A Conversation with Jose Hernandez Diaz—WSR Contributing Poetry Editor
Water~Stone Review is a collaborative project of students, faculty, and staff at Hamline University Creative Writing Programs. In addition to working with our faculty, and to fulfill a larger initiative of providing a place for new/emerging and underrepresented voices at Water~Stone Review, we now have rotating contributing editor
This is a wonderful opportunity for our graduate student assistant editors to collaborate with renown writers in order to expand our reach and further innovation. Past Contributing Editors include Sun Yung Shin, Keith Lesmeister, Sean Hill, Carolyn Holbrook, Mona Power, Kao Kalia Yang, and Ed Bok Lee.
In this post we introduce Vol. 28 Contributing Poetry Editor, Jose Hernandez Diaz.
Welcome! We’re thrilled to have you as a Contributing Poetry Editor for Volume 28, after publishing your poem, “Ni de aquí, ni de allá: ni de la pinche luna” two years ago. What is your writing and editing process like when you’re in creation-mode?
Lately I have been teaching generative workshops with my students. Therefore, I have been responding to the prompts as well alongside my students. My philosophy is just to get the words out there in the initial inspiration without overthinking and then go back and edit until I am satisfied with it. After that, over the next couple of weeks, there might be additional minimal edits as well and then it is ready to submit.
As a professor at the University of Tennessee, what are some important writing techniques you impart to your students?
Get rid of the pressure with initial creation by acknowledging that it is a first draft. It likely won’t be perfect. Like building a house, first get out the foundation and then add the fine details later.
I also encourage them to think about the shape and form of their work. Oftentimes we are saying the right thing, evocative things, however, it is just not the most flattering line break or form. Like going to a job interview and saying the right things but dressed in flip flops and a t-shirt.
So, I encourage them to think about line break and form… as well as more is not always more. Sometimes brevity and condensed aesthetic can aid the mystery and intrigue of a poem. Lastly, specificity of imagery can oftentimes lead to immediacy, texture and pull a reader in.
When reading, what makes a piece of poetry stand out?
Maybe an exciting title, striking imagery, captivating voice, exquisite sounds, haunting storyline or imagery, emotional connection, intellectual stimulation, mystery, visceral fortitude.
What projects are you working on now?
I have a new manuscript, “New Year’s Eve at the Museum of Somber Paintings” that I am fine-tuning and submitting. Also, I have about 45 new poems that I will eventually organize into another manuscript.
I am enjoying teaching undergrads at the University of Tennessee as a Visiting Writer. Watching a lot of college football. Go Vols, Bears and Trojans. Dodgers playoff baseball is heating up. Ready for the Lakers new season. Trying to spread love, positivity and hope.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025). He has been published in The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Iowa Review, Huizache, The Missouri Review, The Nation, Poetry, The Progressive, Poets.org, The Southern Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has taught creative writing at the University of California at Riverside and online for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, and The Writer’s Center. He has been the Poet in Residence at the Carolyn Moore Writers House with Portland Community College. Currently, he is the Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.
