Carlo Matos has published three books of poetry and one book of fiction. His poems, stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Iowa Review, PANK, Another Chicago Magazine, and Paper Darts, among many others. Carlo is a professor at the City Colleges of Chicago and a teaching artist for the Rooster Moans Poetry Coop. He has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Fundação Luso-Americana (FLAD). A former cage fighter, Carlo now trains fighters when he's not entertaining clients at the Chicago Poetry Bordello or writing poems on demand as a member of Poems While You Wait. For more about his work, please visit carlomatos.blogspot.com. Follow him on twitter @CarloMatos46.

It's Best Not To Interrupt Her Experiments

Literature & Fiction

Matos, Carlo

Poetry

Negative Capability Press

<p>We Prefer the Damned, the 11th book from Carlo Matos, features poems exploring bisexual relationships, erasure and denial. Matos, equally celebrated for his fiction, poetry and prose-poetry, pushes toward a new grammar for intersectional identities as the poems in We Prefer the Damned work to integrate his Portuguese-American heritage and bi+ lived experience. Through language used and punctuated in fresh ways, Matos finds the structures and syntax to embrace past and present, old self and new self. His toughness as a former MMA fighter turns to the finessed strength of rigorous self-examination with these poems. The collection embraces the true complexities of the bi+/pan/poly experience, particularly accusations of not being queer enough or, at the same time, of being too sexual and incapable of monogamy, none of which is true. These poems also trace the boundaries where such issues interact with a working-class, child-of-immigrants upbringing, in which the very words for describing bisexuality did not exist. Recent research from Gallup (February 2021) reveals that Americans identifying as LGBT make up 5.6% of the U.S. population, a substantial increase from years past. Of those, 54.6% identify as bisexual. Gallup estimates more than 3% of all U.S. adults now self-identify as bisexual.</p>

We Prefer the Damned

Unbound Edition Press

This anthology brings together fiction, poetry, recipes, and memoirs by some of the best Portuguese-Canadian and Portuguese-American writers to narrate the Portuguese Diasporic experience in North America. These works focus on lived experiences, shared spaces and the ethnic identity through which this distinctive culture is lived in the United States of America and Canada, both of which have long been home to significant and vibrant Portuguese communities that arrived roughly in the same waves of migration. In this book, you will find a range of texts full of passion, wit, and poise, even as they wrestle with a sense of loss about the passing of the torch from generation to generation, the attempts at integration into the mainstream, and the often overlooked third space or otherness often felt by Portuguese-Canadians and Portuguese-Americans. There are also stories about the power gained from the preservation of cultural practices that promote a strong sense of self and strengthen family and community ties, and also the awareness that success can come from understanding one's legacy. We would like to emphasize that even though this anthology was compiled from the perspective of the Portuguese Diaspora to North America, the result goes beyond that community and reflects larger complexities of articulations in Canadian and American everyday life and identity that will resonate with people of any ancestry in these countries. Among the many writers included are Katherine Vaz, George Monteiro, Irene Marques, Anthony Barcellos, August Mark Vaz, Millicent Borges Accardi, Sam Pereira, Darrell Kastin and Frank X. Gaspar. Each of them offers a unique view on the heterogeneity, intricateness, and vibrancy of experiences of the Portuguese Diasporas in Canada and the United States.

Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada: An Anthology

Gonçalves, Luís

United States

Boavista Press

This hard-hitting collection of creative essays explores the beauty and pain embedded in some of our favorite rough-and-tumble pastimes--roller derby, mixed martial arts, and teaching. Carlo Matos ties it all together with gusto, in a book that will send you reeling to the canvas again and again, and make you return every time for more.

The Quitters

Essays & Correspondence

Tortoise Books

<p>What happens when the band falls apart at the very moment it's about to make it big? Carlo Matos, in his tender yet unflinching novel, As Malcriadas, explores the aftermath of the dream's fragmentation. Yet he manages to find beauty in its pieces. With language as polished and sharp as a fine-bladed sword, we see-with clarity-the sadness, joy, pain, and love that lingers in the ruins.</p>

As Malcriadas: Or Names We Inherit

New Meridian Arts