poet

On a Wednesday morning in Terminal 1 at LAX, traveler Nikki Hexum found herself in tears. Crying, on its face, is not an unusual occurrence at LAX. The notorious airport is a tender spot for Angelenos and tourists. Nearby, a displeased lawyer squabbles about a case into his phone. Flight attendants whisk by in pressed uniforms. A delay is announced over a speaker.

Today, an unexpected brush with poetry brought Hexum to tears. She was about to board a flight to Nashville, where she would discuss AI regulation at a film festival for her job, when she stumbled upon Brian Sonia-Wallace, the poet laureate of Los Angeles, sitting at a 1940s-model Underwood typewriter writing custom poems for passing travelers. As Hexum told him about her trip, he began to type, the clacking of the keys echoing through the terminal. When he finished, he read the poem aloud. Hexum’s eyes began to well.

“I sat in something where there was discomfort, but at the end of it, it became something amazing,” Hexum says. The encounter affirmed something for Hexum: the importance of spontaneous human interactions in a world where communication is increasingly relegated to AI. “I think we lost that ability to do that a lot,” she says as she wipes her eyes.

Hexum was one of dozens of travelers who received a custom poem from Sonia-Wallace as they waited to board their flights. Some were traveling to funerals, weddings and family reunions that the poet laureate commemorated in a poem written in minutes. Even flight attendants confided in Sonia-Wallace about their love of travel, which he honored in a poem. Soon, a line of eager travelers began to form.

Poet Brian Sonia-Wallace, center, chats with a traveler as others wait their turn for their own personalized poem in Terminal 1 at LAX.

“We had a couple of criers today,” says Sonia-Wallace. “There’s something about the typewriter and poetry that brings out the best in people.” On the table beside the typewriter, a placard reads: “Retro Chat GPT.” Behind the poet, a banner reads: “Everyone deserves a poem.”

Traveler Silvia Portillo was waiting to board a flight to Colorado. She was heading to her hometown of Glenwood Springs, Colo., to attend her sister’s wedding when she encountered Sonia-Wallace and his typewriter. She asked for a poem dedicated to her sister’s wedding, which she plans to present on the big day. “I thought it would be really cool if he made a personalized one for her, a little extra wedding gift,” Portillo says.

Waiting for a delayed flight, traveler Cassie Feldman tells the poet that she’s looking to shed old patterns before boarding a flight to St. Louis for a family gathering. He begins to read her the poem: “We gather with our old new selves.”

Feldman is delighted. “It was really cool,” she says. “It was an experience you don’t really get, especially at the airport.”

Los Angeles Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace dubs his pop-up poetry project as “Retro Chat GPT.”

Sarah Cifarelli, the LAX arts program director, was thrilled when Sonia-Wallace reached out about doing an installation at the airport. “Airports can feel very transactional with lots of logistics and very functional. Being able to engage with someone like Brian brings more humanity to that journey,” says Cifarelli. She works on programming art and installations at LAX that showcase the city’s vibrant arts scene, including its literary merits. “I think this helps us recalibrate our brains … to connect with others and take notice of what’s going on around us.”

The interactions between subject and poet can be surprisingly intimate. Travelers described lost loved ones, personal tragedies and battles with insecurity, regret and doubts. “My favorite people will be like, ‘I didn’t know this was going to be therapy,’” says Sonia-Wallace. “It’s whatever you want to use it for.”

Over the last decade, Sonia-Wallace has made it a habit to bring poetry to unexpected places like the Los Angeles airport. Since being announced as the poet laureate of Los Angeles in April, he has hit the ground running — delivering poetry to civic spaces like the L.A. Zoo and animal services. “What a poet can do is create pause,” he says. “Like, ‘hold on, what am I thinking? What am I feeling?’”

Poet Brian Sonia-Wallace’s beloved 1940s-model Underwood typewriter.

Sonia-Wallace describes the clacking of the typewriter as his siren song. The inherent theater of it lures a crowd. “If you see someone with a notebook or a laptop, that person wants to be left alone. If you see someone with a typewriter, there’s something happening here,” says the poet. He’s become something of a collector, with 10 typewriters stored in the trunk of his car because he’s run out of room in his studio apartment, even storing one in his bathroom.

Clad in a newsboy hat, Sonia-Wallace sees his practice as being as much about performance as the poetry, comparing his work to that of a pastor or tarot reader. “I was really into [the performance artist] Marina Abramovic, and this idea of the artist is present, and how does the presence of someone making something influence how we think about art,” he says.

The collision of LAX pandemonium and poetry intrigues Sonia-Wallace. The poetry softens people even in the throes of a hectic travel day, he argues. “I love the element of surprise. If someone comes to a poetry event, they’re expecting that. If someone’s just in the airport, and then there’s poetry there. All of a sudden, poetry becomes more interesting,” he says.

The practice began in 2010 when Sonia-Wallace wrote custom poetry for travelers at a Metro line opening on a borrowed typewriter. In 2014, when he got laid off, Sonia-Wallace experimented with making a living from poetry by writing at farmers markets, festivals and the Venice Beach boardwalk — and accepting tips. “I just popped up wherever I could,” he explains. Eventually, the poet began writing custom poetry at private events like weddings and corporate parties before he partnered with the city of Los Angeles.

Traveler Silvia Portillo, center, in Terminal 1 at LAX, accepts her freshly written poem.

The poet hopes to humanize bureaucratic spaces like the airport, a thorny subject for many disgruntled travelers. “I think about using poetry as a stand-in for arts and culture more generally to humanize bureaucratic spaces and create an experience for people that’s a little more personal.”

Cifarelli plans to bring Sonia-Wallace and his typewriter back to LAX in the coming months, and to invite a piano and other poets along.

Hexum prepared to board the plane to Nashville with her freshly inked poem in hand. “I’m gonna treasure this forever,” she says, gripping the poem as she floats toward her gate, and soon, into the sky.

Upcoming poetry pop-ups with the poet laureate of Los Angeles:

• Nov. 21 — Poets in the Wild at the Los Angeles Zoo
• Dec. 7 — Terminal 3 at LAX, a three-poet activation marking National Letter Writing Day.
• Feb. 11 — Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, West Gates, a full performance activation with multiple poets and a pianist, ahead of Valentine’s Day.

Connors is a culture journalist in L.A. She covers books, food, entertainment and offbeat Los Angeles. She’s currently at work on a book of essays about tourism in all its forms.

Cuban American poet Kyle Carrero Lopez first learned what sanctions were as a child — not as a political measure, but as a gendered one. In his poem “Sanctions,” he describes how his father, a surly Cuban refugee who worked as a DJ, laid out the terms of acceptable masculinity.

“No dance class/no “girl toys”/don’t walk like that,” writes Carrero. “His anthem, his law, hammered, hammered, into me.”

The poem features in his debut book of poetry, “Party Line,” released in July by indie publisher Graywolf Press. As a gay, Black Cuban American, Carrero uses social etiquette as a springboard to critically examine how marginalized people learn to negotiate space — whether at a nightclub; in the stratified gay mecca of Fire Island; at a socialist magazine party; or in line for customs at the U.S. border. He cites Black cultural figures like the queen of salsa Celia Cruz, American fashion journalist André Leon Talley, the late French singer and dancer Josephine Baker and political activist Assata Shakur as guiding lights.

“There are two sides of me,” he told De Los. “Between the party girl and the politico is Kyle Carrero Lopez.”

Born in 1995 to Cuban parents in New Jersey, Carrero is now based in New York City, where he earned a master of fine arts in poetry at NYU and published his award-winning 2022 chapbook, “Muscle Memory.” He answered my phone call in South Carolina, while overlooking the Atlantic Ocean; his mother was on the precipice of getting married a second time. Carrero, already a poet, scholar, political organizer and nightlife host, would flaunt yet another title that weekend as wedding officiant. “My work is naturally in conversation,” he explained.

Many of the poems in “Party Line” came to Carrero after visiting Cuba for the first time in 2017, through the CubaOne Foundation. Inspired by the Birthright Israel program for Jewish youth, the nonprofit sponsored trips for Cuban Americans to connect with Cubans on the island. Yet for Carrero, this strengthened his political dissonance with many Cubans in the U.S., who’ve supported economic sanctions on the communist nation. In order to force regime change, in January the Trump administration levied an oil blockade on Cuba, triggering a humanitarian crisis.

Written with an unmistakably Caribbean verve and snappy, conversational meter, Carrero defines his stance on Cuba in no uncertain terms.

“This book really is for Cuban Americans,” he said. “Those of us who are not trying to destroy Cuba, that is.”

Carrero spoke to De Los about party politics, Black Cubanidad and how visiting the island changed his writing for the better. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

A lot of people fall back on these ideas about immigrant communities being all hard work and drudgery — but we come from a festive, dance-fueled culture. How did you get the idea to combine poems about parties with poems about politics?

I’ve always been involved in politics. I’ve done a lot of canvassing. In high school, I was in a learning community called the Civics and Government Institute. We did a “social reformers” panel, where you had to play somebody from a social movement. They had me up there dressed up as Elijah Muhammad in the 10th grade, asking me what I’d think of Obama. I had to drag Obama! These Nation of Islam people were not feeling the moderate Democrats.

But that informed my political engagement to this day. I was concerned with the language surrounding the embargo and U.S. aggression against Cuba. In my poem “Torricelli,” I talk about how [former New Jersey congressman and senator] Bob Torricelli wrote the Cuban Democracy Act, which he designed to, quote, “wreak havoc on that island.”

And I write a lot about nightlife. It is a family industry for me on both sides. My maternal grandfather ran a social club in New Jersey, a games parlor. My mom was a club kid. She was out all the time. Parenthood changed some things, but my father still had DJ gigs. Our basement was his studio. He’d leave the house at 9, 10 o’clock to go to the gigs. You know that new Jordan Firstman movie, “Club Kid”? I’m the original club kid.

How do you write for those who may not be ready to receive the club kid and the politico at once?

I like challenging assumptions that political people are drab and unglamorous — and that party people are brain-dead, escapist and have nothing to say. One of the problems I have with the ’90s club kid scene, as it existed, is they were extremely apolitical. And not only were they apolitical, but I would go so far as to say the club kids in the ’90s were a white supremacist entity. We don’t talk enough about how their whole thing was like whiteness and white privilege. All we’re here to do is have fun — and we see what that mentality leads to, right?

[The movie] “Party Monster”!

Yes, “Party Monster”! Michael Alig literally killed a man of color. That is not the party world that I live in. We don’t take off who we are just because there’s low lighting and fog and loud music. I’m going to respond the same way to harassment and perceived injustice as I would any other space.

To this day, there are white club kids in New York who are in the club talking in black-ccents and wearing imitations of black people’s hairstyles. And then if you call them out, they’re like, “Why? It’s a party!” And I’m like, “OK, but it’s a party where all of the music comes from Black people … you are a guest in this space.” Before I’m going to serve you a history lesson, let’s at least start with decency.

And though you may not think you’re doing politics … politics will still do you. Your club kid parents experienced politics by coming to the U.S. from Cuba. Can you tell me about their journey?

My father emigrated from Havana as a child. My mother was born to parents who emigrated in the 1950s during Batista’s regime. Cubans have a privileged relationship to immigration — the pipeline available to us [political asylum] was not the same for most people of Latin American descent.

My family came here not only as Cuban immigrants, but as Black immigrants. Politics happened to them. My father came to the U.S. in the late ’60s, getting called the N-word walking home from school with his two sisters…. They got hit so hard with belts that they would go home having soiled themselves. They were not only Black, but they didn’t even know what language or culture they were trying to assimilate to. There were layers of hatred…. When people talk about Cuban Americans, they think of white, rich Miami Cubans. It’s irresponsible to think in such a flat and one-dimensional way.

In the poem “Usefulness,” which was originally published in the Yale Review, you speak of how Black Cubans exist at the nexus of two different political agendas: the pro- and anti-Revolution contingents. Can you talk about that?

My opinion is very useful to many agendas. I joke that I would make a great Republican talking head. If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to get the GOP bag and be like, “Democrats are liars! I hate immigrants! I hate welfare! There’s two genders! We don’t need gay marriage!” — I would be a millionaire in under six months.

There’s a tokenism that happens when you exist at this nexus of identities. It’s true of the left as well sometimes. You could ask five different people in Cuba what they think about the government and they will give you five different answers. And that is OK! We need to allow that to be the case.

I don’t want what Trump and the Marco Rubios of the world want for Cuba — which is to seize it, to subjugate it and turn it into the next Puerto Rico. If people who are progressive and committed to Cuba’s autonomy don’t want that, I think part of [the work] is talking to Cuban people and hearing them out. I don’t think it’s acceptable to seek out only the opinions that match your own.

You bring up a historical moment that not a lot of Cuban Americans know about, which was the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, by an anti-Castro Cuban exile group. You said they planned on bombing a flight to Havana the week before, which your mom and her sister were on. How did they manage to avoid that?

[My grandfather] was an influential man. He knew the right people. So he heard something was going down and said, “I’m not putting my kids on that flight.” The flight went on as planned, but these men knew my grandfather and heard that his daughters were getting on the plane. To me that’s like getting on the list … sometimes you get into the party, or the plane [isn’t] bombed. It’s the same negotiation. Or just a moment of alignment.

What was it like visiting Cuba for the first time after the Obama administration eased travel and trade restrictions?

I don’t give Obama much, but he did try to normalize relations there. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t follow through with that, but for a second, we did care about Cuba.

The first time I went was in 2017, when I was 22. It was an incredible experience. My mother traveled to Cuba as a teenager; my father never went back. But they never discouraged me from going. I know that’s the case for a lot of Cuban Americans; there’s so much baggage. But once there was an easy path to go, it changed my life.

I write about Amiri Baraka’s time in Cuba, when he was earlier in his poetry journey — and his writing changed from being there. He wrote a poem called “Betancourt,” named after a young radical there. It made me more politically serious. I feel closer to my heritage, having done that.

What made you close the book with “I Saw Assata In Havana”? Did you really see Assata Shakur?

That was an imagined encounter. But it was the vision of what I imagine was her new life in Cuba — her second chance. I thought that it was a good ending note to land on, pushing against prevailing narratives.

I think the ways that we talk about our radicals — the Huey Newtons of the world, people like Kwame Ture or Angela Davis — we think of them as mythical beings, or, depending on who you ask, terrorists. But that disconnects them from their humanity. I wanted to create a portrait of [Shakur] as a normal lady who needed to pick up groceries sometimes. These were regular people who saw what was going on in the world and decided that they needed to do something about it. Each of us has that ability to enact change.

There are so many ways to make societal shifts, whether that’s writing to your officials or protesting or creating art that is challenging. What Shakur did was to say, “I don’t like this for my people. I don’t like this for the world I’m living in.” The same boot that’s on the necks of Black American people is on the necks of people in the Congo, people in Palestine, people of the global majority. We all have to share the planet. If we work together, we can have a world that can actually sustain itself.

My last question for you is: What would you like to see happen for Cuba?

I’m not a politician; I’m an artist. My duty is not toward any specific government; it is toward truth. My Cuba position, as a Cuban American, is focused first and foremost on my home country’s contribution to the conflict. If Cuba is truly no more than a failed state, why not lift all of the restrictions? Let’s see what happens when Cuba is unimpeded by hostile U.S. policy. That’s how you can best prove your point, right? Unless, of course, you’re afraid of what Cuba could be.

Anne Carson, the Canadian poet, essayist, professor of classics and translator, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature.

The prize, announced at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday, awarded Carson “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” Carson is the 19th woman to win.

Among Carson’s myriad acclaimed works are her novel in verse “Autobiography of Red” and its sequel, “Red Doc>”; her seminal book of literary criticism, “Eros the Bittersweet”; poetry collections such as “Glass, Irony, and God” — which contains “The Glass Essay” — and the T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection of narrative poetry “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos”; her haunting accordion-fold elegy, “Nox”; and her widely praised translation of Sappho’s surviving fragments, “If Not, Winter.”

“In 1981, she published her doctoral thesis in classics, and has throughout her entire career, combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities,” said Anders Olsson, who serves as the chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature at the Swedish Academy, and presented the laureate. “Almost all her literary production has centered upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning.

“Throughout her entire authorship, Carson, with a light touch, explores the possibilities of writing, a process by which the literary sketch has become of particular value for her. In her collaborations with visual artists and choreographers, and with opera and theater directors, she has crossed over into various artistic fields, which has lent her writing a strongly performative aspect,” Olsson continued. “This demonstrates the freedom with which she relates to literary expectations and rule systems, which in turn lies behind the outstanding importance her work since the 1990s has had for the international art and literature scene.”

Nobel committee member Steve Sem-Sandberg said Carson is “an author for our time,” unique in her skill at connecting contemporary ways of living through antiquity. Sem-Sandberg marveled at Carson’s use of the myths, characters, stories and fables from that time, and the way she puts them into a modern context. “The mixture between those two gives an enormous energy to her writing,” he said. “Nobody writes like her, and nobody would even, I think, dare to do this in this way.”

Carson was sipping tea and eating crackers at her seaside home in Iceland — she also resides in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she teaches — after she got the big news. She said she was thinking of ways to give the 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) award away. “We have a friend who needs a house, and we always give a lot to Doctors Without Borders,” she said. She also planned to celebrate by taking a walk through the woods and turning off the phone.

Carson’s initial reaction was surprise. “Who would expect it? For heaven’s sake!”