Empower House Radio KXEP-LP

Platica Y Poetics S4E2: Alex Salinas 08.09.2025 56:17 ↓

In Episode 2 of Season 4 of Plática y Poetics, the only thing missing was a bucket of butter popcorn and a nostalgic 80’s movie playing in the background. My plática with Alex Salinas, author of Hispanic Sonnets, a striking collection that blends humor, vulnerability, and cultural critique. With its bold red cover, reminiscent of a retro Talking Heads album, it immediately draws the eye, much like...

Platica Y Poetics S3E12 w/ Candy 'The Love Poet' Nieves 31.07.2025 1:02:23 ↓

Candy ‘The Love Poet’ Nieves In opening this interview, I honored the voices of Indigenous poets by reading from Enriqueta Lunez—whose words in Tsotsil reflect the depth and dignity of oral traditions that long predate colonization, a perfect segway to enter our plática with Candy “The Love Poet” Nieves, whose work pulses with ancestral memory, sacred sensuality, and poetic resistance. As Candy re...

Platica Y Poetics S4E1 w/ Rita La ‘Golondrina’ Ortiz 31.07.2025 55:40 ↓

The smell of lingering PEMEX gas fumes, fresh masa on comals, along with echoes of traffic horns resonated in the studio as my interview began to take flight. I had the honor of interviewing La Golondrina, Rita Ortiz, a multidisciplinary artist whose work transcends genre and boarders. I opened with a poetic offering, by reading Coral Bracho’s Desde esta luz, a piece whose sensory lyricism, spirit...

Platica Y Poetics S3E11 w/ Diamond Braxton 16.07.2025 58:48 ↓

Diamond Braxton My plática with Braxton just lacked a cafecito and a sliver of pastelito as we divulged into queer legacy, creative intuition, and building literary home. I opened with a reading of ‘Sobre La Mesa’, my personal prose vignette ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ queer version, knowing the culinary connection would take us down a sensory lane. Diamond, from the Gulf Coast, has shaped her work...

Platica Y Poetics S3E10 w/ Dr. Hector Garza 16.07.2025 1:03:15 ↓

Dr. Hector Garza In a wholesome and intimate conversation, Dr. Héctor Garza, a celebrated San Antonio artist and educator, opened up to us about his lifelong journey as a creator rooted in borderland identity, queer expression, and pedagogical purpose. Known for his vibrant fusion of Mexican iconography with American pop culture, Garza’s work transcends boundaries—most notably in his reinterpretat...

Platica Y Poetics S3E9 w/ Liz Coronado Castillo 23.05.2025 59:37 ↓

Queer Lineage, Landed Memory, and Healing Narratives were the themes in an intimate and layered platica inspired by Gabriela Mistral’s “Dame la Mano,” with playwright and poet Liz Coronado Castillo to explore the intersections of queerness, ancestry, and storytelling. Just as Mistral’s work offers a quiet but potent manifesto of unity and sensual resistance, Liz’s voice emerges from the soil of We...

Platica Y Poetics S3E8 w/Osmani Ochoa 12.05.2025 1:00:38 ↓

Migrant Futurism, Poetics, and Survival were themes in my cosmic resonant conversation with Osmani Ochoa—queer Mexican-Xicanx poet, editor, and immigrant rights organizer. He shared insight into their creative and political vision, deeply informed by lived experience, collective struggle, and radical imagination. Their forthcoming chapbook, ‘How to Survive an Asthma Attack in a Climate Apocalypse’...