Gustavo Hernandez was born in Jalisco, Mexico and brought to California by his father as a child. As an immigrant living in Santa Ana in the 1980s, he had an awareness of the spaces his body had traversed, the ones he currently inhabited and the ones he’d left behind. This awareness was due to the lingering question surrounding his belonging, heightened when he realized he was gay. This was happening in Orange County where, at the time, President Ronald Reagan famously said, “It’s…where the good Republicans go to die.” This made Hernandez hyper-conscious of geography, both physical and emotional.

However, Hernandez’s love of poetry was there the entire time. “I have memories of writing poems when I was in elementary school,” he said in an Instinct interview. “Kids in class used to pay me (usually in Ninja Turtles stickers) to write poems for their girlfriends. I can’t honestly point to one thing that prompted me to start writing poems—it just always felt natural and made me feel good.”

Hernandez’s natural skills and enjoyment that evolved into a passion for poetry is what lead him to publish Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press, 2021) and to recently be named Orange County’s second Poet Laureate. The questions surrounding his belonging and identity in the United States, that he complexly explores physically, mentally, spiritually and sexually, in his debut collection, are ideas he continues to wrestle with. “So much has been going through my head since I was informed,” Hernandez said in an Instagram post announcing his appointment, “but I’ve mostly been thinking about who I’ve been in this country. I’ve lived here almost my entire life, and these last few years poetry has brought me closer to this community that I ever thought possible.”

Poetry has changed and enriched Hernandez’s life by connecting him to so many people he otherwise would have never known. It’s helped him feel less like an other. “I have not taken a second of it for granted.” As such, he has many plans for what he wants to accomplish during his two-year stint as poet laureate. But first, he wants to be there for anyone who is curious about poetry and for anyone who needs its love and solace.

And in Hernandez’s poems, he inhabits this love and solace poetry delivers. In “Santiago Canyon” from Flower Grand Fist, he reminisces on the summer his father passed away.

          ...summer, the last one with you. How I felt
          their prayers mantle everyone of your promises to me;

          bless each of the steps you took here; cloak
          and float the things I had left, that I'd been fortunate

          enough to keep for this long, into the sky. How it was
          a ceremony. How their arms held me when it was over.

          When you were gone, when I came back to them
          full of acknowledgement and oaken with age.