Platica Y Poetics S3E12 w/ Candy 'The Love Poet' Nieves

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 read from The Invention, a poem that honors Mayan cosmology and the brilliance of her ancestors, who introduced the world to the number zero, an ancesntral reminder of the cosmic entered the room. Our discussion on how the Maya tradition of understanding time, love, and purpose, not as linear, but as cyclical, infinite, and rooted. Candy’s voice reclaims space for both Mayan and Mestiza identity, weaving in Spanish and pre-colombian references to confront erasure and speak back to colonizing narratives. She exhibited that translanguaging isn’t just a stylistic choice but of survival, sovereignty, and reclamation. In Las Atravesadas and I, Woman, she declared “I will preach, teach, break your master’s tools”, a direct homage to Audre Lorde’s revolutionary spirit and Gloria Anzaldúa, speaking about how the word atravesar means to cut through, and how “las atravesadas” has become those women who cross spiritual, cultural, and societal thresholds, and expectations. Women often shamed for their boldness, and evolution. Candy writes from the body, griefs, pleasures, and sacred thresholds. The spirit is a capsule of sacred ancestral knowledge, navigating decolonial terrain. It reminds, it prays, resists.