Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Amy M. Alvarez
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC). We hope using our platform to highlight this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to celebrate and support emerging women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities; featured poems will be from poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
June 2026 Poet: Amy M. Alvarez
Chiba
My father called me chiba, mi primer hijo—
tomboy, my first son—knuckling the crown
of my head, he said I sat too mannish—
my knees splayed, forearms on thighs,
watching the Knicks on the couch
in his apartment. When I began my model-
plane phase, he came to my mother's house
to help me build an A-1o bomber—each piece
primordial green. We labored over landing gear,
inhaling foul rubber cement.
He mentioned boyhood dreams of building planes,
watching the work of his hands soar instead of clunking
to life like the radiators and refrigerators he worked on.
I told him I was proud of how he fixed what was broken.
My father half-smiled before burying himself in silence
and instructions. We added decals, painted a shark-
toothed mouth on the plane's snubbed nose.
Source
Makeshift Altar, University Press of Kentucky, 2024
Poet Bio
Amy M. Alvarez is the author of Makeshift Altar (University Press of Kentucky, 2024), winner of the 2025 American Book Award and the 2025 CariCon Poetry Prize. She is also co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (WVU Press, 2023).
Born in New York City to a Jamaican mother and a Puerto Rican father, Alvarez explores themes of Blackness, Indigeneity, gender, place, ecology, belonging, and social justice in her work. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poem-A-Day (Academy of American Poets), Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere.
Her honors and fellowships include CantoMundo, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Macondo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet while living and teaching in West Virginia.
Before entering higher education, Alvarez taught in public high schools in the Bronx and Boston. She is currently Associate Professor of the Practice at Boston College and serves on the faculty of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program.