We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joshua Burton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joshua below.

Joshua, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on is the creation of my poetry film “Iridescence”. After winning a contest, I was paired with a local filmmaker in Houston to create a poetry film. I wrote a new poem for the film and me and the filmmaker collaborated on how to best bring the film to life. Because my mother and daughter are mentioned in the poem, they were able to be part of the film. A large chunk of the poem is about my mother, so she is in multiple scenes. I find it important to have this visual record of her since she doesn’t take many pictures or videos of herself. I am very proud of the poem as it exists by itself, but with the elements of the visuals, it brings it to life in a new way for me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I am a poet and educator from Houston, TX. My book is called “Grace Engine” and it’s a collection of poems. For me, my current poems work as archival work as they not only try to hold true to my families histories, I also try to hold true to the possibility of what we can all become. While my work can deal in subject matter like the lack of visibility around black mental health and the legacy of lynching’s in the South, ultimately, I’m thinking about black futurity using black surrealism as a mechanism to reach such heights.

As an educator, teaching high school English and Creative Writing, my main goal is to help students find and sharpen their voice, and realize that their voice matters. Some kids feel like their opinions and ideas doesn’t matter as I did for along time, so I hold my responsibility high as a teacher to make sure if students haven’t felt that elsewhere, they will feel it in my class in some way. Outside of my full time job, I also occasionally teach poetry workshops around Houston a few times a year where I’m able to work with adults offering craft lessons and workshopping space for their poems.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

The resource that I wish I knew about in a more extensive way before I went to grad school in Syracuse to study poetry was that community is free. While at my MFA, they provide you with a cohort of poets and professors to read your work and give you feedback. Many connections I built there are ones I will be grateful for for the rest of my life, but those relationships aren’t isolated to just academic spaces, but are everywhere. You just have to do the work to find your place in your community. Poets are everywhere. And wherever there are poets at, you will always find one willing to exchange work with you.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

What I want most as a poet and an educator is to connect with people. I want to be able to connect with the students and poets in the classroom space and the workshop space, whether it’s over their writing or over the writing of some poet I love. Art has the power to bring people together, and heal you in areas that might not be as clear. But I also want my writing to be able to connect with black people and others. I just don’t wan to be in community with other poets, I want my poems to be in community with other poets as well. I want my words to be in the same space as these poets who have changed my life. I just want to be amongst them. That would be the highest honor for me at this point in my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuaburton23/
• Twitter: https://x.com/joshuaburton23
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@joshuaburton105?si=hcYaofVVhQjHiyem
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/3MoolX97hZJiviLadV
• Other: My book: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/G/Grace-Engine
  My chapbook: https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/pre-order-fracture-anthology-by-joshua-burton

Image Credits

Two middle pictures by Joseph Noe Pineda