I want to be so present and certain in my survival that nothing and no one can shake me. A reminder of “how we green things made it.” I want that. That’s what I need and maybe all of us need. The plants looked so peaceful which to me was so profound considering many of them had just been replanted, moved around on the land to make space for their siblings, and even more worrisome just days before a storm had also hit us. My partner and I had been farming the land for weeks and that morning the wind was flowing. I was sitting on my porch in Bonao looking out at the plantains and the mountainside. Melania Luisa Marte: What a generous and thoughtful compliment! Thank you! I honestly think this collection came from one burning question that took on many different forms. Can you tell us a little about the path to how these poems became a book? There is so much happening here, it’s astounding, we get to see a poet’s becoming and that is rare, precious thing.
It was a delight to email with Marte about her new book, her love for Black women, and how poetry can embody true magic.Īngela María Spring: Felicidades, what an earth-shaking debut collection! Plantains And Our Becoming is an invitation to witness your a powerful journey, as an Afro-Latina and a daughter of immigrants as a Black woman and mother and also allows us into your sacred homes of NYC and the Dominican Republic. In both the garden and on the page, Marte brings us back into the Earth and plants her poems verdantly within us. She stewards the land as her abuela did, a place where she grows the comida and medicina (oftentimes both) those of us in the Caribbean diaspora, and even on the islands themselves, have lost connection to. While Marte continues to call out the violent anti-Black racism that permeates Latinx culture, countries, and spaces, her current collection is also deeply personal and tied to the Dominican Republic. Plantains And Our Becoming is the follow up to her debut collection, MELA, which came out in 2018. Marte, a NYC native who currently splits her time between Dallas, Texas, and her parents’ homeland, the Dominican Republic, is already a widely celebrated performance poet who has dominated slam stages across the country and whose poem “Afro-Latina” was featured on Instagram’s IG TV.
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