When Director of Tickner Writing Center Kelsey Carper discovered José Olivarez and his poem “Let’s Get Married” while searching for a poem to be read at her wedding ceremony last year, she knew she wanted to invite him to be the next Mountcastle lecturer. In her introduction, she called his poetry “laugh-out-loud funny and achingly poignant.”

Olivarez said he started his poetry writing “in the tradition of performance poetry” and encouraged the audience of Upper School students and faculty to “react to the poems. We are not in a library. … It’s helpful to me … if you share whatever energy I’m giving right back.”

The Harvard graduate, who is the son of Mexican immigrants, recited several of his poems, beginning with “Ode to Tortillas.” The last line was: “If I have children, I will teach them about tortillas but I’m sure they will want McDonald’s.”

Since he was visiting an all-boys school, many of the poems he shared featured themes of boyhood, manhood, masculinity, and friendship, as well as his relationship with his father. He also touched on his marriage when he shared a piece he wrote for his wife about washing dishes while she was in the next room called “Down to My Elbows,” followed by her response about listening to him play video games called “Rebuttal.”

“It has been one of the most liberating things in my life,” Olivarez began before he read his final poem of the assembly. “Not to write but to be able to find a place where I can write down the things that I was scared to say publicly ... and later had the ability to share some of those things with people I really love … I hope that all of you get a chance to practice that even if you don’t become poets or writers... no matter what you decide to do … that you give yourselves the opportunity to be uncomfortable at times and to really let people know what they mean to you.”

In the Q&A that followed, Olivarez spoke about the intentionality of including Spanish words in some of his writing, the thought that goes into writing titles for his poems, and his level of expertise playing the video game, NBA 2K.

Watch the assembly below.