Ekiwah Adler-Belendez

As all real poetry is, his poems exist beyond the empirical, the rational, the obedient, the quiet or, even worse, the quieted. He brims with exuberance…To speak of him, his spirit and his work, is a gift in itself. - Mary Oliver from the Preface to Ekiwah’s book, “The Coyote’s Trace.”

For Ekiwah Adler Beléndez, poetry is a light passed from hand to hand in the dark. A form of nourishment for the soul. Born in the Mexican mountain village of Amatlán, where he still lives today, surrounded by moss and stone, Ekiwah, whose name means "Warrior," in Purépucha, came into the world ten weeks early, fighting for breath. He was born with cerebral palsy. At three, Ekiwah often heard the mountains of his hometown speaking to him, and he answered. He didn't think of this as poetry, but his mother, a homeopathic doctor and remarkable human being in her own right, would scribble his words down. At twelve years old, Ekiwah astonished the literary world in Mexico by publishing his first poetry collection, Soy (I Am). His second and third volumes of poetry were published when he was thirteen and sixteen respectively. 

When Ekiwah says that poetry and generosity saved his life, he means it metaphorically, and literally. As a teenager, he was diagnosed with an acute and potentially life-threatening form of scoliosis. The expensive surgery he urgently needed was beyond what the family could afford. When Dr. Nuzzo , a pediatric orthopedic surgeon in the United States was contacted for further advice, Ekiwah's mother had the inspiration to include her son's poetry books, along with his x-rays. As fate would have it, Dr. Nuzzo was a poet himself and Ekiwah's gifts compelled him to act. He raised the necessary funds and secured the additional medical support needed. Ekiwah flew into New York for the ten-hour surgery. He remembers talking poetry with the team of doctors right until the moment of going under. 

Today, Ekiwah moves through the world in a wheelchair he once called his, “steel-tempered mistress.”  Poetry is his ultimate vehicle. “I cannot walk by myself, yet in my poems I not only walk, but give myself license to have eight legs and experience movement.” For him, disability is not a battle to be won but “a long and complicated love story,” to be lived, with all the patience, intimacy, and vulnerability that love requires. And, “Every great love story,” says Ekiwah, “deserves to be told.” His work reminds us that a staircase can become a ramp when we choose to walk together with listening hearts.

In a society where seven out of ten people with disabilities remain unemployed, he aspires to bring forward the voices of those who too often go unheard. Again and again he has witnessed how poetry becomes a key to freedom. He has seen young men in Mexico City prisons rise before guards and peers sharing trembling verses, breaking silence with lines that glimmer like moonlight slipping through bars. For him, sharing poetry in diverse contexts, is emblematic of our innermost sense of freedom. His readings in prisons, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and beyond, often lead to conversations around creativity, the sensory wisdom of nature, the taboos that people with disabilities face in inhabiting their sexuality openly, and what it means to foster a truly inclusive world. 

Equally at ease writing in Spanish and English, he does not privilege one language over the other. No matter the tongue he’s writing in, to Ekiwah, both the writing process and impulse, "continue to be an incredible mystery to me. And it’s because it’s a mystery that I keep going back to it. Writing is this elixir of mystery and silence.” His books — Palabras Inagotables, Weaver, The Coyote’s Trace (with a prologue by Mary Oliver), and Love on Wheels — chart a path of devotion to attention. Mary Oliver once offered him a gift of guidance: “Ekiwah, remember, behind every woman and every man there is a source of sadness.” Those words, casually shared in conversation, have remained with him. In his approach, living itself is the poem, the one that all other poems point toward.

Ekiwah's work has been honored with cultural grants, featured on Dateline NBC, and recognized with the George Garrett Award for Distinguished Teaching in Literature. Yet he's equally defined by simpler pleasures: he calls himself 'half Mexican, half Gringo,' delights in semi-sweet chocolate, peaches, oxygen, and sunbathing. He treasures friendship as a language, takes joy in embodying poems with audiences, and above all, loves being Lucio’s proud father.

“To be a poet,” Ekiwah says, “is like being a tamale vendor.” In his basket are heaped tamales, sweet, salty, spicy, and ones with bitter leaves. Everyone can find what they need.

Join Pavi Mehta and Haleh Gafori in conversation with Ekiwah Adler Beléndez — poet, teacher, father, translator, and tamalero of the soul — who invites us to taste life as the poem we are already living.