José Olivarez

Bio

José Olivarez lives and works in Chicago, at Young Chicago Authors, where he was raised up as a teen within the city’s historically fertile slam scene. His second poetry collection, Citizen Illegal, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in September 2018. The poems span familial experience from before he was conceived (“My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped”) to an imagined beyond in “A Mexican Dreams Of Heaven.” His work wades deeply in memories of growing up as a first-generation son of Mexican immigrant parents in Chicago’s south suburbs. He is the co-host of The Poetry Gods podcast. Here he talks about finding his voice as a poet, learning to accept your imperfections as a person and artist, and how he started and completed his second book of poems.