A MELUS Interview: David Hernández, Chicago’s Unofficial Poet Laureate

In a 1993 article, David Hernandez described his poetic project as follows: "I came from a street background. My poetry reflects that. Twenty years ago I wanted to bring poetry out of the wine and cheese crowd, bring it to the streets, to the public. I've been pretty successful so far" (qtd. in Kelley 15). Called the "unofficial poet laureate of Chicago," Hernandez has been performing his poetry around the city for about thirty years. Hernandez was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico, on May 1, 1946, and migrated to Chicago with his family in 1955. He began performing his poetry in the late 1960s on playgrounds and street corners while working as a community activist and as the Minister of Information for La Gente Organization in Chicago. From there, Hernandez started performing at Hull House and other community centers around the city, as well as running El Taller, a community-based arts workshop. He founded Street Sounds in 1971 in order to "reach a bigger audience, do more festivals and make poetry more accessible to people and not intimidating the way it was, break down those barriers that say poetry only belongs to a few people" (qtd. in Lauerman, 17). He performed at Harold Washington's mayoral inauguration in 1987, at Washington's funeral, and at Chicago's sesquicentennial. Over the past thirty years, he has taught poetry workshops at the Uptown Community Clinic, in the Chicago Public Schools, and through community arts programs, such as Gallery Humboldt Park. Hernandez published his first book of poetry, Despertando/Waking Up, in 1971. It was followed by Collected Words for a Dusty Shelf (1973). He wrote an introduction for and was included in the 1973 anthology From the Belly of the Shark and he guest edited the Nosotros Anthology edition of the Revista Chicano-Riquena in 1977. In the past decade he has published three books, Satin City Lullaby (1987), Rooftop Piper (1991), and Elvis Is Dead but at Least He Isn't Gaining Any Weight (1995). His work has also been anthologized in Stray Bullets (1991) and Unsettling America (1994). He has starred in a movie titled David Hernandez--Street Poet and has recorded an album titled David Hernandez and Street Sounds (1981) as well as two audiocassettes, David Hernandez and Street Sounds Volumes I and II (1989). His poem, "Liquid Thoughts" was included on A Snake in the Heart (1994), a CD compilation of Chicago performance poets that is distributed by Tia Chucha Press. From 1995-1996, he wrote "Brown Baggit, "a column for U-Direct, a free, independent literary magazine that was published by Mary Kuntz Press. He is currently at work on a CD project with his band Street Sounds. I met with David Hernandez on November 8, 1997, to discuss his three-decade career as a poet, teacher, and community activist in Chicago. Interviewer: When did you start writing poetry? Hernandez: I started writing poetry when I was eleven years old because Miss Greenspan at Robert Morris School, Room 208, said that poets had a poetic license, that they didn't have to worry about commas and grammar. So I said, "Bingo! I'm a poet." Interviewer: So a career was born? Hernandez: Yeah. I really lucked out because I knew what I wanted to be. Well, actually I was going to be a minister. My parents wanted me to be a minister, but the ironic thing is that I became minister of information for a militant group later on. That's as far as I got with being a minister. Interviewer: For La Gente? Hernandez: Right, for La Genre. Interviewer: Maybe this would be a good point to talk about your work as Minister of Information for La Gente. What is La Genre and what did you do for them as Minister of Information? Hernandez: Well, what happened was that in 1967 I became a youth worker. I was working with the Commission of Youth Welfare for the City of Chicago and was working with gangs on the North Side. One of the gangs that I was working with was called the Latin Eagles. …