Adrian Ernesto Cepeda : part one

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of the full-length poetry collection Flashbacks & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press and the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red Mare Press.

His poetry has been featured in The Yellow Chair Review, Frontier Poetry, poeticdiversity, The Wild Word, The Fem, Rigorous, Palette Poetry, The Yellow Chair Review and Lunch Ticket’s Special Issue: Celebrating 20 Years of Antioch University Los Angeles MFA in Creative Writing.

One of his poems was named the winner of Subterranean Blue Poetry’s 2016 "The Children of Orpheus" Anthology Contest and two of his poems “Buzz Me” and “Estranged Fruit” were nominated for Best of the Net in 2015 and 2016.

Adrian is an LA Poet who has a BA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and he is also a graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and their cat Woody Gold. You can connect with Adrian on his website: http://www.adrianernestocepeda.com/

Photo credit: Rachael A. Warecki

1.      What are you working on?

Currently, I am working on a manuscript on poems for my Mami. My mother passed away in November. It’s been so difficult because for years she was a champion of my poetry. She gave me the gift of la poesia. And now that my first chapbook, So Many Flowers, So Little Time has been published for Red Mare and my full-length poetry collection Flashes & Verses…Becoming Attractions just released, published by Unsolicited Press, she is not here to see my books come to life. For years, I sent my Mami poems for her birthday and Christmas. My Papi gave me an envelope of those poems and I’ve written so many more since her passing, I am putting them together in a book in her honor. Still needs work. Mother’s Day was tough for me. So many milestones of mourning left for the first year. It is slowly coming together but not ready.

            In the meantime, I have two manuscripts of erotic love poems that I am editing and ready to shop around. Poems that would be perfect for couples to share. The themes of these collections reflect Lawrence Ferlinghetti who once famously said, “Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.” This is where my creative voice comes in, trying to reach my reader somewhere between imagination, fantasy and desire.