A2H #13 | Immigrants, Grief, and Bukowski with Christian Lozada

Art 2 Heart

Accomplishment and emptiness.
Gratitude and sadness.
Love and grief.
Filipino and White.

Two things can be true at the same time.

Today’s guest is an insanely talented poet and educator who is an expert at holding two things in tension together.

Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him/they) is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendant of the Confederacy, so he knows the shape of hope and exclusion.
He co-authored the poetry book Leave With More Than You Came With from Arroyo Seco Press and the history book Hawaiian in Los Angeles.
His poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review (Pushcart Nominee), Mud Season, Sin Cesar (formerly Dryland), among others. Christian has featured for the Autry Museum, the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, and Beyond Baroque.
He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College. Christian also has a third book being published later this year, a collection of poetry called He’s a Color Until He’s Not.

In this episode, we talk about reconciling with two conflicting ideas, like how America can be shitty and awesome at the same time.
We talk about the sense of grief that’s immediately followed after an accomplishment, how Charles Bukowski has been an integral part of his life in San Pedro, how immigration and capitalism are so closely tied to one another, and how becoming an educator became a natural fit for his passion and love of writing.
We also explore how folding origami frogs became his grief embodied for his sister, and how his love for his students often means never seeing them again.

Unfortunatley, this interview was cut short by technical difficulties with the service I was using, and will now never use again.
I lost the last 30 minutes of our interview, so the dialogue ends rather abruptly. I was looking for a way to edit it down and clean it up, but Christian brings so much rawness and vulnerability that I didn’t want to lose more than what was already lost.
Connect with Christian

Instagram : @poetloz
Website: https://www.readontillmorning.org/

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Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier Clark

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