New poet laureate showcases Fresno communities in his work. He ‘redefines fearlessness’

Fresno will soon get comfortable – or, maybe not – with its newest poet laureate who unapologetically sprinkles cuss words into his poems as if they were as essential as periods and commas, and whose mind spouts the rawness of working class figures with dreams and stories that are as much a part of the city as raisins, tri tip and William Saroyan.

Meet Joseph Ríos, named by Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer as the city’s sixth poet laureate on April 20.

The 35-year-old Ríos doesn’t hold back on his thoughts, which scream at you through the pages of his 2017 debut book ‘Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations,’ or escape from his brain while speaking at a reception for him hosted by the Fresno Arts Council.

“Those of you that might know my work know that I’m not afraid of saying bad words,” said Ríos at the Thursday evening reception.

Ríos was officially introduced as poet laureate for the next two years at the city council’s meeting Thursday morning, where he stood alongside Dyer and the council.

“Our mayor is quite an intimidating figure,” said Ríos.

“I grew up watching him as a kid like this towering figure on the podium, like, you know, wearing a police uniform that was one size too small,” said Ríos, who is 6-foot-2 and a former football player at Clovis High.

That awe vanished once Ríos realized he towered over Dyer.

“I’ll just keep doing what I do,” said Ríos. “I’ll say a few less f-words, but I’m just going to keep being the writer that I have been.”

Who is this poet/author who follows in the footsteps of former Fresno poet laureates like James Tyner, Lee Herrick, S. Bryan Medina, Marisol Baca, and Megan Anderson Bohigian?

Herrick, his poetry professor at Fresno City College, said Ríos “redefines fearlessness with a signature talent and unapologetic conviction.” He wrote that in Ríos’ debut book.

“The agile flurry of his storytelling is dazzling: Zapata and Lorca, Shakespeare and Borges, Rocky Balboa, family and tías … This is duende and fire, language as pugilism. This is a new poetics at the next level,” Herrick wrote.

Carissa García, who nominated Ríos for the honorary title, said his poems “are of loss and growth of the mundane and the idiosyncratic of sharing story, memory and music through generations and of the foul-mouthed but witty language of a younger generation.”

“They are poems filled with different communities that make up Fresno and that showcase the unique culture of place,” said García, a Chicano Studies professor at Fresno State and filmmaker.

Fresno Arts Council executive director Lilia Gonzales-Chávez, responding to a man who yelled “That guy’s good!” after Ríos read a few of his works at the Thursday reception, said, “He’s better than good. He’s amazing!”

Ríos was weaned on the storytelling of his grandmother Helen Ruiz, who embellished her gossip with each telling.

“I didn’t realize what was happening. But like, you know, years later as a writer, I’m like, ‘Oh, Grandma was practicing revision,’” said Ríos. “You know what I mean? She was making the story better every time.”

Ríos – who read ‘Fresno Is’ after his city council introduction and also at the Fresno Arts Council reception – credits his grandmother, who grew up in Old Clovis, for the early lessons on how to deliver poetry.

The movement of her hands, the pauses of words, placing her hands on her knees, and leaning into the listener, said Ríos, became his first “workshop.”

Ríos hopes to motivate young and soon-to-be poets and writers much like how Herrick and Medina inspired him to take a detour from being a journalist.

While researching at the main library downtown for a school project, Ríos sat down and read the works of Andrés Montoya, Juan Felipe Herrera, Phil Levine and others.

“It was right then that I was like, you know, no offense, but I was like, I don’t want to be a journalist anymore,” he said. “I want to be a poet. Like, you know, like I’m in the wrong racket.”

Ríos wants others to feel the same about literature and how to describe Fresno and its people with words that “are worthy of the page.”

“I hope that in the two years that I’m doing this, that I create space for some poet to feel more like a poet or begin to call themselves a poet,” said Ríos. “Maybe one, two, three dozen (of them) hopefully begin to feel confident enough to say, ‘Hey, I’m a poet. I want to be a poet.’”