Writers and Their Cherished Hobbies: Steven Espada Dawson
I talk to Steven Espada Dawson, poet laureate of Madison, WI, about playing pool.
Welcome to the inaugural Writers and Their Cherished Hobbies interview! I’m glad you’re here. I can’t think of a better way to kickoff this series than by talking to my friend, and Madison, WI, poet laureate, Steven Espada Dawson.
I first met Steven in March 2023. I was visiting UW-Madison, trying to decide if the school would be the right fit for me as a prospective MFA student. In between meetings, wandering the halls of the Creative Writing department, I peered my head into a room with its door open and inside were two WICW fellows—Steven and the inimitable poet, Chessy Normile—reading poems they had discovered that week to each other. I remember this moment fondly not because of the poems, but because of how eager they were to have me join them, how curious they were about my life and writing, in a way that felt more genuine and less veiled recruiting strategy.
Steven and I would become friends in the fall of that year when I moved to Madison. We worked alongside each other at the Arts + Literature Laboratory—a free-to-all community arts space in Madison—where we put on the Watershed Reading Series once a month. And because Art Lit Lab was just down the block from a huge pool hall (shout out Brass Ring), we often found ourselves there after a reading, with all our friends crowded around a pool table. This is where I learned just how good Steven is at the game. I don’t mean like a casual, “oh yeah, I’m pretty good at pool,” no. I’m talking four balls sunk in a single turn. I’m talking trick shots. I’m talking masters degree in physics. So when I began reaching out to writers in my life and beyond for this project, I was particularly delighted when Steven offered to talk about his history with pool.
For those who may not be familiar, here’s a quick bio:
Steven Espada Dawson is the author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025). From East Los Angeles and the son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. His poems appear in many journals and have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance. He has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country and lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as poet laureate.
Now, without further ado, here is my interview with Steven on his cherished hobby: playing pool——
Jonny Teklit: Okay so you’re, like, the best pool player I know. And anytime someone is amazing at something, I always want to know more about their relationship to the thing. So set the scene for me: How long have you been playing pool? Why did you start playing pool? What drew you to it? How often do you do it? Walk me through it.
Steven Espada Dawson: While my mom was working one of her handful of jobs, she'd throw my brother cash to "babysit" me. We'd go to bars and he'd perch me in the arcade section while he poolsharked strangers, just within view. I remember being in awe of the way he would alchemize babysitting money into something that could sustain our time there. Between games he'd break dollars into quarters, so I could keep playing. (I wrote a poem about it here.) There would be times where people got mad, starting yelling—a couple times someone would flash a handgun. I learned to be ready to leave quickly. I think that excitement (anxiety? possibility?) is still baked into the game for me.
I started playing myself as a teenager, then had a short-lived pool shark phase of my own in college before being asked to leave too many of my favorite spots. Many years ago I had to pawn my pool sticks to keep my water hot. Ever since, I've taken pool less seriously. Combined with having more reasons to wake up in the morning, pool has become less a competition and more of a way to connect spontaneously with friends (including transcendent award-winning poet Jonny Teklit).
JT: Haha, oh please.
SED: I'm not a great pool player anymore, and if you put a five on the table I'll show you.
JT: It’s wild to hear you say you aren’t a great pool player now, when you’re still better than anyone I know. Who/what have been your pool teachers? And what, if anything, has pool taught you?
SED: Aside from my brother, I had two primary pool teachers: Jeff and Mahmoud, the only two people that would continually humble me at my college dorm's single pool table. Our relationships were tied so much to this singular place that I don't know if I ever knew their last names. They were my Cher and Seal of pool.
Jeff was a walking mystery. Tall with the chiseled face of a Prada model, but always dressed in pajamas. He'd walk around drinking black coffee straight from a pot. I never saw him without it. He was, by his own admission, a professional lucid dreamer that would retire early every night to live out his best life in his dreams. He was the most wanted man at the dorms, rejecting every attempt at flirting in exchange for sleep. I don't know where he learned to be good at pool. I'm not even sure he enjoyed it. It sometimes felt like something to do to pass time before his favorite thing. But he was the kind of person that would help make the most minor suggestions matter the most. He'd move your shoulder a centimeter to the right and you'd suddenly be able to run the table.
Mahmoud was an international grad student studying physics. He was one of the sweetest and smartest people I've ever met. He didn't know a lot of people, so when he wasn't dissertating, he was watching anime while smoking hookah or playing pool with me and Jeff. He had this one trick: practice with the odds stacked against you. He'd put a pack of playing cards underneath one leg of the table so that it was lopsided. This meant you had to come to the table more confident, hit the balls harder if you wanted them to go where you were aiming. Last I heard he bought a hookah bar in downtown Denver.
JT: How, if at all, has playing pool changed and/or affected your relationship to your writing?
SED: After a certain point, the ability to aim and strategize the table becomes mostly intuitive, which feels a lot like drafting a poem. There's a kind of minor (major?) faith system that relies on a belief in muscle memory and experience. That feels akin to meeting a poem on the page—the way we believe in the language to take us where it needs to be because it's taken us there before. That ball will go where you need it to be because it's been there before.
There's also this nerve wracking ritual of breaking the balls from their neat triangle form. A lot of people don't realize that breaking is not just about getting a ball into a pocket to continue your turn. You're trying to knock the balls so hard that they scatter evenly around the table. When there's more negative space between the balls—even your opponent's—it's easier to run the table. For me, breaking feels like the act of marking the page for the first time. The page is changed irrevocably. Even if you could cross out what you wrote, the psychic energy of it persists. There's nowhere to go but forward through its ghost.
JT: Is there something about pool that you're always talking to others about, that you want more people to know?
SED: Like most lowkey public "sports," pool will help you learn to lose with style and grace—or go down swinging while honing your shit talk. For however many quarters it takes to put your laundry through the washer, there's a quarter table in your city where you can take your friends and laugh until you cry.
JT: Finally, what is the cause you would like WATCH! to support this month?
SED: Checkout OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center in Madison! They provide support to Queer community members—with special attention to Trans and Non-Binary folks—across south central Wisconsin. Click here to learn more about the wide array of local services they provide.
~ ~ ~
Thank you so much Steven! I love you! We didn’t spend much time talking about it in the interview, but I cannot let this dispatch end without telling you—talking to you now, dear reader—just how good Steven’s poetry is. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve audibly gasped or raised my hands to my forehead in disbelief while listening to Steven read. The places he goes, the images he makes, the *endings* he manages to pull off. This guy writes endings like nobody else. His poem, “A River Is a Body Running,” is one that I particularly love. It is also the opening poem to his forthcoming debut poetry collection, LATE TO THE SEARCH PARTY, which comes out on May 6th, 2025! Next week!! I’ve had the fortune of reading it early and already know it will be one of my favorite poetry collections released this year. Hustle to your nearest indie bookstore and preorder your copy, or preorder a copy online by clicking this link here. You will not regret it. Otherwise you can find more about Steven and his work by clicking here.
And that does it for the inaugural interview of Writers and Their Cherished Hobbies! Through your subscriptions, WATCH! donated $27.50 to OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center in Madison, and I was able to match that amount for a donation total of $55 dollars! The receipt of the donation is viewable below.
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and made this possible! Furthermore, for locals in Madison, Girl Blood Info—a zine made and organized by the aforementioned, incredible Chessy Normile, with contributions from numerous writers and artists from across the country (including yours truly)—is having a release party for its latest issue on Saturday, May 3rd at Communications Madison from 4-7pm, and all the money raised from ticket and zine sales will *also* be donated to OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center, specifically their Madison Area Transgender Association. Maybe I will see you there!
Remember if you would like to subscribe to WATCH! and have a small portion of your money go toward the survival of someone else, you can do so by clicking the button below.
Thank you so much for reading. Be well, be safe. See you next month!
with warmth,
Jonny
jonnyteklit.com
Even if you could cross out what you wrote, the psychic energy of it persists. There's nowhere to go but forward through its ghost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!