LatinoLife: Your  book opens, “As a boy in Argentina, I used to collect all sorts of things–”, and it’s populated by explorers, adventurers and plundering colonizers. Could you talk about the theme of collecting in this collection?

Leo Boix: Collecting runs right through the heart of this book. As a kid in Buenos Aires, I was obsessed with gathering little treasures—bugs, plants, rocks—thanks to my only aunt, who really sparked that curiosity in me. It was never just about the objects though, but about how they were named, classified, made sense of. That early love of categories and Latin labels eventually spilled into my poems. The sonnets became this way of zooming in—like holding a magnifying glass—to explore both the tiny details and the bigger picture: who gets to decide what’s worth collecting, and why? Living with my partner Pablo, who’s a brilliant artist and collector of all things historical and decorative, that instinct for gathering and arranging has definitely carried on into adult life.

LL: Every poem feels like the most intricate and yet unfailingly rich curio cabinet. You pen in precise miniature–one specific life and experience–and yet the themes of each poem feel so vast and universal. How conscious are you of balancing this intricacy and depth?

LB: That’s such a lovely image—thank you. Honestly, it all evolved quite naturally. Each poem added another piece to this bigger puzzle I was building: something deeply personal but also historical, ecological, post-colonial. I was writing from a house in Deal, by the sea, where I actually had a cabinet of curiosities full of fossils, rocks, little objects that held stories. So it makes sense that the poems began to mirror that—small things holding much larger histories. Without realising it at first, I wasn’t just writing my migrant story, I was writing a continent’s story. One sonnet at a time.

LL: Why did you choose the sonnet as a form?

LB: Totally by accident. I wrote a few sonnets, sent them to PN Review, and when they got picked up, I thought—why not keep going? There’s something so satisfying about the structure: the little narrative arc, the turn in line 8, the neatness of the final couplet. I started writing Shakespearean sonnets—ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG—but called them Latin American Sonnets to reclaim the form a bit, to bend it towards my own story, my own language. Some sonnets mix in Spanish or Spanglish. I ditched the iambic pentameter on purpose—it felt too tied to the English canon. I wanted the poems to reflect the bilingual, bicultural experience: slightly off-kilter, with their own rhythm.

LL: Did you set out with the vision of writing 100 sonnets, or how did this project start and change over time?

LB: The 100 came later. I had hundreds of sonnets at one point—200, maybe more—and it took years to shape them into a single book. Working with my editor, Sarah Howe, we landed on 100, split into three sections with two “crowns” near the beginning and end, to create a kind of mirrored structure. There was something visually satisfying about that number, too—maybe tied to my obsession with seeing and being seen, with lenses and binoculars and magnifying glasses. But at its core, I wanted the book to take readers on a kind of voyage: full of curiosity, wonder, and surprise, while also gently questioning what those words really mean.

LL: Which was the first poem or series of poems you wrote?

LB: One of the earliest was about being a Latinx migrant in the UK—me and my Argentinian boyfriend, speaking Spanish at home, English outside, building this odd little life by the English seaside. It was a way of capturing that sense of in-betweenness, the daily dance between languages and cultures.

LL: There are frequent references to visual art, and you write with a vibrant palette (pink iguanas, a carmine dress, cobalt bedrooms). Yet running underneath is a strong sense of containment and repression. How much is that an intentional act of setting these things in juxtaposition?

LB: That contrast is built into the sonnet itself. It’s a form that thrives on tension—between halves, between ideas—and I leaned into that. Living with Pablo, who’s an incredible visual artist, opened my eyes to colour and detail in new ways. But I was also interested in what’s not said, what’s held back. Beauty can be a form of distraction or even repression. I liked playing with that: making something lush and vivid, then pulling the rug out from under it in the turn or the couplet.

LL: Two characters in particular emerge so strongly in the first section: the mother and her son. Their relationship feels like a kind of sacred space or shelter in a fraught world. Could you talk a bit about bringing that relationship to life?

LB: That thread became clearer towards the end, during the editing. My editor pointed out that this mother-son story really anchored the first section, and I leaned into that. My mum was a force—smart, independent, and a school head in a very patriarchal world. She died when I was 13, and that loss shaped so much of who I am. We were very close—I’d read to her, sing for her, help her during her illness. She gave me my first books, taught me to love reading. In many ways, I’m still writing for her.

LL:Nature has a fierce presence in your work, and it made me think about efforts in Latin America to decolonize nature. How do you think your heritage influences your experience of natural spaces?

LB: Nature was my first obsession. I was the kid catching butterflies in the garden, flipping through animal encyclopedias and LIFE science books. Later, I became curious about how nature itself had been written about—especially by European explorers in South America. How their observations shaped what we were taught in schools. There’s a kind of colonial residue even in how we think about plants and animals, and I wanted to unpick that, to show how deeply those narratives run.

LL: How does this exploration relate to the powerful theme of migration throughout the book?

LB: I was born not far from where William Henry Hudson, the English naturalist, spent his childhood before moving to England. He later co-founded the RSPB! I loved that coincidence. Migration for me is layered—it’s personal, it’s historical. Just as I’m exploring Britain through a Latin American lens, I’m also watching those old colonial paths in reverse. Scientists like Darwin or Humboldt went to South America and wrote about it—but they also took from it. I read their diaries, and some of what I found was brutal. This book is, in a way, a response to that: a kind of re-charting.

LL:  The book is also grappling with history, mythology and folklore - how has your sense of these themes changed as a result of working on this collection?

LB: The research was a journey in itself. I read endlessly—histories, indigenous myths, natural science, folklore. I realised how much has been erased or distorted, especially when it comes to indigenous voices. So this book became my own re-telling, blending facts with memory, myth with personal truth. A kind of poetic archive.

LB: You mentioned the house in Deal where you were writing this book. Do you have a sense of a “home” now?

LB: Yes, I think I do. We lived in Deal for over a decade, and it shaped so much of this book. But recently we moved back to London, near Camden Square, and it really feels like home now. I garden a lot, go to Hampstead Ponds every day—it’s my quiet space, where I write and read. It’s funny—home used to be a place I left behind. Now it’s something I’ve grown into.

LL: Which books were the biggest inspirations as you worked on this project?

LB: So many! In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin, Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, The World Encompassed by Drake, Gerard’s 16th-century Herball, The Purple Land by Hudson, and all of Borges’ sonnets. The more I read, the more the poems kept multiplying. Books really fed this project.

LL: Returning to that first poem in the collection, you’re speaking to an unnamed “you”. Who did you imagine as your reader when you started working on this book?

LB: That changed depending on the language. When I write in Spanish, I picture a reader in Latin America—a fellow writer, someone who gets the cultural references. But in English, I imagine someone here in the UK, who maybe hasn’t heard of certain places or histories. So there’s always this sense of offering something, like, look at this, come with me. Writing in English also flips the explorer dynamic: it’s me guiding them back to Latin America, reimagining that journey through my own lens.

LL: And if you could recommend one book you’ve read recently to LatinoLife readers, what would it be?

LB: False War by Cuban writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez. It’s electric—sharp, restless, full of interwoven migrant stories and shifting voices. He takes us from Mexico City to Berlin and back, always circling around themes of identity, displacement, and desire. It’s one of those books that gets under your skin.