The Nomadic Poet laureate of South Central: Nikolai Garcia
This week on ComiCentric we get together with an old friend who has established himself in the written world. Nikolai Garcia the nomadic poet laureate of Los Angeles. Nikolai grew up in South Central and has been writing since the age of 13 high school. having a taste for writing he continued his training by going to a magnet school in the San Fernando valley and even joining the journalism department at East Los Angeles college.
Since he has been writing poetry at a young age, inspired by an old episode of Rosanne. but it wasn’t until after college, with a brief hiatus in which he became a social activist, that he came to get serious about poetry. finding motivation after joining DSTLArts a nonprofit that helps guide artist and writers in the right direction by giving them a guidance and a platform where they can sharpen their skills.
This program helps Nikolai start writing again and even went as far as to help him produce his first chap book “Nuclear Shadows of Palm Trees” a book of his own poetry. Filled with poems of his own experiences living laughing and loving in Los Angeles. A page poet and a poet of place Nikolai’s’ ‘Felix the cat is the mayor of Los Angeles’ if one of my favorite poems. He manages to take a Los Angeles icon that overlooks the 110 freeway and elaborate it into an iconic visual that helps settle the sediment of Los Angeles.
Finding support by going to these workshops and meeting up with other of his fellow compatriots they would meet up at Patria coffee shop to spend time listening to each other and providing feedback and support.
Nikolai is currently working on his new chap book, poetry that is more influenced by music.
Slow in coming along due to his busy schedule its hard for him to find time to write. Besides being a writer, he currently is hosting his own poetry readings at places like Re/Arte in East Los Angeles, holding his own workshops in south Los Angeles, travels the coast doing different poetry readings and is also assistant editor for Dryland a literary journal created in South Central Los Angeles
Furthermore Nikolai is more than just a writer he is a reader of comics as well. He got into comics through like many at a young age via cartoons. Watching old spiderman cartoons lead him to buy his first issue of spiderman. A random issue set in the maximum carnage story arch. This led him to venture out and find comics any which way he could from the magazine rack at the local rite aid to the no longer available comic shops in the east of Hollywood. Nikolai’s passion grew and he eventually found shops and even got to venture to the shrine Auditorium for their annual show. He eventually started buying his comics from peter and hasn’t stop since.
We find that music is a big part of Nikolai’s life as well. We go off on a bit of a music tangent and we could have gone on forever. So, tune in and find out a bit more of our favorite poet laureate Nikolai Garcia.
XOXO