3 Questions for Camilo Loaiza Bonilla

What inspired your choice of genre and/or form for "Dios te salve, Maria"?

A couple years ago, I “borrowed” my family’s photo albums and started digitizing everything I found. I became curious about the stories that the images tell and how I can tell more than one story at once through image + text work. As I cut out different pieces from the photos and placed them into new contexts, juxtaposing the images with the poem’s text, I discovered new possibilities for storytelling at the intersection of creative writing and visual art.

Can you walk us through your creative process for this work?

This piece is rooted in the Hail Mary in Spanish, a prayer that centers my deadname’s namesake: la Santa Maria. The title of the piece is how the prayer begins, and I then play with the prayer’s language in both English and Spanish across the poem’s three panels.

What is the significance of the work to you?

This piece captures one of the hardest parts of my transition: letting go of my deadname. The name—passed down from my great-grandmother to my grandmother and then to myself—carries so much ancestral memory, cultural connections, and religious belonging in its five letters. Severing that connection through the rejection of my deadname was difficult, but creating this work allowed me to channel those emotions and begin to heal generational wounds.

Camilo Loaiza Bonilla (he/him/él) is a Latine writer working to unwind generational silence as a queer, trans, first-generation immigrant. He received his MFA from the University of South Florida and in August 2025, his solo museum exhibition—Raíces/Roots: Camilo Loaiza Bonilla—will open at the University of Tampa's Scarfone/Hartley Gallery. As he explores the intersection of poetry and visual art, his work is in or forthcoming from Hayden’s Ferry Review, Graywolf Lab by Graywolf Press, Quarterly West, and elsewhere.