Rodrigo Toscano considers it an accomplishment if he is alive at the end of his workday.

As the Hurricane Sandy Health and Safety Training Director and a worker for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Toscano regularly works with communities that are destroyed by natural disasters. In his line of work, he says, over 5000 people are killed every year, 60,000 get permanent disabilities, and millions are exposed to toxic chemicals and environments. Despite the dangers surrounding his work, Toscano finds it rewarding. His work fulfills him not only because it allows him to help communities recover from natural disasters, but also because it informs another defining part of his life: Poetry. Toscano says that working in disaster relief has compelled him “to speak with people from completely different walks of life than people who make art." As a poet, he finds value in experiencing the daily conditions of life and interacting with the service, medical, and nautical industries. Recently, he came to speak at UB’s Poetry Collection, which is located at 420 Capen Hall. At the reading, he shared 16 pages of his book-length poem “Explosion Rocks Springfield.” Toscano says the poem is centered on a poetic sub-heading from a news story about how an explosion in Springfield, MA leveled a strip club next to a daycare. Toscano has not yet published the piece. However, according to Poetry Foundation, Toscano has published several unique collections of poetry including Partisans (1999), The Disparities (2002), and Collapsible Poetics Theater (2008). Toscano says the purpose of his work is to allow “allegedly high philosophic discourse to bump up against the demotic, or everyday kind of speech.” He says while some people criticize his poetry for being "whimsical, manic, [and] overly-intellectualized," others praise his writing for being "energetic, inquisitive, and [representative of] the many facets of social life." Although he is a nationally-known poet, Toscano did not have a defined college and career path. In fact, Toscano says college was not an important part of his growth as a poet. He explains that, as a college student, he often visited coffeehouses and conversed with writers and intellectuals and was involved in poetry “as a participant rather than as a student.” While he was cultivating his understanding of poetry, Toscano took classes from a variety of disciplines, such as engineering, electronics, and anthropology. Additionally, by 1999, he had risen through the ranks of labor unions and was elected as the Vice President of the local Labor Institute. Toscano says that the main turning point in his life that led him to pursue a diverse and unconventional path occurred midway through college when he "made somewhat of a conscious decision to not pursue a hardcore career." He explains that although most parents would typically oppose this type of decision today, when he was growing up in the 1970s, parents were happy as long as their kids were “working and out of trouble.” Today, his advice for aspiring writers is to "write things, don't just copy things.” He encourages students to rearrange language out loud and often. Toscano explains that, in his own writing process, he uses techniques to produce unique poetry. For example, when he begins the writing process, he doesn’t start by typing complete sentences on a computer. Instead, he starts with sketches of sentences on a piece of paper. This step allows him to be creative and work free from an organized structure. "Sentences don't come out straight, they come out crooked and diagonal," he says.  He then types out a rough draft of his work on the computer and revises it by hand in the evening. Revising by hand, he says, is essential because it allows him to “dislodge the certainty of the printed page.” Toscano also says it is critical for writers to study other languages in order to better understand the language they are writing in. Toscano cites that, in his own work, he has used: Spanish, German, French, Norwegian, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, and Arabic. He further explains that although he is often “head over heels in love” with whatever he is currently working on, he refrains from ever being satisfied. Why? Because, according to Toscano, being satisfied means "you have no more hunger for what's ahead." Most importantly, he says, as a writer it is important to always be open-minded and think critically about everyday social interactions.  "Young writers would do well if they remain piqued and curious about every interaction. Express relations in new ways to prevent from becoming stale. Use books as lenses to look into the world and the world of books. Remain fluid."