William Archila @ The Poetry Society of America
In addition
to being the author of The Art of Exile,
which won an International Latino Book Award in 2010 and was honored with an
Emerging Writer Fellowship Award by The Writer's Center in Bethesda, William
Archila is also winner of the inaugural Letras
Latinas/ Red Hen Poetry Prize. Archila is currently featured over at the
Poetry Society of America’s series of interviews titled Red, White and Blue: Poets on Politics. In which Archila discusses
his examination of “anything men and women struggle against in this world” as
valued experiences which when translated by the poet into literary experiences
can move a reader into maintaining or opposing a status quo “where misery is
visible everywhere you go and only a small amount of people, a minority, benefit
from the wealth of the world.” Writing is an act with real consequences,
Archila seems to say. And whether one writes—knowingly or not—to uphold a
conservative status quo or to break fissures in it, poetry will always be part
of that particular human experience. But poetry for Archila (an exile from El
Salvador’s civil war) is more than that, more than what fits into neat
political spectrums, poetry he seems to say is memory and refuge, his only
home:”
“This is
what drives my poetry. It seems like I'm condemned to see and hear that which
once was lost and which can only be saved through words. For that reason, I try
to construct a language of mourning where the driving force is memory. I
believe that to remember is an act of struggle against history. It is an
acknowledgement of one's time and one's acceptance of it. As it's been said,
forgetting is passive, but remembering is active. And remembering is the ideal
vehicle for poetry.”
[Continue Reading.]
*
Richard Yañez @
The Latino Author
Richard Yañez is an
associate professor of English at El Paso Community College and the author of a
collection of short stories El Paso del
Norte: Stories on the Border and the novel Cross Over Water: A Novel, both from The University of Nevada
Press. Richard is currently featured in an interview for The Latino Author in
which he discusses his growing up in El Paso, Texas and how the landscape of that
city and his childhood have served him as a rich canvas for his writing and his
imagination. Yañez also shares the lessons learned from writing his first book,
El Paso del Norte: Stories on the Border,
and the success he felt at “writing a strong female character” for his second
book, Cross Over Water:
“And based on various
responses, I believe that I succeeded in the writing of Cross Over Water.
The main story centers on Raul Luis “Ruly” Cruz, a curious child of the border,
but Laura, his older cousin is the tether that keeps him in orbit.
Together, they learn about the geographies of their bodies, their emotions, and
their culture. I feel good about having addressed a limitation in my writing
and await the next challenge. “
*
Laurie Ann Guerrero @ Poet’s Quarterly
Of Laurie Ann Guerrero’s
manuscript, A Tongue in the Mouth of the
Dying,( winner of
Letras Latina’s fifth edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize) Francisco
X. Alarcón had this to say: “This is the poetry of both saints and sinners (and
even murderers). The poet conjures up Pablo Neruda, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sylvia
Plath, and rooted in the best Latin American, Chicano/a, and contemporary
American poetics, is able to render an effective poetic version of Nepantla,
the land where different traditions meet, according to Anzaldúa. These poems
make the reader laugh, cry, cringe, lose one’s breath, and almost one’s mind,
at times.” Guerrero is currently featured in an interview for Poets Quarterly
where she discusses the poetic forces that have shaped her: storytelling and
the landscape of West Texas. And more importantly, she offers some advice to
other women who want to go “down the path” of being a writer:
“I think it’s important,
too, to trust your gut. As women, we are not taught to believe in our
instincts. We’re labeled emotional or overly ambitious or just plain
crazy. These are all things I’ve been called—by those I love and
strangers. Because I was moving 2000 miles from home to go to college, I was
told I was “acting white.” Because I was taking a 7 year old, a 4 year old, and
a newborn, it was said I had post-partum depression and was not thinking
clearly. Because my husband was not divorcing me meant that I had emasculated
him and that he had no voice. But none of this was true, and in my gut, I knew
it. I trusted it. It was never easy, but it was never wrong. I’ve been
told I can’t or I shouldn’t all my life and for a while, I believed it. I don’t
have to challenge that anymore. My life speaks for itself.”
*
Carmen Tafolla @
New Border
Poet Laureate of San
Antonio and CantoMundo cofounder, Carmen Tafolla in a moving interview for New Border: Criticism and Creation of the
U.S./Mexico Border describes what it was like to be selected as San
Antonio’s first Poet Laureate while at the same time becoming banned in the
state of Arizona’s k-12 Mexican-American curriculum for her book Curandera. Tafolla, a long time teacher,
also reflects on her childhood elders—the grandparents, aunts and uncles—the
storytellers of her barrio who declaimed and recited poems and stories out loud
and whom were the first to shape her as a poet and writer. And to her students
and other youth Tafolla advices to look beyond the world of verifiable date and
into the depths of the imagination:
“That the physical world,
the modern scientific world, the world of “validated data” is only the tip of
the iceberg and that human beings respond to, impact, and are influenced by a
huge non-visible world that we have not “validated” yet in the data. That
is, standardized tests do not tell us what students have learned,
pharmaceutical medicines do not treat all our ills, and the world of emotion,
spiritual energy, respeto, and peaceful attitudes toward our environment
has an immense and tangible impact on how smart, healthy, and happy we end up.
This means that there is a place in our world for curanderos, traditional folk
wisdom, and poets, and that you are more than just a number or a score or even
a label—your powers are limitless.”
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