Rodrigo Toscano

An experimental poet, dialogist, essayist, and labor-environmental activist, Rodrigo Toscano is originally from San Diego, California. He is the author of eleven books including The Cut Point (Counterpath, 2023); The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2022); In Range (Counterpath, 2019); Explosion Rocks Springfield (Fence Books, 2016); Deck of Deeds (Counterpath, 2012); Collapsible Poetics Theater (Fence Books, 2008), a National Poetry Series selection; To Leveling Swerve (Krupskaya, 2004); Platform (Atelos, 2003); The Disparities (Green Integer, 2002); and Partisans (O Books, 1999).

His poetic works range from constructivist lyricism and polyvocality, to intra-genre writing involving cut-up forms of conversation, coupled with physical movement. Throughout his work, there is an interrogative momentum that crosses borders: the borders between poetic and political action, between the made thing and its making, between speech and theater, between languages, between social change and its provocation.

Toscano’s work has been included in the anthologies Dialectical Imaginaries (2018), BAX:BestAmerican Experimental Poetry 2015, Angels of the Americlypse (2014), Against Expression (2011), Diasporic Avant-Gardes (2009), Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 (2009), The Best of Fence (2009), TheBest American Poetry2004, In the Criminal’s Cabinet: An Nthology of Poetry and Fiction (2004), among many others. His work has been translated into seven different languages, and his radio pieces have aired on stations across the country. Toascano was the recipient of a New York State Fellowship in Poetry, and he won the Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry in 2019.

For his Collapsible Poetics Theater project (2004–2010), a traveling “test of poetry” at the intersection of poetry and theater, he served as artistic director and writer for volunteer performances. His plays and body-movement poems have been performed at the REDCAT in Los Angeles, Links Hall in Chicago, Play on Words: A Poets Theater Festival at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York, and elsewhere.

Toscano works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Communications Workers of America, and National Day Laborers Organizing Network. He works on educational and training projects that involve environmental and labor justice, health and safety culture transformation, and immigrant worker rights. He lives in New Orleans.