by Malcolm Friend
Yesenia Montilla Photo credit: Ana Leiva
This past summer I had the honor of attending the CantoMundo retreat in Austin, TX. For those who don’t know, CantoMundo is a national organization that cultivates a community of Latin@ poets through workshops, symposia, and public readings. Founded in 2009 by Norma E. Cantú, Celeste Mendoza, Pablo Miguel Martínez, Deborah Paredes, and Carmen Tafolla and inspired by Cave Canem (for African-American poets) and Kundiman (for Asian-American poets), CantoMundo hosts an annual retreat for Latin@ poets.
While in Austin, I was blown away not only by the talent that was present at the retreat, but the diversity of the fellows and their work. To better give the Hot Metal Bridge community a look at these fellows, I conducted a series of interviews with a number of fellows. In this interview I got to pick the brain of CantoMundista Yesenia Montilla.
Hot Metal Bridge: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from and where are you currently based?
Yesenia Montilla: I am a DominiCuban [Dominican and Cuban] from New York City, born, raised and currently still residing. I work at a law firm by day, but by night and while my boss is in meetings I am a poet. I tend to be unequivocally shy which is why every time I have to go in front of an audience and read my poetry I ask: why did I choose poetry again? The answer is always I didn’t choose it; it chose me.
HMB: What first attracted you to poetry as an art form?
YM: So I never really liked poetry *gasp.* I was attending Hunter College, finishing up my undergrad degree at the age of 30(ish) and I was thinking I wanted to write the great American novel. I was a creative writing major; but because I worked by day it was hard to get into the very few evening fiction classes, they always filled up quickly. On a fluke I took a poetry class with and that was the beginning of the end for me. I was astonished on how much work a poet does in such a confined space, we are contortionist in a way, for example a sonnet can be a novel in those 14 lines with a plot twist and everything.
HMB: As someone who also started out in fiction and switched to poetry, do you think your background in fiction shows in your poetry? Are there any techniques that you carried over from your fiction-writing days?
YM: I think at first I was trying to write super short stories. My poems were more like vignettes and lacked some of the elements that may not be fully realized in fiction like paying super close attention to every word used, line breaks, and imagery. My poems were full of characters and I was working plot in the lines. I don’t know if my fiction background taught me anything to apply to poetry, but I will say this: poetry has influenced not only the way I view the line in everything I read, but I feel that if I were to go back and try to write a novel, although incredibly difficult, the outcome would be really dynamic for me. It would be more prose than character and plot, it would be strange and maybe even a bit avant garde, and I think that is what studying poetry has taught me. If I were a novelist, I’d probably be a magical realist a la Marquez, because that’s the language I love and the type of experience I most cherish on the page.
HMB: I know what you mean when you say you were trying to write really short fiction. A lot of my early poems I was doing similar things. Shifting gears a little bit, though, let’s talk about CantoMundo. How and when did you first find out about the retreat?
YM: I went to grad school with Laurie Ann Guerrero and I love her very much. As a young poet (in terms of years writing, not years on this earth) she has been invaluable to me.
When I graduated from Drew, I wanted to seek her out, be a part of what she was building, follow her. So when she told me about CantoMundo, it took me two years to build up the courage to apply, but after I did and I arrived in Austin, I knew I was home.
CantoMundo is so special to me. It’s basically a community of poets dedicated to lifting one another up and extending Latin@ poetics beyond the boundaries of just our own community, we are learning from each other, we are spreading the gospel of poetry, influencing the next generation, giving them permission to say: yes, I have a place at the American literary table and giving ourselves that permission too.
HMB: I’m glad you mentioned this idea of claiming a place at the American literary table because it leads into my next question. You mention in your author biography that you have Afro-Caribbean roots. Could you speak a little more about that and how your identities as Afro-Latina and Afro-Caribeña, identities that have traditionally been shunned from that table, reflects in your work?
YM: Yeah, I can easily just say I am Latina, or I am Caribeña, but I come from a long line of folks who engage in constant self-hate: they are always too dark, their hair is not straight. So to add my African roots in the mix is important to me. I embrace where I come from and I also feel that being vocal about this is important with all that is going on in the world; look at the Dominican Republic and Haiti, look at the United States, the parallels there are so frightening. I have a poem called and it’s real, my journey is out on front street, because I do come from a very diverse background and I had a nice granddaddy who bought me gifts and loved me, but had light eyes and was ruthlessly racist, so I want my poems to be in constant conversation with identity and with self-acceptance, but also to reflect love and forgiveness. Because at the end of the day those two actions actually heal the world a lot faster than anything else we can do.
HMB: Absolutely, yes. I think it starts with that self-acceptance you mention. I think it’s great that you have that relationship with your identity and that you aren’t afraid to be critical with your poems when it comes to that identity.
Now that you’re talking about your work a little bit, you have your first book, The Pink Box (with some amazing cover art, I might add), due out this October. Can you tell us a little more about it—about where the title comes from, what the reader might expect to see in this collection, your excitement going into its release?
YM: I am a poet of the body. I worship the body in my poetry and I really also struggle with what society expects of women and their bodies. All women have to have a baby, just because they can. Really? Women shouldn’t be sexual beings, they shouldn’t act like “men” in that respect. Really? So as a woman who creates outside of her body—I don’t have children—I am always talking about the birthing process, birthing poems, carrying poems in slings, poems as babies, books as babies. The Pink Box is the space in which I hold my creativity, my sexuality and my ambition. Is it a representation of my womb? Yes. My vagina? Yes. But it’s also that sacred feminine space in which all energy flows from.
The collection itself is broken down in three sections: “The Wilderness” – which tackles growing up in a very diverse world—the Dominican, Cuban, Haitian and everything else constantly present and the navigating of that. It has poems about my family, my upbringing, drug use, love, joy, in essence a wilderness that I can meditate in and in which I have been able to solidify who I am.
The second section is my first love – “The City” – New York City to be precise, all the poems there are about my beloved place of birth and some are so celebratory and others are not, but still I feel that the city shaped who I am too, and so I had to represent it.
The last section is titled “The Otherworld” and it is made up of poems of longing and of love. This is where I really investigate the body, tap into muses. Here, I wrote from a place of desire and want and ache. It could be a metaphor for the creative process itself, but it’s also I think a sensual, painful and truthful depiction of how we navigate through the world as bodies seeking other bodies.
This book is my first baby, of course I am excited, I want everyone to love it the way I do. To think it beautiful and smart and kind. So yes, I am so excited, I am also incredibly protective.
HMB: I’m glad that, even being protective of it, you were able to send it out into the world. I’m looking forward to its release. Are there any other projects you’re currently working on or have your hands in that you’d like to talk about here?
YM: Well, right now I am getting ready to go into hibernation for a few weeks to work on Literary Journal’s next issue. I am guest editing it. It’s an incredible journal for women of the world, I am really passionate about giving women everywhere a voice so when the founders of the journal: Janlori Goldman, Caits Meissner and Cheryl Boyce Taylor asked for me to be a guest editor I jumped at the chance.
Other than that, I am just really looking forward to the book, the book party and all the readings I’ll have this Fall and Winter. Hopefully I can make it out to Pittsburgh one day.
HMB: That sounds amazing. We definitely need more platforms for women voices. I’ll have to be on the lookout for when the issue is released. And I’d love it if you were able to make it to Pittsburgh. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.
Okay, so one last question before I let you go: If you had to recommend a book of poetry by a Latin@ author, what would it be?
YM: This last question is hard, but I want to say that by Aracelis Girmay is a really important book for me. As well as Laurie Ann Guerrero’s . I feel so bad just saying those two collections because there are so many more for me. But I go to these two so often and they truly aid me on this poetic journey.
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is a New York City poet with Afro-Caribbean roots. Her poetry has appeared in the Chapbook For The Crowns Of Your Head, as well as the literary journals: 5AM, Adanna, The Wide Shore and others. A CantoMundo Fellow, she received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. is her first collection.
To find out more about CantoMundo, or if you’re a Latin@ poet looking to apply, check out their website