Islander Poets Interview Series – Juan Manuel Pérez
Juan Manuel Pérez is an award-winning Mexican-American & Indigenous poet, Gulf War (1991) veteran, actor, former Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi (2019-2020), and author of multiple books. In this interview, Juan spoke about his poetry and writing being grounded in his childhood growing up as a migrant farm worker and his experience learning to speak English from comic books in the 2nd grade. He described the evolution of his writing process from journaling his thoughts to his own self-taught exploration…