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 WCU Stories      October 3, 2018

Ricardo Nazario-Col贸n, 甜瓜视频app鈥檚 chief diversity officer, first caught the poetry bug as a youngster in Puerto Rico.

He would watch his mother, with the Victrola playing in the background, take a break from cleaning on the weekends to sit on the couch and read poetry. Nazario-Col贸n also had an uncle and a grandfather who were poets.

So, it鈥檚 no surprise that he would later discover his talents in the writing form. Those talents have led Nazario-Col贸n to recently being named as one of three Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets by the North Carolina Poetry Society.

Nazario-Col贸n will represent 32 counties in the western region of the state. Between January and May of 2019, he will mentor four emerging poets, ideally one from middle school, high school, a college or university, and an adult in the region. In addition to serving as a mentor, he will conduct a reading with the poets at their home libraries. The poets will present their work at WCU鈥檚 Spring Literary Festival in April.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a huge task and honor to help other people shape their work, guide them, provide them with ways to improve their craft,鈥� Nazario-Col贸n said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really an honor. I was excited. I am not someone who鈥檚 always seeking these kinds of accolades. I just like to write. I don鈥檛 submit for prizes. I don鈥檛 do competitions. I just like to write. For someone to think I could be a representative of the region, that I could represent the art form in its best light, it鈥檚 humbling.鈥�

Nazario-Col贸n remembers writing poetry while in elementary school in Puerto Rico. During his time in the Marines, he wrote a poem about an ant crawling across the grass.

鈥淎pparently, I sent it back in a letter to a family member and everybody was like, 鈥楾hat is such a great poem.鈥� But nobody kept the letter, so that poem is lost in time,鈥� Nazario-Col贸n said.

It was while he was an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky in the late 1980s and early 1990s that he began to flourish as a writer. He was part of a group of faculty, staff and students that came together to form The Affrilachian Poets. They mentored and supported each other as they learned about poetry and writing.

鈥淎ffrilachia is a word that was created by Frank X Walker to recognize that there were people in the region of Appalachia who at the time did not meet the dictionary鈥檚 definition, which was white residents of the mountainous region. That was actually in one of the Webster鈥檚 dictionaries. He knew that was not accurate. Cherokee people have been in the region for generations and African-Americans have been in the region.鈥�

Nazario-Col贸n said his biggest gratification as a poet came from writing his first book, 鈥淥f Jibaros and Hillbillies,鈥� when his family read it and thanked him for telling their stories. The ultimate approval came from his mother.

鈥淪ome people worry that you鈥檙e telling your family鈥檚 business,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut my mother read my manuscript. I just happened to have it sitting down next to me on the sofa. She sat down and grabbed it and started reading it. All I kept hearing was this whisper as she was trying to read it quietly. She read it cover-to-cover, every single poem in the book.

鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 move. She finished and she closed it with that gentle, caressing hand, and then she said, 鈥楧id grandma say that?鈥� The opening poem was about something that my grandmother told me when I was young. And I said, 鈥榊es.鈥� She kind of nodded and gave that uh-huh and walked away. I was like, 鈥極K, I鈥檓 good to go. There are no objections.鈥� That was my stamp of approval that what I was doing was right, and that I wasn鈥檛 crossing any unspoken rule about talking about family.鈥�

In addition to writing about his family, Nazario-Col贸n likes to write about places, loved ones and politics. He has written about the terrorist attack in Boston, and 9/11 because he was living in New York City at the time.

鈥淚 think one of the most important pieces for me is being able to tell stories,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e often write about what we know. That鈥檚 where we begin, and then we expand. Just being able to give voice to family stories and learning that these stories are similar to other people鈥檚 stories. When other people read my work, they have a story to tell that resonates with them. That, I think, is important because it closes the gap of humanity and it shows that we are very much alike in many ways. Our lives are not as different as we might think. I enjoy that a lot.鈥�