David Campos
*
Rhina
P. Espaillat
writes:
“But the prize goes to the remarkable Pica, a work whose five
parts trace a son’s effort—only partially successful—to fulfill his father’s
expectations and—perhaps even more difficult—understand those expectations
enough to forgive them.”
*
David Campos lives with his wife in Fresno,
California. Born in Ventura, CA, his family moved around that coastal city for
the first few years of his life before they settled in Fresno. He occupied many
jobs while attending Fresno City College, and California State University,
Fresno where he earned a B.A. in English Education and was the co-winner of the
Andres Montoya undergraduate scholarship award for creative writing.
Concurrently, he was a member of the spoken word troupe The Parking Lot
Prophets, and he cofounded the literary radio show Pákatelas on KFCF 88.1FM
Fresno. While attending UC Riverside for his M.F.A., his short screenplay
“NAMES” was chosen to be the first production of the Theatre department. Also
at UC Riverside, he helped kick start the I-Promise Joanna Anti-Bullying
campaign alongside California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrrera in coordination
with the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts. His poems have appeared in the
following magazines: The American Poetry Review, Boxcar Poetry Review,
Huizache, The Packinghouse Review, Verdad, In The Grove, and Miramar among
others. Currently, he teaches English at Fresno City College.
David Campos
writes:
There
were moments when poetry was going to leave my body for good; my literary
failures were, and still are, bountiful. But an intangible force in the poems
of the first collection I ever read kept pulling me back from the precipice.
Andrés Montoya’s the iceworker sings and other poems evoked a certainty of hope
in the landscape of Fresno that I had never encountered before. Growing up in
this city, and witnessing it swallow people whole, I had grown complacent with
the expectations of failure that surrounded me. And I even accepted it as my
fate. When I encountered his book for the first time, its poems and author’s
photo, filled me with the courage and drive to achieve a success similar to
his. If a person of color could write a book assigned in a college course, then
perhaps I could too. His collection propelled me to discover the literary
heritage engrained in Fresno and the surrounding area’s past. It led me to
pursue writing, not only as a passion of the heart and mind, but also as a
weapon of justice. There is a purity in the power of Andrés’ words that cannot
be made foul, that cannot be undone, even in the face of absolute failure. As I
traversed the academic landscape and encountered rejection after rejection, and
bits of validation through the occasional acceptance, I had grown wary of the
prospect of ever reaching the same success of Andrés. After finishing my MFA, I
returned to Fresno with the hopes of teaching and of being a role model to my students
as Andrés was to me through his writing. Slowly, I felt poetry slipping from my
flesh. And when Ms. Espaillat called me to notify me that she had chosen my
manuscript as the winner, all I could think of were the closing words of “the
ice worker speaks of endings”: “now, here and now, / the clouds are opening
into light.”
Rhina P. Espaillat
*
Rhina P. Espaillat has
published poems, essays, short stories and translations in numerous magazines
and over sixty anthologies, in both English and her native Spanish, as well as
three chapbooks and nine full-length books, including three in bilingual
format.
Her most recent book, published in August 2013, is a
translation of poems by Richard Wilbur, titled Oscura fruta: cuarenta y dos poemas de Richard Wilbur/Dark Berries:
Forty-Two Poems by Richard Wilbur. Her most recent collection of
her own work in English is, Her Place in These Designs (Truman State
University Press, Kirksville, 2008), and a bilingual collection of her short
stories, El olor de la memoria/The Scent of Memory (Ediciones CEDIBIL,
Santo Domingo, D. R., 2007).
Her honors include the Wilbur Award, the Nemerov
Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Robert Frost “Tree at My Window”
Award for Translation, the May Sarton Award, a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts
Award from Salem State College, and several prizes from the Dominican
Republic’s Ministry of Culture, the New England Poetry Club and the Poetry
Society of America.
Espaillat lives in Newburyport, MA with her
sculptor husband, Alfred Moskowitz; there she is active with the Powow River
Poets, a well known literary group she co-founded some twenty years ago. She
also performs with a group known as Melopoeia, comprised of poet Alfred
Nicol, guitarist and composer John Tavano, and vocalist Ann Tucker, which has
presented numerous and varied programs that combine poetry and music, most
recently at West Chester University and the House of the Seven Gables.
