Platica Y Poetics S3E12 w/ Candy 'The Love Poet' Nieves

Candy ‘The Love Poet’ Nieves

In opening this interview, I honored the voices of Indigenous poets by reading from Enriqueta

Lunez—whose words in Tsotsil reflect the depth and dignity of oral traditions that long predate

colonization, a perfect segway to enter our plática with Candy “The Love Poet” Nieves, whose

work pulses with ancestral memory, sacred sensuality, and poetic resistance. As Candy read from

The Invention, a poem that honors Mayan cosmology and the brilliance of her ancestors, who

introduced the world to the number zero, an ancesntral reminder of the cosmic entered the room.

Our discussion on how the Maya tradition of understanding time, love, and purpose, not as

linear, but as cyclical, infinite, and rooted. Candy’s voice reclaims space for both Mayan and

Mestiza identity, weaving in Spanish and pre-colombian references to confront erasure and speak

back to colonizing narratives. She exhibited that translanguaging isn’t just a stylistic choice but

of survival, sovereignty, and reclamation. In Las Atravesadas and I, Woman, she declared “I will

preach, teach, break your master’s tools”, a direct homage to Audre Lorde’s revolutionary spirit

and Gloria Anzaldúa, speaking about how the word atravesar means to cut through, and how

“las atravesadas” has become those women who cross spiritual, cultural, and societal thresholds,

and expectations. Women often shamed for their boldness, and evolution. Candy writes from the

body, griefs, pleasures, and sacred thresholds. The spirit is a capsule of sacred ancestral

knowledge, navigating decolonial terrain. It reminds, it prays, resists.