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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UCR professor Juan Felipe Herrera sworn in as California Poet Laureate

Written by Eric Gamboa for the University of California Riverside Highlander

Click photo to enlarge. Click header to go to original article.

University of California Riverside Professor Juan Felipe Herrera will be California’s first Chicano Poet Laureate, upon senate confirmation. On March 21, California Governor Jerry Brown appointed Herrera, whose work focuses on the Chicano experience—a subject that holds special significance to Herrera since he was the son of migrant farm workers. “No one is more worthy than Juan Felipe Herrera, both for this distinctive honor and for the task at hand as the California Poet Laureate,” proclaimed UC Riverside Chancellor Tim White in his weekly email. Within a week of the appointment, Herrera traveled to Sacramento where the governor swore him in.

Herrera currently serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair at UC Riverside’s Creative Writing Department. “I want to thank UC Riverside for such a great community of support. All the students here inspire me greatly. This award is for all the young writers who want to put kindness inside every word throughout the state, because kindness is the heart of creativity,” stated Herrera in an article by UCR Today.

According to Herrera’s personal website, the renowned poet has published 24 volumes of work including theater, children’s books and young adult novels. Herrera, a graduate of UC Los Angeles and Stanford University, has received dozens of highly prestigious awards and has seen much of his work been turned into plays and musicals. “Many poets since the 1960s have dreamed of a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too. Many poets have tried to create such an art: Herrera is one of the first to succeed,” noted a New York Times review of Herrera’s work, as quoted in the governor’s press release.

The position of California Poet Laureate was created in 2001 and is primarily shaped by the California Arts Council. The council, which consists of 11 experts in fields such as the arts, education, and community development, are tasked with selecting candidates who would best promote and serve as an advocate of poetry in the state of California. Following his senate confirmation, Herrera will begin his two-year term and his tasks will include providing six public readings and completing a cultural project with the goal of exposing poetry to individuals of all backgrounds.

According to the California Arts Council website, the criteria for selecting the Poet Laureate depend on the achievement of scholarly excellence, the size of published work, the reputation of the poet and the willingness to partake in the cultural project. The Poet Laureate position has been vacant since September 2011 and was last held by University of Southern California Professor Carol Muske-Dukes.

“This honor reflects what we have had the privilege of seeing up close ever since he joined our distinguished faculty: namely, this remarkably gifted poet’s unique ability to connect—through his art and teaching—with everyone, regardless of their cultural or educational background,” stated Andrew Winer, chair of the Department of Creative Writing, in the UCR Today article.

Herrera’s recent accomplishments include being elected to the Academy of American Poets’ Board of Chancellors and receiving the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry.

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