Artist Profile: Steven Espada Dawson

Photo of Steven by Taylor Kirby

Steven Espada Dawson is the author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025). From East Los Angeles and the son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Ruth Lilly Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. His poems appear in many journals and have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as poet laureate.

What other artistic practices have you tried/do you enjoy? How (do they?) do those other arts support your writing practices?

Apart from occasionally noodling on the guitar, piano, and drums—and a short (and wholly unsuccessful!) charcoal phase in college—I haven't spent a ton of time learning other artforms. I am so lucky to get to work with artists of all kinds in my current role at Arts + Literature Laboratory. Most days I get to talk to screenprinters and sculptors and filmmakers and musicians in some capacity. They can receive the world in ways that I can't, and I find it humbling and healthy.

Besides writing, the closest thing to an artistic practice I really dedicated myself to was skateboarding. I love the way you have to negotiate with your terrain, your body, making potentially life-altering decisions in split seconds. I love the way that it asks you to see a curb, a set of stairs, a hill a little differently. I found it incredibly challenging and fulfilling in a way I hadn't felt before writing. That decision-making happens at a different pace than writing, but I still think learning to trust your intuition is crucial for makers of all kinds—and especially poets who like to leap from thought to thought or play with spatial arrangement on the page. I had to quit skating after a serious injury, but those lessons persist.

Photo by James Kreul

What have been some surprises, and highlights, of your role as Madison's Poet Laureate so far? 

I've loved getting the chance to talk about poetry on the radio and via local interviews, but the definitive highlight of my first few months was working with the Odyssey Project at UW. They provide accredited college-level classes for adults facing economic barriers—including providing childcare and meals during class. As someone who grew up low-income, and the first person in my immediate family to graduate high school, I felt right at home in that classroom. Those are my people. I love being in rooms where you don't have to explain what it's like to have that kind of background. The richness of detail and the vivid conjuring of stories from those students is something that has stayed with me.

Would you be willing to share one of your first poetry event experiences?

Late in high school, my then partner and I borrowed-without-asking (stole) her sister's busted-down camaro and drove it to the Mercury Cafe in downtown Denver. "The Merc" looked like if a high school theater teacher had 45-minutes to decorate a bar. It was cozy and basementy with low lighting and mismatched furniture, paint splattered on the floor. I remember a stuffed animal boa constrictor wearing a feather boa (yes, a boa wearing a boa), hanging from the ceiling rafters. The stage was small and made smaller by a player piano on it. Thick velvet curtains hiding a brick wall behind the mic. Anyway, there was a regular there that had a tradition of giving nicknames to poets that read at the open-mic. I was nervous, out of my element, and truly don't remember my reading at all, but I'll never forget that man sliding me a torn piece of notebook paper with "The Word" written on it.

Photo of Steven reading at podium with microphone, taken by James Kreul.

What are 2 to 3 exhibitions, concerts, books and/or book talks, spoken word events and/or films you're hoping to check out this season in Wisconsin or virtually?

Art Lit Lab just launched LAB^4, a community curation project where interdisciplinary teams of Madison artists get to curate a summer's worth of programming. I've met with the teams, and they are wonderful—talented and ambitious. I would really keep this on your radar!

I’m already thinking about spring, and I'm really excited about a virtual reading I have in a few months with beloved Kaveh Akbar. It's on April 19th as part of the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center's Poets in Print series. My debut poetry collection, Late to the Search Party, comes out May 6, so this reading will be a good chance to hear a few poems before you commit to buying it!