A Conversation with Xavier Cavazos
Savor this vibrant dialogue tracing poet Xavier Cavazos’s path from the Columbia Basin’s dust to Manhattan’s poetic fires.
Experience the Episode
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
Can sound truly mend a fractured soul? Savor this vibrant dialogue tracing poet Xavier Cavazos’s path from the Columbia Basin’s dust to Manhattan’s poetic fires. Listen in to the collision of Nuyorican energy and academic sanctuary in an oral history interview conducted by Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza. Witness the crackling energy of a life transformed through metamorphic verse.
For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.
Meet the Poet: Xavier Cavazos
Xavier Cavazos is a Nuyorican Grand Slam Champion (‘95) and the author of three award-winning poetry collections: Barbarian at the Gate (Poetry Society of America), Diamond Grove Slave Tree (Ice Cube Press), and The Devil’s Workshop (Cleveland State University Poetry Center), winner of the 2024 Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur Award. His poetry has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Experimental Writing (BAX) and Under the Pomegranate Tree: Best American Latino Erotica. Currently, Cavazos serves as a senior poetry editor for Poetry Northwest and teaches in the Professional and Creative Writing Program at Central Washington University.
Meet the Moderator: Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza
Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza (she/her/ella) just completed her second year as a Ph.D. student in English and is a Joseph Gaia Distinguished Fellow in Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. As a scholar, her passion lies in advocating for greater representation of Chican@/Latinx experiences in literature and education. As such, she is interested in conducting research through Chicana Third Space and Postcolonial critical theories to explore storytelling as a cultural resource against trauma and discrimination, assess the role of spirituality within Chican@/Latinx culture, and implement a multidirectional feminist praxis within a broad analysis of 20th/21st-century literature. Her ultimate goal is to advocate for using Curanderismo (traditional Latinx folk healing) in the U.S. public health care system to increase accessibility for lower-income families.
In addition to conducting research and writing essays, she is a Washington-based poet whose work explores illness, myth, and sacrifice detailing the experiences of migrant farmworkers in the Yakima Valley, the borderlands, and across the United States. She was the first poet featured in Poetry Northwest’s “Presenting” series for up-and-coming poets, praised for her language and aesthetic, described as “an agricultural beat, a field worker’s beat, a hot beat—[that] becomes prayer.” Her poetry has also appeared in The Acentos Review, Palette Poetry, and Huizache. Her manuscript “La Casa Negra” was a 2022 semifinalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize through Letras Latinas at Notre Dame. Her favorite poets are Natalie Diaz, Xavier Cavazos, and Natalie Scenters Zapico.