To be a poet is to learn the craft of summoning your emotions to weave them into meaning through your words. To be a poet who claims New York City as your home, it’s imperative to have that skill coming out of your pores like the first honest sweat you break the moment it gets above 75 degrees in the streets. Because in a city with over eight million unique stories, to have your voice heard using the craft of poetry means you are asserting your power. Creating crowns out of the various experiences you’ve lived through, and that of those who’ve come before you through words. All of this is true when reading the work of Anacaona Rocio Milagro.
Anacaona Rocio Milagro is a poet born in, raised and still living in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. Beginning at the tender age of four, she would pursue the craft of writing and poetry fervently, going on to earn a BA in Social Anthropology and Journalism/Creative Writing, a minor in Art from Baruch College/CUNY BA Program and a Fine Arts degree at the Low Residency creative writing program in Paris to go with her Masters of Public Health degree from Columbia University. “Prolific” is an understatement concerning her published work, as her poems have appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Latinext Anthology, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, No Dear Magazine, and Raising Mothers among others. Her “Nine Eleven Poem” is a part of the permanent 9/11 Archives of the Smithsonian Museum, and she’s also a Cave Canem Fellow. Most recently, she has released her debut book AND spoken word album of the same title, To Make An Island of a Street Corner. Remember when I spoke about creating crowns? For Anacaona, whose mother is from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands and her father from the Dominican Republic, her creative journey to this point is evident in each line of hers that you read. After reading her book, I told her that lines from the poems reminded me of another Dominican artist, Firilei Baez and one work that she had in The Museum of Modern Art in 2019. It’s no wonder, given that she shares the name with one of the more venerated Indigenous figures from the Caribbean, that you will walk away feeling as if you’ve spent hours appraising fine art. I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with her about her literary journey, what inspires her, and her hopes for those looking to pursue the craft of poetry.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Q: What led you to embrace poetry as your craft?
Anacaona Rocio Milagro: My mother. She naturally speaks in parables and proverbs and Psalms. She can sneeze out a poem. She's just a naturally poetic person. I think that a lot of us coming from the Caribbean have a parent or a grandparent or a relative or someone who just naturally speaks in such a beautiful, profound language. My mom is a natural born poet. She and I shared a bed when I was growing up, and she would sing nursery rhymes to me as a kid. She grew up in St Thomas, so she would recite them by heart or sing the little songs that she learned when she was a kid, and that made me fall in love with rhyme and music and just language in general.
In addition to that, she was, or is still a Jehovah's Witness, so she was heavy into giving us Bible studies. And I have three older brothers. We're all two years apart and she would sit us all down and give us Bible studies together. And she would literally sit us there and have us deconstruct Bible text, deconstruct metaphor, deconstruct the symbolism that's in the Bible. She was really teaching us all of these critical reading skills and poetic craft.So that trained my poetic muscles in metaphor, image, storytelling, symbolism, all of it. So I started doing that at a really young, young age because of her, and again, I loved it.
The book of Psalms in the Bible was my favorite, and Genesis was also one of my favorites, and revelations because it was so heavily symbolic and jam-packed with image and messaging and storytelling, so much storytelling. And the meaning was meant behind all bible text is meant to be salvation, right? Orto help you expose evil and sin and how to avoid it. So for me, writing and reading, all of it was a means to an end. a how-to book on how to avoid traps and sin. And I learned all of that from my mom, and that's what ignited what I think was already in me to write poetry.
And I would be writing down as best as I could at four years old, writing little poems down, and declaring to my mom, “I’m writing a poetry book.” (laughs) I’d cut out the little pages sew the spine of the pages, and I'd write and write and write. Also just being the only girl and the youngest in my household, I often felt like I didn't have a voice, and no one really listens to the baby sister. So, I would just put pen to page. Like a way of screaming into the void, a way of attempting to be heard, and also just getting to dabble in all of these wonderful craft tools that I wassubconsciously developing or mastering. But it was a visceral response. Like anytime I would hear something really beautiful in a song, or anywhere I would justsalivate. And really light up whenever I heardreally good language. So I knew immediately before I knew anything - I knew I was a poet. I just knew it. It was an undeniable fabric in my DNA.. (laughs)
Q: In reading your work, I could see the love for Hip-Hop culture through the cadence, and the styling. Was there ever a time when you entertained wanting to be a rapper in addition to being a poet?
Anacaona: Of course. (laughs) I would always say that I attribute the maternal part of my writing, or my poetic craft, to my mom,nursery rhymes, and the Bible, and then the paternal, or the masculine part of my poetic craft would be Hip-Hop. All of that sophisticated stuff happening in the Bible, I felt like it was the exact thing happening in Hip-Hop, but now it's a very masculine, tough, way. It was a means of salvation. But it was in our vernacular and our time, and it was just modern as opposed to doing it in biblical times. I absolutely loved and worshiped and studied and got lost in Hip-Hop the same way I would with poetry and, well, it is poetry to me. I didn't really see a difference other than it has its own medium with the music. Poetry has its own intricate music to it. So it just made sense that Hip Hop evolved the way that it evolved. Yes, I did want to be a rapper, but my problem was when I finally did discover Hip-Hop, I was already writing for so long. I've been writing poetry since I was four years old, and then Hip-Hop came into my life when I was about eight. I was still really young but I had already fallen in love with poetry. And for me, poetry commanded its own music. So this is where it became a huge conflict for me, where I understood with Hip-Hop, you have to flow to a beat, you have to rhyme to a beat. And I could never do that because it would mean I'm following the command of the beat over the command of the internal beat of a poem. I had already been trained by the poems themselves. I just always felt and respected that when a poem came to me, it came to me with its own music. And so I can't write to external music.
A lot of other poets would ask me, “Oh, what music do you listen to when you're writing?” And I'm like, “I don't ever listen to music when I'm writing, because it would drown out the poem’s original music.” My poetry, if you hear it, if you listen to me recite it, it's very musical. I know everybody has their own process, but I just find it very odd. You know how people assume everybody does things the same way? I always found it really odd to write while playing music. How can you hear the music of the poem if you're listening to music as you're writing? It felt almost, to me, disrespectful, like how are you disrespecting the poem like that? It knows what it wants. I'm a big believer in the poem as its own entity.. You are a vessel, and you've been assigned this, right? You listen to what it wants to be. Especially when I was young - I had so much to say. Because I'm watching the world in my little corner and wanting to participate and say things. And then when you finally get a poem, and let's say it's strong. And you want to throw everything in that and the poem is like, “No, I have my own identity. I have a very particular agenda. I know what I want to be. Calm your ass down and write that poem.” (laughs)
So you have to edit yourself and be like, “Yes, poem. I'm listening to you, and I know you have your own rhythm, and I know you have your own meter, and I know you have your own beat, and I'm gonna respect that.” So when I wanted to get into rapping in Hip-Hop, and as much as I loved it, I could never write lyrics to a beat, I could never break that habit that I had already nurtured in my own writing. I had already developed my own voice and my own relationship to poetry. I couldn't break it. I didn't want to break it. I thought it would be a disservice, and I understood and respected Hip-Hop for what it was, and I understood that it would never be me. But that doesn't mean I didn't love it as much as I do and will always and how it impacted me. How it still Influences me. And I think our assignment is similar, right? When people are writing songs, some of them have very specific messaging that has a very specific agenda. I’m doing the same thing, but in my medium, you know? I can respect that. I think the best ones really carry it through. Like, the message is so clear and it penetrates.that's the magic of it. I think when you surrender to the art form, whatever medium you do in art, if you are allowing the messaging to come through, it's going to penetrate whoever your audience is, and it's going to do something to that audience. And that, to me, is the success of the work.
Q: in chaotic and uncertain times, what and who do you lean on in addition to your craft?
Anacaona: I definitely lean on Hip-Hop, believe it or not. I leaned on Hip-Hop my whole life. I really do genuinely love Hip-Hop, and I don't lean, believe it or not, heavily on literature. I know a lot of writers shame me for this. (laughs)I do have an MFA, I do have degrees and all of that, but my love for writing did not come from reading. It just never has. I would listen to the poem, the direction it wanted to go, and it was a relationship between me and, I guess, the divine, if that's how you want to say it - that's where the genesis of my writing comes from. It does not come from reading literature. And unfortunately, because I went to a public school in the city in a zone that was incredibly impoverished, they did not assign much literature. From kindergarten through 12th grade, there was a minimum amount of books that we were assigned to read. And I remember rereading books over and over. I can't tell you how many times I was assigned to read Romeo and Juliet in junior high school and then again in high school. I envy this generation with how many writers of color, and how many different genres and everything they have to pick from that did not exist in my time in the public school system in NYC. I remember the only people of color that I was introduced to in school were Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. Anyone else I discovered on my own. Like when I met Willie Perdomo. He had the biggest impact on my entire writing life. He's from Spanish Harlem. He had a book in Barnes and Noble, published by Norton, Where A Nickel Costs A Dime. I was 16 years old. He looks like my family, you know what I mean? when I was writing poems, I never thought anyone gave a shit. I never thought it would ever be published in a book and people would buy it. I never thought it was a possibility for me until I met Willie Perdomo, and I saw him do it.
Suddenly, I was like, “Oh, shit, this thing that I've been doing my entire life could exist in Barnes and Noble.” Suddenly, it became real, and it was very exciting to see. And then he came out in The Sourcemagazine. So it was like, “Oh shit. They respect this as they should.” But, you know, you just never saw it. There wasn't anyone that I could go and touch. Langston Hughes wasn't around anymore. Maya Angelou was around while I was growing up, but she wasn't someone that I had access to. She was such an anomaly in my mind because, again, I had such limited exposure to what was out there. So it was Hip-Hop for sure, and then when I started to discover some of the writers that were also writing about my world. If you read Where A Nickel Costs A Dime, in Unemployed Mami, one of the lines in that poem was: “Although Mami didn't have a job, she still be working hard.” It just painted my whole world in such a beautiful way. It was such an important piece of art that I needed, and I think so many of us needed. Because when I talk to other poets that are about my age, Willie Perdomo was such a vital part of their artistic journey as well. His poetry book was the first to come out with a CD, and I had that on replay. I could recite those poems in his voice and cadence with no problem to this day. (laughs) And then around the time I started college, we had dead prez, we had Black Star. We had all of these profound, poetic lyricists - obviously Tupac and Nas, right? And they were really into lyrics and also rapping about the world that I lived in, which was so absent from the literary world that I had access to through school. So it was just nice to see something that could declare my reality for a change because I wasn't seeing it anywhere else. So it was almost like I'm not screaming into a void by myself on this page anymore, like now through Hip Hop we're collectively saying, “Look, this is our experience. We're here. This is what's happening. These are the injustices. Let's work together and change some of this. It doesn't need to be this way.”
That was definitely what I would lean on. So I know I'm a bit different than some of my writing people that may lean so heavily on literature. I didn't have that. My mom barely graduated junior high school. I didn't have access to books that weren't biblical in my house. I do love literature and poetry in particular, but it's not my go-to. I don't go to a book for comfort ever, unfortunately. I do go to writing, and I do look at the world, and the world inspires me, especially marginalized groups. Nuances and naming things that aren't named, to me is very important. Sometimes I feel like when you go to literature, those things have been named. I can appreciate and love it, but it doesn't get me to the page.
Q: And my final question is, to those who aspire to be poets and writers, what's one thing that you would give to them as a way to help them on their journey?
Anacaona: My number one thing is always to be true to your lens. I think it is so enticing to want to have your art acknowledged. I mean, that's the whole point 90% of the time of why we do it, not the whole point, but we put all this out for it to be experienced. I know I so desperately want to be heard, but what I would encourage is to listen to your assignment, stay true to your voice, and look at the world through your lens. I think there's too much replication happening, and I think people play it safe, and they regurgitate a lot of the same things. And it's a safe place to be, and it could, even if you do it well enough, it can gain you some stardom and a spotlight or a platform, but it doesn't add to the craft.I love this craft so much. I want to see people take risks. I want to see people come out with unique voices, unique perspectives, at the risk of people not fucking with it. You know, they may not fuck with it today, but they'll fuck with it tomorrow. At some point. Sometimes you're ahead of your time, and no one will ever discover that if everybody's playing it safe and looking for a round of applause. And I understand that. I know all people are gonna go through their journey and explore and test things, and a lot of that comes from imitating your favorites and all of that. I’m not criticizing. That's part of our growth as poets or artists, and I get that. But also not abandoning your assignment and your lens and your voice - really sharpening that and working on that is what's going to elevate and contribute to the current craft and make it better and make it grow and make it more exciting. Just really, truly, doing you.
Anacaona Rocio Milagro's debut book To Make An Island of A Street Corner is available now through Black Freighter Press, and the album (produced with original music by Substantial, AJ Rios, and Mason Lieberman) is available on all streaming platforms.
