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Damien Flores, who grew up in Old Town Albuquerque, is a busy guy with the energy to multitask.
At 38, he is an educator, radio host, published author, occasional comedian and now the seventh Albuquerque poet laureate.
The city-sponsored Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program every two years chooses a citizen author to share poetry and develop a specific community project. The high-honor position includes a stipend tied to fulfillment of these duties. One project Flores is already working on is a series of poetry workbooks for students.
Flores, who teaches at St. Pius X, says he hopes to help students feel more confident being vulnerable through their words.
“I want to make students feel comfortable expressing their stories,” he says.
Part of that project also means intersecting academia with creative writing.
“I want to focus on New Mexico poets in a slim workbook style, with tear-out pages and writing- prompts based on the themes or the structure of the poems being read,” he says.
The Paper. met with Flores on a recent Friday evening in his favorite restaurant, the Monte Carlo Steakhouse.
Flores rose up in the ranks of competitive “slam” poets, both locally and nationally, to the point that he was recognized by the National Poetry Slam and by HBO’s “Def Poetry” TV show.
“As a teenager, they filmed me doing a handful of poems at a youth center in Los Angeles, and at the National Slam,” he says. “When I got into the poetry slam, I was in the 10th grade. You might think I’d be scared. But it was no scarier than the comedy open mics I already had performed at. The comedy scene is very critical. If nobody’s laughing, something’s wrong. Poetry open mics are a bit easier on you, and I do get laughs for some of my funny poems, although I do serious poems as well.”
Damien says he sees his style as specific to New Mexico.
“Slam poetry has a lot of urban influence, a style that was popular in the big cities like New York,” Flores says. “But what we do in New Mexico and in the greater Southwest, is more of a story-telling style. We still might have that slam staccato rhythm, but most of the poems tell a complete story rather than just sketches or speaking broadly on a subject.”
Damien says he was mentored by older poets he met along his journey such as Tony Santiago, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Danny Solis, Kenn Rodriguez, Angela Williams and Demetria Martinez. He says they all encouraged him to find his own voice — something he says helped him grow as an artist.
“Take influence from them, but make it your own,” he says. “That was how I developed my writing style.”
Flores says while honing his skills as a student at the University of New Mexico, he “snuck through, under the radar,” while fighting the stigma of using a more hip-hop style.
“In class, I never said that I was a slam-poet. I never brought in flyers for my shows,” he says. “I sat in those academic critique circles and seminars and I just didn’t mention it. But then everybody loved my poems anyway.”
Flores says he hasn’t fully started to feel the pressure of fame just yet, partially because he hasn’t performed publicly in his latest role. But, he says, he’s starting to get some public recognition at spots such as Duran’s Pharmacy. He’s also seeing an uptick in listeners to his KUNM radio show, the “Spoken Word Hour,” which he’s hosted since 2010 — the same year he started in poetry.
Flores says he has come a long way from his youthful days in the “old” Old Town.
“I had to fight when I was in middle school because there was a really bad gang influence there when I was growing up. In ninth grade, I had two guns pulled on me,” he says. “You walk around Old Town now and you ask, ‘How could this be a gang territory?’ But back in the day in that neighborhood, it was.”
Flores says he got help turning his life around from The Cornstalk Institute, an after-school program aimed at gang and drug prevention.
“They never once preached to us,” he says. “It just was a place for kids to go and to be accepted, with fun activities and homework help and tutoring and art.
As a high schooler, he eventually became a mentor to younger students at Cornstalk, and the organization later helped him get through his higher education.
“When I was at UNM, Deryle Perryman, the executive director and co-founder of Cornstalk, offered me a job as a ropes course technician, helping kids navigate those outdoor climbs which build confidence. Cornstalk treated me well. They put me through college and Deryle wrote me a recommendation letter to get my first teaching gig,” he says. “I am very grateful.”