Octavio Quintanilla is the author of If I Go Missing Former Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Texas. Founder and director of Verso Frontera, a festival of literature and arts, and publisher of Alabrava Press, he teaches literature and creative writing at Our Lady of Lakes University. Quintanilla, Zócalo’s poetry curator for his January, chatted in our dressing room about visual poetry, Spain, and Dostoyevsky.
Q:
what are you currently reading?
A:
Poetry by James Henry Knippen are we still thereFor visual poetry, I read Jennifer Sperry Staynorth’s book. Her Read: A Graphic PoemI am also re-reading Federico García Lorca’s anthology. As for poetry, I read the book many times. The first is to have fun, the second is to distill their process and learn.
Q:
How has the pandemic affected the way you think about and write poetry?
A:
In 2020, I started a series of visual poems called “Los Días Oscuros” that can be translated into “dark days”. Each day I documented some aspect of how the pandemic has affected me intellectually or psychologically. is now required.
Q:
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A:
I couldn’t say for sure at the time, but I think I wanted to live a creative life. I was a kid who loved listening to adults. I grew up in Mexico until she was 9 years old. LarancheriaThere was no electricity or television in those days, so people sat outside, smoked, talked and told stories. I was there, just listening, and my imagination ran wild.
Q:
Who would you like to drink with, dead or alive?
A:
I have to say Dostoevsky. I love Russian literature. When I graduated from high school, I learned of his existence and was greatly influenced by him. Before he became a poet, he wanted to be a novelist and write thick novels like him. Just listen to him. To me he was a genius. myself, Mexican-American. He probably had never met a Mexican-American in his life.
Q:
How do you procrastinate?
A:
I procrastinate a lot, so I think about it a lot. But for me, procrastination is good.it doesn’t mean you are No do something It simply means that you are processing, so by the time you sit down and do it, you are ready. You may. I see it as part of the creative process.
