Daniel Romo found the meaning of life on television. At least, he found the thing that would give his life deeper meaning. The show was Def Poetry Jam, Russell Simmons’ HBO show featuring a variety of spoken word performers. The thing was poetry.
“I loved the energy that was presented,” he says.
Unlike most poets, who say things like, “I was born writing. I was scribbling poems on the walls of my mother’s womb,” Daniel admits he had never written a poem before. Still, he dove right into it, stating, “It felt natural.” Now, he has an MFA in poetry, and first book, When Kerosene’s Involved, is being published by Black Coffee Press. There will be a release party for the book on Friday, March 22, at 7PM, at the Gina M. Woodruff Gallery and singer Chelsey Sanchez will also perform.
Inspired by Def Jam, Romo started attending open mikes in and around Long Beach. He became a regular at Viento y Agua and Shades of Africa’s open mic nights. “I had never been in a world like that, where there were other people sharing their art,” he says. “It was a bit overwhelming, but very welcoming.”
These open mics gave him the inspiration to not just keep writing, but to work on his writing. “They drove me to search for whatever I needed to grow as a writer.”
Not that poetry was entirely foreign to him–he teaches English at Lakewood High School–he had just never felt motivated to write it himself. He showed his poems to a fellow teacher. Based on her encouragement, and the reactions he was getting at open mics, he started submitting his poems to literary magazines. He quickly found success there as well and has published in a number of journals. He prefers online journals because they are more immediate and reach a larger audience, but he’s not willing to rest on such success.
“I’ve grown a lot since I first started writing. As I learned what constituted a strong poem, I’ve become more comfortable with taking risks in my writing,” he says. “My style has shifted dramatically. That’s been the result of writing more and reading more.” One of the first poets he read who influenced his style was Charles Simic, whose short, surreal poems are about as far from slam poetry as one can get.
The same teacher also encouraged Daniel to apply for an MFA in poetry and he started studying at Antioch. There he worked under Richard Garcia, who got him interested in prose poems. He eventually transferred to Queens, in Charlotte, NC, a low residency program, because their program focused more on the actual writing. His final thesis was a collection of prose poems, which became When Kerosene’s Involved.
Daniel describes prose poetry as “poetry written in a paragraph-ish form. The focus isn’t on how the words appear on the page, yet the poem still maintains poetic elements.” He also quotes Simic, “Prose poems are the culinary equivalent of peasant dishes, like paella and gumbo, which bring together a great variety of ingredients and flavors, and which in the end, thanks to the art of the cook, somehow blend.”
In his hands, prose poetry is both grounded and surreal. He uses recognizable details of everyday life, but often twists them into something quite different. He admits he often starts with autobiographical material (teaching and the classroom come up often in his poems), but is never restricted by it. The reader should never take his poems as the truth about his life.
When asked what he used to do before poetry, Daniel answers, “Nothing.” Of course, teaching high school and raising a family (he has been married for 15 years, and has two children) are not nothing, but we know what he means. “Poetry helps me deal,” he says. “At this point, I can say it has become something I’m meant to do.” His level of talent shows that he was always a poet, it just took a fortuitous flip of the dial for him to discover it.
When Kerosene’s Involved book release will take place Friday, March 22, 7PM at Gina M. Woodruff Gallery, 5555 E. Stearns St. Daniel Romo will read from the book, and Chelsey Sanchez will sing.
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