Natalia Rodriguez
Staff Writer
The University of La Verne’s creative writing program presented its Spring Poetry Reading on Wednesday in the Ludwick Center Sacred Space.
The reading featured poet J. Jennifer Espinoza, finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry and 2026 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and author of “I Don’t Want to Be Understood,” her newest poetry collection.
Additionally, four ULV students – Raquel Rivera, Kayla Taylor, Simone Warren and Jesus Velazquez – read their poetry to an audience of approximately 30 people.
The student writers read first, beginning with Taylor, followed by Rivera, Velazquez and then Warren.
Taylor, a junior creative writing major, said that her three poems, titled “Motherhood,” “Existence,” and “Woman,” all drew from her experiences as a black woman.
With “Existence,” she shared how she wants to ignore people’s negative views of her, and just let everything roll off her back. She also emphasized her desire to have people connect with her through her poetry.
“I just want everyone who reads my poems or listens to them to really connect with me on a deeper level outside of just me being the poet,” Taylor said. “I want to build that. . . almost like a familial connection.”
Rivera said that she enjoyed writing poetry for the class, and added that being a songwriter has improved in her ability to write lyrics. Her poems were titled “Worn-ridden Clown,” “Distance” and “There’s Still Time.”
“It was great to read … and have that support from the community,” Rivera, a junior English major, said. “I think people knowing a little bit about what motivates you and what inspires your art can really help you meet more people and start those conversations.”
Warren, a senior criminology major, read two poems titled “A Mother’s Love” and “The One Who Performs, Starring Miss Prima Donna.”
Despite studying criminology, Warren said she’s been a creative person ever since she was young.
“The One Who Performs…” materialized after a conversation she had with peers about when they first realized they were women, she said.
“We came up with this idea that we just have this obsession, this need to perform, and I was like, ‘Okay, so what happens when we go home? Do we ever truly stop performing,'” Warren said.
Velazquez read four pieces titled “Burn,” “Off the Wall,” “Light the Fire” and “The Cycle of the Interconnectedness of Humans.”
“I just think each of them individually are fantastic poets,” said Sara Ellen Fowler, adjunct professor of creative writing. “And I also appreciated how they contributed to the atmosphere of the class this whole semester, so I kind of wanted to celebrate that too, in this public way.”
Fowler, the students’ poems initially started as imitations based on annotations they did of other poems featured in Poetry Magazine. She said she enjoys seeing the development of “The Cycle of the Interconnectedness of Humans” over time.
Espinoza read a series of poems from her collection “I Don’t Want to Be Understood.” She described the collection as being a kind of memoir in verse.
In it, the narrator, a trans woman, is in the airport on the way to visit family for the first time after coming out. After an incident with the TSA, she runs away and begins to recall different stages of her life.
“I think early on, a lot of my poetry was very fragmentary, and it sort of gestured towards autobiography or details of my life, and it was all so opaque and kind of in pieces,” Espinoza said. “I feel like as I’ve grown as a poet and grown as a person, and integrated more of my own life narrative. . . the poetry that I write about myself starts to feel like it has more shape and form to it.”
To conclude the event, Espinoza then read two newer poems.
Her future projects include a novel and a nonfiction essay series—also a memoir.
Natalia Rodriguez can be reached at natalia.rodriguez@laverne.edu.
Natalia Rodriguez is a senior creative writing and communications major. She is a member of ULV's The Blank Page Writer's Club and has served as a staff member for the school's literary magazine, Prism Review. She is currently arts editor and a staff photographer for the Campus Times and previously served as a staff writer.
