by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
Poetry is not about victory for slam poet Damien Flores.
Flores, along with UNM Lobo Slam teammates Hakim Bellamy, Aaron Cuffee and Carlos Contreras, took second place among 20 teams in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational at Eastern Michigan University on April 7.
"We finished in second place, but all of these different teams that we have competed against were coming up and were impressed with our work and gave us praise for staying true to what we were doing, the things we were saying and the subject matter we approached," he said. "Winning wasn't everything, and it didn't matter. What mattered was people got to hear us."
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Flores started writing poetry when he attended Albuquerque High School.
"One of my teachers brought in a local Albuquerque poet, Levi Romero, to do a presentation, and I got into Chicano and Hispano
poetry there," he said. "The following year, one of the slam poets from Albuquerque - Kenn Rodriguez - went to my high school, and he taught a workshop with another English teacher. From then on, I was with a group of students who were really into it."
Flores, author of the poetry book A Novena of Mud, said his writing is constantly evolving.
"It's pretty various depending on certain subject matter," he said. "When I was young, my mom had passed away when I was 15. I was kind of trying to do self-healing through writing and try to get all my feelings out."
Flores said stand-up comedy is a source of inspiration, as well.
"I had a little routine of my own that was kind of funny, so I imply a lot of humor in a lot of my writing," he said. "If I have funny stories, I can figure out a way to transform those into poetry."
Today, Flores tries to capture older generations' stories and retell them through poetry, he said.
"It's like my mother's generation, my grandparents' generation before they get too old, die out and these stories are lost," he said. "It's sort of like taking on a poetic historian kind of thing. So, a lot of my writing has a lot of New Mexico culture in it and a lot of me, with humor."
Though he has several sources of inspiration, Flores said it comes when he least expects it.
"Every once in a while there's that moment where an, 'aha,' or idea comes into my mind, and I either grab a pen, or I call my own cell phone and leave a voice mail of lines that I'm thinking of," he said.
Flores said he looks forward to next year's College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, which will be held at UNM. For now, he'll keep writing.
"I've always loved writing, and when I was young, I always wanted to be a published author," he said. "I had some stories that I wanted to tell that I wanted a lot more people to know. With poetry and writing in general, everyone has their own stories. You have to tell them, or else nobody is going to."
