In a quiet classroom at the Native American Community Academy (NACA) in Albuquerque, Manuel González asks his students to write to their ancestors during the Halloween season. The assignment isn’t about the thrill of a scare; it’s about memory, loss and healing.
“We’re talking about healing from the pain of losing someone,” says González. “Of course, this is Halloween, but it’s more than spooks and scares. It’s about honoring our ancestors.”
It’s in rooms like these, where poetry meets the edges of life, that González’s work has always lived. This fall, that work earned him one of the state’s highest literary honors as González was appointed New Mexico’s third state poet laureate. Appointed by committee members who were selected by New Mexico Arts and the New Mexico State Library, González will serve a three-year term dedicated to amplifying voices from every corner of the state.
For González, poetry has never been confined to the page. It began as something personal, but it transformed when he discovered poetry slams in Albuquerque. The stage, with its mix of vulnerability and rhythm, cracked something open.
“I’d get up there, my paper would shake, and my voice would quiver,” says González. “Then I got to the end of the poem. I’d get low scores, but I didn’t give up. I kept going back.”
Eventually, persistence turned into mastery. He served as the Albuquerque poet laureate from 2016 to 2018. He also became a four-time Albuquerque poetry slam champion and a national competitor with the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. But the competitions themselves were only the beginning.
Teachers began inviting González into classrooms to perform and talk about poetry after seeing a few of his poetry slams live. Those early workshops changed him. “I realized that this poetry isn’t about me. It’s not about my poetry. It’s not about anything like that. It’s about sincere and authentic self-expression,” says González.
That realization became the foundation of a career that merges art with service.
Over the past two decades, González has carried poetry into recovery programs, senior homes and educational spaces across New Mexico. He’s built circles where students and community members can write, speak and listen together, where poetry becomes less performance and more ritual.
“I come from a philosophy that poetry is medicine. It helps us process the trauma and reconnect with our culture,” says González.
That belief guides his teaching at the NACA, where lessons often reach beyond the page. His students write to ancestors, explore inherited grief and find strength in collective storytelling. For González, the classroom is a sacred space, one where art becomes a tool for emotional survival.
As poet laureate, González plans to carry that spirit statewide. His upcoming project, Voces de la Tierra, is an ambitious, multimedia archive that will collect and showcase poetry from across New Mexico’s vast landscape. He envisions a digital map of the state, where readers can click on a county, pueblo or town and encounter the voices that live there.
“It’s a living, breathing archive of New Mexico stories. I’m creating a digital anthology,” says González. The project will feature both written and video poetry, blending technology with the state’s oral traditions.
His goal is not to elevate his own voice, but to gather and amplify the chorus of others. “This laureateship does not belong to me. It belongs to New Mexico. It belongs to us, every voice that ever dared to speak,” says González.
Michelle Laflamme-Childs, executive director of New Mexico Arts, describes the state’s poet laureate program as community-centered. “It’s not just a figurehead role, where somebody just reads poems at official events,” says Laflamme-Childs. “This is really about how are you going to engage communities across the state in the reading and writing of poetry?”
Laflamme-Childs says González’s enthusiasm and long history of community engagement made him a natural fit for the position. “I think it was a combination for the committee of appreciating the work that Manuel is interested in doing,” says Laflamme-Childs. “And his experience in working with a huge variety of different kinds of communities, and his energy.”
From his early days performing shaky-voiced poems to his years of teaching and mentoring, his path has been one of persistence and purpose.
Now, as the state poet laureate, González wants to return that gift to bring poetry to those who need it most. He plans to visit as many of the state’s 33 counties and 23 recognized tribes as possible, from pueblos and reservations to libraries, schools and treatment centers. His mission is simple but profound: to remind New Mexicans that poetry belongs everywhere.
“New Mexico itself is poetry,”says González. “The music, the mountains, the wind, the food, our language, our grandmother’s prayers, we are the land. Those stories are what we have to pass down to our children.”
With Voces de la Tierra, González hopes to capture that living spirit and preserve it for future generations.
For González, poetry is how we remember who we are and as New Mexico’s newest poet laureate, he’s determined to make sure every voice has a place in that remembering.