Former Dallas Poet Laureate Joaquín Zihuatanejo Is Still Reclaiming Time

Joaquín Zihuatanejo speaks like a poet even in casual conversation.

Sitting in a worn green chair in the corner of Deep Vellum Bookstore, his words seem to rise from the depths of his soul, filling the space with history, pain and beauty.

“Poetry isn’t something I create,” he says, leaning forward as if he feels closer to the truth of his own words. “It’s something I uncover, something waiting to break free.”

A year after the release of Occupy Whiteness, his groundbreaking book of “hybrid erasures,” Zihuatanejo’s words resonate more profoundly than ever.

Deep Vellum Publishing, nestled in the heart of Dallas, released Occupy Whiteness just as the nation grappled with another fractious election cycle. The book’s themes, centered on resistance, the reclamation of space and the complexity of identity, arrived at a moment of national reckoning. And now, still in the wake of political shifts and ceaseless debates, its timeliness feels sharper, like a hammer striking with precision and purpose.

“This book isn’t about a moment,” Zihuatanejo says. “This book? It’s about a movement.”

Reclaiming Space with a Hybrid Form

At the foundation of Occupy Whiteness is the “hybrid erasure,” a genre Zihuatanejo not only wrote within but invented. The technique involves selecting isolated fragments from text written by white, male authors and surrounding the ripped-out words with what Zihuatanejo calls “Brown-verse.” The result is a powerful reclamation of space and meaning. Each poem floats uneasily on a sea of white space, visually representing the tension and emptiness of narratives crafted about people of color without their voices.

When asked about this at the bookstore, Zihuatanejo recounted a conversation from a literary festival that he included in the book.

“A white poet said to me, ‘Don’t you feel bad about taking their words?'” He smiles as he retells his response. “‘I’m not taking any words,’ I told them. ‘I’m discovering them. I’m colonizing them.'”

Flipping the dynamics of appropriation on their head is a radical idea, but one Zihuatanejo has found catharsis in.

“For so long, language has been a tool of oppression,” he says. “I wanted to turn it into a tool of liberation.”

The erasures are more than deconstruction – they’re obliteration followed by rebirth. The absence of titles in many of his pieces furthers this ethos. Zihuatanejo often feels titles are laden with a sense of ownership.

“But to be undocumented, as a person or as a piece of writing, is to exist outside the rule of ownership,” he explains.

Zihuatanejo says these untitled works are as vital as the rest. This decision isn’t just an artistic choice but a deliberate commentary on visibility, belonging and erasure.

“There are undocumented pieces in my book, but they’re just as important as the documented ones,” the poet says.

The Sound of Resistance

One of the most arresting pieces in Occupy Whiteness is the aptly titled “Erasure.” It begins with a cacophony of fragmented images and sounds that represent systemic violence against marginalized communities. Gunshots pierce through the lines, babies cry and thunder growls. Amid all the chaos, whispers and the distant thrum of drums persist.

Those whispers, Zihuatanejo says, “are the voices white supremacy tries to drown out, but they keep going, like a restless rivulet.”

The closing question of the poem resonates with devastating precision: “Can something be 62 percent water and 38 percent arsenic?” Zihuatanejo nods when this line is brought up during the interview.

“It’s a question about systems that claim to sustain us but poison us all the same,” he explains. “That’s what so much of Occupy Whiteness confronts.”

A Love Letter and a Eulogy for Dallas

Zihuatanejo’s deep connection to Dallas is woven into the book’s DNA and his identity as a poet. Being from the city, his work frequently reflects on the evolution and gentrification of the neighborhoods that raised him. The poem “View from the Fifth Floor of the Adam Hats Building, 1986,” captures this transformation, painting a portrait of a city consumed by its hunger for progress. Zihuatanejo’s recurring metaphor of the “gentrified pegasus” speaks to beauty and theft, themes Zihuatanejo views as central to Dallas and his poetry.

“Dallas is my city because it’s the only place that existed for me as a kid,” he says. “But the Dallas of my childhood doesn’t exist anymore.” He pauses, as if reliving the memories as they pour out. “I remember playing soccer on a field that was two-thirds dirt and one-third dream … now it’s covered with condos. That gentrification runs through my verses because it runs through my veins.”

There is a duality in Zihuatanejo’s poetry that threads beauty and brutality. Poems like “The Crossing” and “Wake,” with their gut-wrenching images of migration, underscore the peril of longing.

“Crossing rivers, deserts, leaving everything behind,” Zihuatanejo says. “It’s the definition of courage and despair, all at once.”

Complexity as Resistance

At the heart of Occupy Whiteness is its insistence on complexity, or as Zihuatanejo describes it, “the beauty of the gray.” The collection offers readers two paths through its pages: “One route is linear,” he says. “The other follows scattered footprints.” On this choice, Zihuatanejo remarks, “Life is rarely rigid. Why should poetry be?”

Gray is also central to Zihuatanejo’s advocacy for dialogue over division, an idea that will be incorporated into his new project, Immigrant.

“I think what I’m hoping [for] with Immigrant is to make people realize that the older we get, we don’t have to drift farther away from the idea of coming to the center,” he explains. “We don’t have to get entrenched in this side or that side. We can follow a path to grace, to understanding, to connection.”

Zihuatanejo’s reflections carry deep personal meaning, as he describes how Immigrant will be dedicated to honoring and reckoning with his family’s history.

“I think the dedication page will say something like, ‘For every brown mother and her brown children, and the river between them,’ because it’s about the space between,” he says. “About being here, in the in-between. Where you’re neither of one world, nor fully of another.”

While Occupy Whiteness demanded reclamation, Immigrant aims to carve out that reclaimed space as home. For Zihuatanejo, it isn’t just a book; the weight of generations is etched into his voice.

“For the rivers they crossed and the crosses they carried,” he says. “That’s what I’m writing for this time – for them.”

A Bookstore, a Poet, a Legacy

Zihuatanejo’s love for Deep Vellum Bookstore is evident.

“There’s something about this place,” he muses, gesturing to the bookshelves and the chair where his words seem to imprint themselves into the room. “It’s like Dallas breathing through paper and ink.”

From his role as Dallas’ first poet laureate to receiving the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, Zihuatanejo carries representation with both pride and purpose.

“Writing the words in Occupy Whiteness was an act of carving our place in history,” he says. “Dallas still needs voices that don’t just reflect the city but challenge it. That’s what this chair, this bookstore, this book and this city mean to me.”

A year after its release, Occupy Whiteness feels more vital than ever, not just as a collection of poems but as a call to action, a reclamation of space and narrative. It’s a hammer striking against the silence, forging a path forward with each blow. And here in the middle of the Deep Vellum Bookstore, Zihuatanejo still swings it with precision, each word hitting with the weight of decades and the hope sustaining it.

Occupy Whiteness is available at Deep Vellum Bookstore.