California State Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera to Visit Redlands, CA Jan. 20

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• By Guy McCarthy

The California State Poet Laureate is coming to the Contemporary Club in Redlands, CA on Jan. 20, and he is seeking poems. Juan Felipe Herrera is author of 28 books and currently serves as the Tomas Rivera Endowed Chair for the Department of Creative Writing at UC Riverside. He was appointed Poet Laureate for the state of California in March 2012.

When Herrera comes to Redlands he plans to discuss his signature Poet Laureate project, "The Most Incredible & Biggest Poem on Unity in the World," according to announcements from A.K. Smiley Public Library and the Inlandia Institute, the nonprofit literary center in Riverside.

Herrera will also be collecting contributions of poetry from the public, the key element of "The Most Incredible & Biggest Poem," library and institute officials said.

To assist his collection efforts, Herrera launched a Facebook page in September 2012 dedicated to compiling fragments of contributed poetry, officials said. "The tagline reads, 'Put your Unity into Action - write a poem for unity - or a phrase or a line. All languages, bilingual too - to create One collective poem for all to see.' Along with contributions that have come through other channels, Herrera is at work creating what he hopes will be the largest community-based poetry project on the subject of unity that has ever been attempted," library and institute officials said.

Herrera's latest request is for contributions of poetry paying tribute to victims of the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He started this recent effort with his poem, "Little Ones We Carry You," and dozens more poems have been contributed by others since its launch, officials said.

Herrera is a former professor and chair of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno, from 1990 to 2004 and a teaching assistant fellow at the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa from 1988 to 1990. His work has received critical acclaim including national and international awards, library and institute officials said.

"The mission of the California Poet Laureate is to advocate for the art of poetry in classrooms and boardrooms across the state, to inspire an emerging generation of literary artists, and to educate all Californians about the many poets and authors who have influenced our great state through creative literary expression," officials said.

The Inlandia Institute publishes regional writing in print and electronic form, including books published in partnership with Heyday under the Inlandia imprint, the annual Inlandia creative writing anthology, Writing from Inlandia, and the online literary journal, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, according to the institute.

The institute also provides creative literacy programs for children, as well as creative writing workshops for teens and adults in Riverside, Idyllwild, Ontario and Palm Springs.

Anyone can contribute to the "The Most Incredible & Biggest Poem on Unity in the World," including people who attend the event in Redlands. Contributions can also be emailed to juan.herrera@ucr.edu or mailed to:

The Redlands event is planned at 1 p.m. Jan. 20 at the Contemporary Club, 173 S. Eureka St., Redlands, CA, adjacent to the A.K. Smiley Public Library.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information, call Cati Porter at (951) 218-4464 or Smiley Library at (909) 798-7565.

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Seis Poetas / Six Latino Poets 2 of 3 - 1976

Some old friends do the poetry thing at KQED TV back in 1976. Daniel del Solar is the director... the man. Yes, there are three parts. Go to YouTube to see the rest.

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Chicano press lands first series

[Click image to enlarge]

By Steve Bennett

Express-News

Juan Tejeda and Anisa Onofre have "realized a dream" with the birth of Aztlan Libre Press and its premiere publication, the 10th collection of poetry and writings by influential Chicano poet alurista.

"It's a labor of love," Tejeda said of the press last week at his South Side home, an adobe structure dating back to the Mexican Revolution. "But what other kind is there?"

The independent press, says Onofre, will be devoted to Chicano literature and arts.

"We want to publish books regularly and continuously by writers we admire," states Onofre, who is a poet and director of the writers-in-communities program at Gemini Ink. "It ties into my work with Gemini. I love working with writers."

"Tunaluna," the alurista collection, is the first in the press' Veter@nos series; plans are being made for a Nuevas Voces series (New Voices) and for a literary prize — the Aztlan Libre Press Premio en la Literatura Xicana.

Other irons in the fire range from a children's coloring book of animal symbols from the Aztec calendar and a chapbook of poems in three languages: English, Spanish and Nahuatl. A website has been launched at aztlanlibrepress.com.

Tejeda, founder of San Antonio's Tejano Conjunto Festival and director of the Conjunto music program at Palo Alto College, has devoted his life to the Chicano arts. It all began, he says, in 1975, in a class at the University of Texas at Austin, a poetry workshop taught by . . . alurista. Meeting once a week, first on campus, then in the teacher's or students' homes, students read and critiqued poetry and stories, made music and talked politics during turbulent times.

"alurista is considered the poet laureate of Aztlan," says Tejeda, retrieving a battered spiral-bound journal titled "Trece Aliens," his only remaining copy of a Xeroxed compilation of the class' output.

"This was the beginning," he says. "I've been involved in writing and publications, really, since my college days. It's been a dream of mine to start a press, and a couple of years ago, Anisa and I just said, ‘Let's do it.' So, now, it's sort of come full circle."

Serendipity played a role in the publication of "Tunaluna." Onofre discovered the poet's website one evening, and Tejeda — "I hadn't spoken to him in years," he says — dashed off an e-mail. A couple of weeks later, a typed manuscript arrived by mail. The would-be publishers were "amazed" — and a little giddy.

"We were a just-started-never-published-nada small Chicano press," says Tejeda, "and we might publish alurista's poems! He had published nine books, but nothing in about 10 years."

Another "interesting convergence" came when Chicago painter Judithe Hernández saw an Internet posting about the publication of the alurista collection and contacted Aztlan Libre Press about cover artwork.

"She had done the illustrations for alurista's first book ("Floricanto en Aztlan") in 1971," says Onofre. "She offered her beautiful artwork for the cover as a gift to alurista."

Small presses rarely place books on the best-seller lists, but their role is critical, says Bryce Milligan, publisher of San Antonio's Wings Press.

"The literary role of small presses in America tends toward discovery, resurrection and preservation — the discovery of new writers, the recovery of ‘lost' works, and making the noncommercial literary works of established and deceased writers available," says Milligan, who's been a sounding board for Tejeda and Onofre. "With their first book, Aztlan Libre Press has accomplished the third of these with a strong work by a pioneer of the Chicano literary movimiento. They've done solid, important, necessary work. As a San Antonio publisher, I could not be more delighted with both the book and the press. ¡Bienvenidos, Aztlan Libre!"

There is a touch of the old revolutionary spirit in the Tejeda/Onofre household, where the "compañeros" live with their 3-year-old daughter Maya, and where Aztlan Libre Press business gets done. Perhaps alurista, in a poem titled "Birdnests," captures its essence:

we
remain
standing
with our slingshots
in our hands
no goliath shall prevail.

To purchase "Tunaluna" by alurista ($15 plus $3 shipping) visit the Aztlan Libre Press Web site at http://aztlanlibrepress.com/. Several readings are planned in October, including UTSA (Oct. 5), Texas Lutheran University (Oct. 6) and Palo Alto College (Oct. 8).

Jesús Garza, "By the way... Aztlan Libre Press has a great website. Click here!"

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Alfred Arteaga 1950-2008

INSPIRACION

Alfred Arteaga

En el film, es ella, la extranjera,

ella que conmueve al protagonista

fingido en la blancura de la luz

y en el negro del infinito también

simplemente a causa de hablar francés.

En la escena que recuerdo, ella para,

espera a las lluvias de guerra, bueno,

metáforas de conflicto y de sangre

pero lluvias todavía, tal como

lluvias son al momento de encontrarse

con un acto de belleza violenta:

el mármol de una mano de una diosa

se compromete bajo la redacción

como la memoria aún persistente.

Es, según el guión improvisado,

la belleza que demora y no la actriz,

es la raza de olas y la de mareas

que simplemente son sus familares,

es el paisaje que es sexo para ella

más que la respiración de las lomas,

los sueños de los impasibles robles.

Pero en la tarde, afuera en la plaza,

ella está sola y fuera de la imagen,

fuera del montaje y de la historia

envuelta en una sintaxis helada

como si fueran piedras las palabras.

Con eso, la figura de la mujer

conoce ambos la escultura y las lluvias

pero algo de las palabras francesas

ella no sabe nada:

porque reproducida el habla falla

y la respiración da vida a nadie.

Al reconocer el nombre de la actriz

y de la figura que ella simula,

Veronica Karina,

ves por fin las letras F-I-N

que ilusionan el impulso del guión,

allí, lejos en la larga distancia

donde negra está la pantalla gris

y cierras a la vez la última blanca

página del libro, F-I-N .

¿Apagar la luz en ese momento

o esperar un poquito?

Cierras los ojos tal como el libro

y después de haber librado la vista

de todos los trozos blancos y negros

de pantalla y página, luz y papel,

mueves la cabeza a la derecha y ves

el azul cielo desde el avion azul

desde las alturas por la ventana

ves la azulada sangre que flota

encima lo de abajo, casa y plaza,

encima memorias desvanecidas.

A la vez que ves, al mismo instante

dos mariposas llegan a tu cama

por fin llegan a las manos que apenas

dejan caer un libro desde el cielo.

Respiras sobre las frágiles alas,

a la cama te caes y se te ocurre

que los sueños no han sido los efectos

de muerte ni las causas de belleza.

Traes en la mano, musa,

las alas azules de haber vivido

bajo un cielo que no está hecho de imagen

cuando respiras tu respiro encima.