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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