¡ PINTURA:PALABRA (2) aterriza en la Florida !

The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum

Florida International Univeristy

Frost Art Museum
(photo credit: Emma Trelles)

About a week ago I saw a gem of a play: Lisa Loomer’s Living Out is set in Los Angeles and is about the fraught relationship between a Salvadoran-born nanny and the entertainment attorney she works for. In one scene the nanny and the attorney’s husband are alone and, as if trying to convince her that he sympathizes with her plight, begins to play and dance to one of his favorite albums: the Buena Vista Social Club…

—which brings to me to Miami, typing up this post at a café in Coral Gables, an elderly man flipping through a magazine on Pope Francis, mumbling to himself beside me—which is something that shouldn’t have surprised me: the amount of Spanish I’m hearing in this my first time in this vibrant city.

Coral Gables

“Our America: the Latino Presence in AmericanArt” opened at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (FIU) of April 2, and runs until June 22.

The Exhibit

(photo credit: Emma Trelles)

Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize-winning poet Emma Trelles, who took part in the inaugural ekphrastic workshop in DC last February, graciously agreed to facilitate/lead the second in what we hope will be a string of workshops as this groundbreaking show continues to meander around the United States. To date, including its current stop in south Florida, the exhibit has been confirmed at seven venues, stretching well into October of 2017 (next stop: Sacramento, CA; yet to be confirmed are proposed stops in Denver and New York).

Emma, I should say, curated the roster of poets who will be engaging and responding to the exhibit this weekend.

Without further delay, they are:

Elisa Albo was born in Havana. She received an MFA from FIU and teaches English and ESL at Broward College. Her chapbook, Passage to America, is now an ebook. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Alimentum, Bomb, Crab Orchard Review, InterLitQ, Irrepressible Appetites, MiPoesias, The Potomac Journal, and Tigertail.

Adrian Castro is a poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist. Born in Miami from Caribbean heritage which has provided fertile ground for the rhythmic Afro-Caribbean style in which he writes and performs. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey (Coffee House Press 1997), Wise Fish (Coffee House Press, 2005), Handling Destiny (Coffee House Press 2009). He is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including USA/Knight Fellowship, CINTAS Fellowship, and others. Adrian Castro is also Licensed Acupuncturist, and Herbalist.

Silvia Curbelo was born in Cuba and emigrated to the U.S. as a child. A new poetry collection, Falling Landscape, is forthcoming from Anhinga Press in 2015. Previous collections include The Secret History of Water and Ambush. She has received fellowships from the NEA, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Cintas Foundation, as well as the Jessica Nobel Maxwell Prize from American Poetry Review.

Roy G. Guzmán is a Honduran poet and English instructor based in South Florida. His poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, BorderSenses, Drunken Boat, and Red Savina Review. In the fall, he will be pursuing an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota. Catch him on Twitter: @dreamingauze.

Mia Leonin is the author of two books of poetry, Braid and Unraveling the Bed (Anhinga Press), and a memoir Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Her poetry has been published in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, and others. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.

Rita Maria Martinez’s work appears in Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Literary Nonfiction, Poetry and Drama and in Burnt Sugar, Caña Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish. Her chapbook, Jane-in-the-Box, takes a character from classic English literature—Jane Eyre—and revamps her with tattoos, fishnets, and modern feminism.

Caridad Moro is the award winning author of Visionware (2009) published by Finishing Line Press. She is the recipient of a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart prize. She is an English Professor for Miami Dade College in Miami, FL where she resides.

Alexandara Lytton Regalado’s poetry has appeared in Narrative, OCHO, Gulf Stream, Tigertail and other publications. She holds MFAs from Florida International University and Pacific University. Co-founder of Kalina publishing, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of several Central American-themed books, most recently the bililgual Salvadoran poetry anthology Theatre Under My Skin (2014).