Congratulations to 2017 Freedom Plow Recipient, Christopher Soto (aka Loma)

As they do every other year, Split This Rock is awarding the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism. This year's recipient is Christopher Soto (who also goes by Loma). He's the author of Sad Girl Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), a founding editor of Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, and co-founder of the Undocupoets Campaign, which works to provide undocumented poets with the financial resources necessary to support their writing. In this interview with Melissa Bittner, published at the Split This Rock blog, Soto extolls the virtue of laughter, necessary to sustain his activist lifestyle. "The current political climate has made me take my laughter and joy more seriously," Soto writes. From there:

If I do not find a place to enjoy political protest then I will burn out. Thus, when marching on the streets I am singing and dancing and carrying poems and hugging my friends. I have been marching and protesting for over a decade now and I know that I can keep on fighting, as long as I’m able to find pleasure and healing while resisting too. The struggle is serious but my activism must also be sustainable.

I think the current political climate has provided a great opportunity for innovation. What new and creative and fun ways can we resist? For example, I made a GoFundMe account the other day and wrote a letter to Betsy DeVos there, asking her to pay my student debt. This page is a small way that I’ve been able to resist her online presence and also be silly.

Read the rest of their conversation here. To purchase tickets to the awards ceremony, which takes place on April 21 at the Arts Club of Washington, click here.