We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sonia Iris Lozada a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Sonia Iris , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
Since I was a young one, I’d sang and dance around the house. Whenever visitors came by, I’d be ready to put on a show. It wasn’t until I worked at the American Film Institute at eighteen and saw all these famous faces pursuing their aspirations that I thought to myself, “I can do this too!” Don’t let fear hold you back from your dreams and desires.
Sonia Iris , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I decided to follow my heart, even though it seemed like a strange decision since I have bills to pay and food to put on the table. I went through a stretch of time during which I lost sight of the joy found in acting and writing. At that point, I viewed my career with a seriousness born out of the need to make money. Yet, I haven’t made my living from this yet. What I discovered, however, is that I don’t have to stop being an actor, writer or poet; these things are true passions for me, and when I stopped trying so hard to make money from them, suddenly the joy reappeared and I started booking projects again. There are miracles everywhere if we just look for them.
I’ve attached a bio that my editor wrote about me, and I believe it accurately describes me. They know me well, and their words should give you an idea of who I am and what kind of work I do.
Fostering truth and beauty in all its various modes—through riveting determination on stage and screen, through harmony of perspectives in podcasts, through deft eloquence of words on the poetic page—Sonia Iris Lozada inspires, dreams, fascinates, cracks a smile, and spurs the moment with verse and wit.
Here we have an actor with an eye toward the real in the unreal, an actor who accentuates the subtlety of life in her various roles. With numerous acting credits across a range of genres, Sonia enlivens characters out of scripts into full-bodied beings and lures in the viewer at the same instant. Her roots dig deep through her parents to Puerto Rico and spread to the streets of Chicago where she was born. She brings this mixture of culture into a mixture of styles, humor with drama, a smile with a keen gaze, and steady timing in works such as Life Upside Down, season two of Bosch Legacy, the award-winning short Love in Time of Pandemic, Out of the Wild, and Expired. Her dynamism is electric.
Sonia lives the many lives of a dreamer: out of one’s self-imposed limits, she discerns potential. Through her assorted poetry collections—Inspire me Series: Book 1 & 2 (2022), Inspire Me: Perception (2019), Follow Akashic Dreaming Through Time (2019), and Inspire Me: Raw (2017) Sonia weaves grace from loss, honesty from love, delicacy from the torn fabric of memory, and a persevering joy in the face of doubts. Her poems convey a broad spectrum of life’s yearnings. Yet the lilt of her voice never lapses: from the cascading effect of Spanish alongside English to the perceptive lessons of one’s soul in concert with one’s living, these poems dance to the tune of life’s multi-layered vibrations and never miss a step. Her forthcoming poetry collection, the triumphant third in the series, will bring the raw past and the perceptive eye toward a new vision: Inspire Me: Awakening Dreams.
After accomplishing so much in her diverse expressions of art, Sonia sought to cultivate the expressions of others in an exploratory mode. Through her Poetic Resurrection Podcast she speaks to those who have learned life’s hard lessons through experience, art, and teaching. These lessons become conversations of strength and acceptance, of seeing the long-term effects of beliefs on behaviors (Season 1), of essence in writing and living (Season 2), of the spectrum of life’s plentiful hues (Season 3), of self-actualization (Season 4), and of perseverance (Season 5). These lessons are not singular, certain, or prescribed; these are frames of thinking and thus handholds of living. In these podcasts you will find laughter and tears, hopes and doubts, ideals and realities—but always sustaining, always living, always a current of inward focus and outward breathing. These conversations are succor for life’s pains, and you will hear Sonia smile, again and again, through art, through life, through the prosodic music of words.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The feeling of being in the zone is unparalleled. My mind falls into a peaceful silence and creativity seems to come naturally. I find solace in expressing myself artistically; all the everyday worries drift away. I can recall many times when I’ve started writing poetry and before I knew it, hours had passed and the sun was setting. The ideas just keep flowing and there’s so much that needs to be shared.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
With my Poetic Resurrection Podcast, I didn’t aim to alter anyone’s opinion or pass judgement. I wanted the listener to contemplate their own interpretations of life. Are their beliefs really their own or were they formulated by society, culture, and life experiences?
Exploring my own perspectives has made me more creative than ever before. I stopped wondering what people would think of me and allowed myself to be vulnerable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://poeticresurrection.com/
- Instagram: @poeticsonia
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poetic.resurrection
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAJgk3HMADdbg3iIyzHlH9A
- My other websites: Acting website: https://sonialozada.com/
- Overheard at Chica’s Café podcast website: https://overheardatchicascafe.com/
- Chica & The Man podcast website: https://chicaandman.com/cm-podcast/
Image Credits
Photos by: Ken Sawyer, Mark Atteberry and Denise Sanchez.