New Voice Series, featuring Meliza Bañales, Carlos Quinteros III, and Hilary Cruz Mejía: May 11, 2023

Hilary Cruz Mejía introduces and performs their poetry: "Untranslatable Body,” “How Do You Name a Poem that Hurts?” and (in Spanish followed by their own English translations) “In a Futuristic Thought, Parts I & II.” She closes by talking briefly about the state of contemporary politics in Guatemala, and cultural forgetting of recent brutal history against indigenous people. 

Carlos Quinteros III reads from his MFA thesis “American Nightmare," which incorporates several prose sections titled “Sanctioned Sanctuaries.” He reads “Class Notes #1,” “Class Notes #2,” “Learning Your Language #2,” “Stick-up,” “Shadows,” “Untitled,” “Nucleus” and closes with a prose section, on attending Catholic school in Los Angeles, titled “Sanctioned Sanctuaries.” 

Meliza Bañales introduces and reads from her books Roōt for the Underdog and Say it With Your Whole Mouth. From Roōt for the Underdog she reads: “Dig,” “Calmly walk through the metal detector...,” “Outstanding Balance: San Francisco, 2003,” “Six,” “Seven,” “Conjunctions: Los Angeles, California, 1984,” “In 1997 you read in a bar on the border of the Mission and Folsom...,” “I landed in San Francisco with five hundred dollars, a shaved head....” From Say it With Your Whole Mouth she reads “Do the Math,” then closes, from Roōt for the Underdog, with “Writing Assignment: Tell Me Who You Really Are, Rough Draft Number Two.”

Meliza Bañales takes the mic, asking the other poets, “Where do you feel like you are in your practice?” Hilary Cruz Mejía, Carlos Quinteros III, and Bañales discuss their various perspectives on their writing. Quinteros says, “After teaching a class here, composition, I really found that you have to just allow yourself to be in the moment and be on the paper.”

Bañales asks the poets, “Do you find yourself to be an underdog?” Mejía, Quinteros, and Bañales discuss sharing their poetry against difficult odds. Mejía says, “I try to, before I share my poems with other people, I try to share it to the wind — and I’m like ‘take it, bro, take it and make it all the way back home.’” Quinteros mentions his work with the journal he co-edits, The Ana, and the pleasure he feels working hands-on with his electric Smith-Corona typewriter, and "tripping on" oneself.

Bañales describes being a queer writer and a “gonzo” writer, and asks the other poets what they see their work doing in the world, where they see it landing. Mejía says “One of the reasons I started sharing my work…[it's] about Central American voices,” and describes writing in the face of fear. Quinteros says he hopes his work reaches students, as well as others who feel silenced, and speaks to his aspirations to teach coming out of his own experience as a student at multiple levels.

The discussion is opened to the audience, and Laura Atkinson asks if the poets think there is a unique role to play within the world of poetry for a poet working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bañales describes the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s, when "this town was dominated by literature." Quinteros cites some distinctive aspects of the Bay Area — he speaks of working at City Lights Books, the walkable size of the city, its public transportation.... “I love this city for that, but I think it’s definitely losing its magic,” he says. Bañales says, “One of the biggest elements of my experience here was being queer. I came here to come out. Like, I need that to be made so motherfucking clear.” Mejía says, “I don’t feel that I am embodying the act of living in this place, because I still battle with my own feelings of displacement. But I’m grateful.” She closes by speaking to the love and acceptance that she feels from and for the community she's encountered in the Bay Area.