East Las Vegas writer ascends to Clark County poet laureate role
He’s a man of words — they’re inked onto his knuckles, even — so it’s fitting that he’s now surrounded by them.
That’s why he’s here.
It’s a Friday afternoon, and Sin á Tes Souhaits is holding court at the Sunrise Library.
He came here as a kid, riding his bike with his sister from their east Las Vegas home.
They’d spend all day reading and playing on the computer — they didn’t have one of their own.
“We didn’t have a rec center close by, so this became our place to hang out,” he says in muted library tones, “Free dope” tattooed across his fingers. “It’s nice to come back to this place, and be reminded of what literature gave me before I knew it was giving me something.”
It’s given him plenty — and he’s returned the favor.
Recently, Sin á Tes Souhaits (pronounced sin a tay sweh) was named Clark Country’s fourth poet laureate. At 6 p.m. Thursday, he’ll be introduced at the Winchester Dondero Cultural Center during the “Bridging Poetry” event.
An engaging, conversational writer who comes across as a natural storyteller, á Tes Souhaits’ background also spans fiction, journalism and plenty more.
He was a 2020 Art for Justice Fellow with the University of Arizona Poetry Center, a 2019 Donald Barlow Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, and his writing has been featured in The Believer, Gen magazine, The Rumpus and Desert Companion, among other publications.
He’s also the director of ACI Creative, a media consulting firm currently representing McSweeney’s “Of the Diaspora” series and Yale Press’ “Black Lives” series.
What’s the connective tissue among them all?
A knack for imbuing personal experiences with a universal emotional resonance.
“You can speak most honestly about what you’ve done and where you’ve been and what you feel,” á Tes Souhaits explains. “A good poem should be true. I really believe that.”
Poetry without pretense
No, he doesn’t have beef with Robert Frost or the urge to toss rhetorical stones at T.S. Eliot.
Sin á Tes Souhaits can certainly appreciate literary prose.
After all, he earned his graduate degree in poetry at UNLV in 2019, where his manuscript “Literal Dope” won the prize for outstanding master’s thesis.
It’s just that in his writing he favors a more direct — yet no less artistic — expression of who he is, where he’s from, where he’s been and where he’s going.
He relies less on metaphor, more on real-life scenarios to bring his work to vivid, sometimes biting life.
In other words, á Tes Souhaits doesn’t feel that a poem always has to be some puzzle to be solved.
“Poetry is meant to serve us, it’s meant to help us see the world in a new way, to help us find ways to connect to other people — and even to ourselves,” he says. “For all those reasons, it shouldn’t be hard to understand. You can be innovative and discover things without being obscure.”
He got into poetry as a teenager, hooked by episodes of HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam.”
He started writing poems, though á Tes Souhaits was reluctant to share them with anybody initially.
Before college, he thought he might become a firefighter or an EMT.
But he couldn’t put that pen down.
Now he’s Clark County’s face of poetry.
“I like his passion and I like his experience,” explains Irma Varela, the cultural program supervisor of the Winchester Dondero Cultural Center, which is in charge of the poet laureate program. “Another thing that we like is the possible connections he can make with other groups that we have not been able to reach. We want to emphasize, particularly here at the Winchester, that art is for everyone. Art is not for the elite, art is for everyone, and that is what we are working on together with the poet laureate program.”
The poet laureate gig
The poet laureate, in conjunction with Clark County Parks and Recreation, plans activities during a two-year term, including a monthly Clark County TV segment and a monthly program at the Winchester Dondero Cultural Center. He or she also participates in events and educational programs.
For á Tes Souhaits, it’s all about outreach.
“It’s bringing poetry to more folks,” he says. “A lot of the places that we find poetry, that we find art stuff in the city, they’re kind of like little bubbles that aren’t necessarily connected all the time — like at UNLV or in the downtown arts scene and in certain places. I’m excited to try to create a broader network for some of this stuff.”
Sin á Tes Souhaits will serve as the county’s fourth poet laureate since the program began in 2015.
For him, the timing couldn’t be better.
There’s a lot of turbulence in the air these days.
“I think that poetry encourages us to just slow down a little bit and look closely at yourself, at the world,” he says. “And that is so necessary right now. It’s great to be in this moment, bringing poetry to people.”
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter and @jbracelin76 on Instagram.
Explaining his name
Sin á Tes Souhaits explains his unique, self-applied handle.
"My first name is 'Sin,' like wrath, greed, pride, etc., and my last name is the French colloquial response to someone sneezing — its literal translation is 'to your wishes.' So my name can be understood as 'Sin to Your Wishes' or 'Sin, Bless You.' "
Why did he choose it?
"I had known that the name I was given at birth did not feel like mine. And during the pandemic I've been able to spend a lot of time developing a deeper understanding and relationship with myself as a part of my healing journey in therapy, which I do every week. And part of that healing process was letting go of other people's expectations and ideas of me so that I could take back agency in my life and live more authentically.
"I think the early years of my career — booking shows and being introduced with my old name, seeing my name in print and retweeted online and stuff — it spurred me on in a way," he continues. " 'Cause every time it felt a little off, and honestly, the only answer I can give about where my name came from is that it came from God. I didn't have any prophetic dreams or anything. I can't really explain it without some folks thinking I'm crazy. But I asked in prayer, 'OK then, fine. So what is my name? What's my real name, then?' I heard 'Sin,' and I knew it was my name. It's perfect. It suits me perfectly."
