Emma Trelles and Silvia Curbelo @ ND

In a way I have been connected with Letras Latinas from the moment I conceived of myself as a writer. I started writing poems—or rather those early attempts at poetry and which one has the courage to call poems—in 2006 as a senior in high school. Poems that I then would go on to submit to that year’s edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, which of course I did not win. On Monday the 16^th I did have the honor of introducing the winner of the fourth edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Emma Trelles, who read alongside judge, Silvia Curbelo at McKenna Hall, the building housing the Institute for Latino Studies here at Notre Dame.

Judge, Silvia Curbelo

Silvia Curbelo is the author of three collections of poetry. She has received poetry fellowships from the NEA, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation and the Writer's Voice. Awards include the Jessica Nobel Maxwell Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review and the James Wright Poetry Prize from Mid-American Review. A native of Cuba, Silvia lives in Tampa, FL, and is editor for Organica magazine. In 2010 she served as judge for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and selected Emma Trelles’ winning manuscript Tropicalia for the prize, which was recently announced a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Awards.

Reading from her debut collection The Secret History of Water (Anhinga Press, 1997) of which Carolyn Forché said: “In Curbelo’s intimate telling, even water in a drinking glass is “river beginning to be named.” This is a compelling first collection of necessary poems.” In a reading of lush and sensuously lyric poems, Curbelo summoned to testify the body of water that separates an archipelago of human lives, as in “Balsero Singing” where despite being on a precarious raft at sea,

“The sunlight

is incidental, falling

all around him like a word

or a wing. In another dream

he is dancing in a cottage by the sea

and music is language he has just

learned to speak, the cool yes

of her throat. The sky goes on

 for days with its one cloud waving,

the song lifting him like a sail.”  

            [More poems here.]

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Of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame 2011) Silvia Curbelo wrote: “Tropicalia is first and foremost, an atmosphere. Walking into these poems, one enters a soundscape where something akin to a heavy brass line underscores the scenery….Visually, the effect is pure motion, a long camera sweep of overpasses and street signs, tract houses, palm trees, gardens, weeds—all blown through with a language that is insistent as a hot summer breeze.”  For me hearing Emma read her poems allowed me to rediscover that courage that first drove me to call my poems, poems:

“I hope you never read my poems.

 I do not care for the sweet wine you serve

warm from the pantry, or the email you sent

about a savior at the supermarket.”

Emma reminds me that the poet besides being driven by a desire to communicate is also driven by the sheer force of vocation. Emma’s vocation gives a poetry, that as Campbell McGrath points out in a blurb for Tropicalia, where the world “may not always look better” but is “ a better place for all lovers of poetry, thanks to her [Emma’s] rich and heartfelt book.”

In 2012 Emma Trelles was named winner of the fourth edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for her winning manuscript Tropicalia. Twice nominated for a Pushcart and the recipient of a Green Eyeshade award for art criticism, she has been a featured reader at the O, Miami Poetry Festival, the Miami Book Fair International, and the Palabra Pura series in Chicago. She received her MFA  from Florida International University and is a regular contributor to the Best American Poetry blog.

Emma Trelles

            [Listen to Emma read here.]

Review Roundup--March 11, 2012

Danielle Seller’s reviews Emma Trelles’ Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame, 2011)

This spring is a time of excitement here at Letras Latinas—not only are we anticipating William Archila’s and Ruth Irupé Sanabria’s launch of installment two of Latino/a Poetry Now at Georgetown University on March 20th  but also two readings by the winner of the 2010 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Emma Trelles. On March 18, Emma travels to Washington D.C. to read with DC-based poet Carmen Calatayud at the "Sunday Kind of Love" reading series at Busboys and Poets. 


On April 16th, Emma will be at Notre Dame, reading with Silvia Curbelo, the judge who selected her manuscript. With this in mind I offer here a book review of Tropicalia, albeit an older review it offers us a sneak-peak at Emma Trelles’ poetry before her readings.

Here is what Danielle Seller had to say:

With the publication of Tropicalia a new voice leaps onto the scene, one rejoicing in the often unsung qualities of Florida. In her first collection, winner of the 2010 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Emma Trelles seeks to make sense of the South Florida world she was born into, a world often gritty and hard to love, with its drugs and traffic and racism, but also one of exotic beauty. Unlike many who write about Florida, Trelles doesn’t rely on cheap exotic thrills to hook her readers. The poems in this collection are raw in their honesty and in what they are willing to divulge.

Click HERE for the full review.

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Craig Santos Perez reviews Gabriel Gomez’s The Outer Bands (University of Notre Dame, 2007)

For those who may not be familiar with McKenna Hall—the building housing the Institute for Latino Studies—one of its most invaluable treasures is the Julian Samora Library. Where many of the institute’s historical primary sources (think the Letras Latinas Oral History Project which records conversations by many of the Latino/a poets, writers and artists we have come to love) are archived. Among these treasures is Gabriel Gomez’s The Outer Bands and which I had the pleasure of reading. If in times of natural catastrophe language is reduced to its most basic function: that of simple communication then individuals and society are essentially reduced to a state of muteness: “It is indescribable,” “beyond words,” these are only some of the clichés evoked to communicate the pain of catastrophe.  How then to summon a language to transcend this kind of violence? The answer may be found in Gabriel Gomez’s The Outer Bands. In this collection Gomez makes music of what is essentially an inaudible tragedy: the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  And in keeping up with the review roundup’s tradition of giving a second-life to older reviews (and taking advantage of the up-coming Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize reading) I offer you here Craig Santos Perez’s review of The Outer Bands, winning manuscript of the 2006 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.

Here is what Santos Perez had to say:

Gabriel Gomez's The Outer Bands, winner of the 2006 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, inventively makes audible what is ultimately "inaudible for poetry" (5), from the transformations of glaciers to the vows of retablos, from the power of song to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.

Click HERE for the full review.

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Nick Depascal reviews Sergio Troncoso’s From This Wicked Patch of Dust (University of Arizona Press, 2011)

A native of El Paso, Texas, Sergio Troncoso is the author of four books. His latest, the novel From This Wicked Patch of Dust was selected by Southwest Books of the Year as a “Notable Book” and by the editors of Dark Sky Magazine as one of the “Best Books of 2011.”

This is what Nick Depascal had to say:

Sergio Troncoso's new novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust, is a tightly focused and affecting work of fiction that has much to say about family, fidelity, religion and politics without ever seeming heavy-handed and pedantic. Troncoso's prose is crisp and clear, with nary a wasted word, and he manages to deftly handle numerous storylines over a long period of time in just 240 pages. While a couple of the characters' arcs are a bit less developed and less believable than the rest, the book is a highly engaging read.

Click HERE to read the full review.