Letras Latinas inaugurates a new occasional series

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One of the pleasures of working in this field is encountering new voices. 

This space has forged a decent track record of posting author interviews of poets and writers with new books. 

The gesture that follows is a bit different. 

We’re highlighting a voice that, shall we say, is “pre-book,” “pre-chapbook” even.   

All in an effort to support and encourage an early and lively commitment to the art. 

Letras Latinas is pleased to introduce Daniel Eduardo Ruiz. 

—FA

First of all, I want to thank you for agreeing to take a few questions. Will you share with our readers what brings you to poetry?

What brings me to poetry is what brings me to most things: an enjoyment of my personal freedom. I love playing around. Anyone who knows me knows I'm an enthusiastic goofball, and much of the joy I derive from writing comes from exploring the stretchy spaces of language and sentiment. I am and have always been emotionally charged-up and excited by wordplay. Technically, we don’t see with our eyes but with our brains, and that’s where all of the goodies are: memories, little ticks, weird patterns, ideas, and feelings—and it’s all perpetually sloshing around together like a semi-truck full of soup. In this way our perception becomes kaleidoscopic, and wordplay becomes a system of experiential or imaginative plasticity whereby we “stretch the truth,” so to speak. Nicanor Parra says the only rule in poetry is that you must “improve the blank page.” Fear provides an ending. It says, Hey man, none of these lines are worth a damn, and if you stop writing no one will care anyway. From conversations with other artists it seems to be a pretty common belief, an anti-self or arch nemesis we create so we have something to go against—often with a very specific, personal face. I write poetry to confront this reality in a space where I have the ability to improve it—to make it more playful, more human, more mine. There is joy in play, and in this way I’ll always be a child. I want to feel joyous, which, for me, is more about emotional fullness than an embracement of only positive stimuli. Happiness too often feels like a rejection of the negative, and poetry is a lifestyle for me in the sense that I use it to explore the origins of my often-exaggerated reactions to whatever life seems be to torpedoing toward me.

One of the things that drew me to your profile is that you made the deliberate decision to spend time abroad. I know for myself my time in Spain was transformative. Why did you decide to spend time in Chile?

Chile is el país de los poetas. I admire many Chilean writers—Bolaño, Huidobro, and Neruda (sometimes) are my favorites. I applied for the Fulbright with the idea of writing a solid manuscript of poems and came out having produced a lot of writing but no cohesive book. It took me weeks to get settled and transition from Florida to Santiago to an apartment in Valparaiso. I spent a lot of time editing and reading, watching movies and cooking. Fulbright gave me a rare opportunity and one most poets probably dream of: I got to be a full-time poet. I had a salary. It seems like magical realism to type it. Fulbright gave me the space to make of my writing whatever I wanted, and that’s an experience for which I have the utmost gratitude. I spent four years in poetry workshops at Florida State, but for the first time I went to a place and wrote by myself, for myself. In a sense, if you accomplish little during your Fulbright, there aren’t real consequences. I had the opportunity to experience a quiet failure, and I’m elated to announce that I didn’t. I wrote so much, tried out so many new moves, read so many new authors. It was what I had wanted for years: to have total accountability, to be able to blame my success or failure on myself—because without accountability we quell the former and blame others for the latter. I came to Chile to learn to be myself, and I’m proud of the person I’ve become. It’s like a little act of kindness you do for someone else and decide to walk around all day long like nothing happened—but you know.

Will you share with our readers how living abroad for a year has changed your poetry?

It changed my poetry in many ways. First, in a short period of time I experienced so many new things—food, music, culture, street art, a dialect of Spanish about which I knew nothing and had never heard—which means I took the opportunity to write about new things. I wrote a series of odes based on Neruda’s Odas elementales called “Industrial Odes”—doorknobs, credit cards, digital scales, etc. But Chile is also known for its protests (many of which I attended). I lived in Valparaiso, a big-ish port city with five universities only a quick bus ride from Santiago, and the protests were frequent. Universities went on strike often, often because students would take them hostage by sneaking in after hours or bribing the custodians for their keys to lock them from the inside. Because I witnessed and participated in political protests—coupled with the elections in my home country, Trumplandia, the Colombian deal with the FARC, Brexit, Castro’s death, and Venezuela’s new dictatorship—I wrote some more obviously-political poems. I used to think topics like religion and politics were taboo, but now these difficult conversations seem imperative to the re-education of a post-colonial society whose concept of power, when you follow the historical rhetoric of threats, is based on physical superiority and not mental or emotional strength and stability. So I wrote about these things. I’ve decided to be happy for others when I see them utilizing social media as a platform for expressing themselves because social media has given voice to many, many, many people who didn’t even know they had a mouth that could open. Also, more than ever, I did all I could to be honest with myself in my writing and make it truly mine.

One of the issues that Latino and Latina poets seem to have to navigate, in one way or another, is identity.  Will you share with our readers your take on this subject, as it pertains to you?

In the movie The Rundown, Travis (Seann William Scott) flees to Brazil and tells Mariana (Rosario Dawson), a bartender, that, in the states, Brazil nuts are expensive, and she says, “Well, we are in Brazil, so we just call them nuts.” I’m Puerto Rican and Cuban and was raised in the ultra Puerto Rican part of Orlando, but I was born in Puerto Rico. My dad was born in Cuba and raised in Miami. My mom was born in New Jersey and raised in Bayamón. My grandmother was born in Fajardo and raised in Harlem. My grandfather was born in Brooklyn but raised in Aibonito. To be honest, I don’t even know if I’m considered first- or second- or third-generation, and it’s a tricky roulette many Puerto Ricans play because, for example, though my Spanish accent is very Puerto Rican, in Puerto Rico they can tell I’m boricua from the states—and in the states it’s always, “What, um, what are you?” What I’m getting at is this dual sense of not belonging, of feeling othered, though I actually feel whole and liberated in New York. Until I reread many of my poems in a row, I never realized how much of my latinx upbringing came through subtly in them. To me, the poems had nothing to do with where I was from, but there’s no way for me to change the part of my personal history that’s behind me. Without a doubt, I am a hyphenated person. On the other hand, though, it has to do with what my mom complained about my entire life: that she had to be twice as good and work twice as hard to get noticed a little bit less than just-as-much. I struggle with this because I want to empower other latin@s, especially Caribbean ones, but I also want my writing to be good enough that people who don’t look or sound or dress like me find themselves in it. Salvador Plascencia said in an interview, “I’m not a professional Mexican,” and I was immediately drawn to that logic, though I sometimes think it reductive of the importance and diversity of the Latin-American experience. Other times, I tell myself we’re all equals on the blank page and think about O’Hara saying, “Everything is in the poems.” In short: I’m still figuring it out.

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Mash(ed) Up

            by Daniel Eduardo Ruiz

I am through feeling embarrassed     I don’t care if vodka

is the French fries     of liquor     If push comes to shove

I will stick my hand in toilet water     to pull out glasses

for a friend     Yes     I am mad that David Mitchell wrote

Cloud Atlas          before me       I’m pissed off that I’m leaving

Alexis says it’s easier than staying—     not if you’re a tree!

I am one half of at least sixty people      I admire     not

my five closest friends     It’s my responsibility to help them

fill in their cracks with liquid gold       like Japanese china

They need me like water wishing to wash itself of salt

for its awareness     of parched lips      which is to say

I want to jump off a bridge    and watch my back unbend

into wings like a soccer ball kicked so hard      it floats

after bursting open     Open your hand      Here a token

for pinball      Here an amulet     whose golden wrapper

reveals a chocolate     Do you know how many faces

have pressed against each      Iron Man mask

in the Wal-Mart toy aisle?            Don’t hate on where

I bought all of my childhood     lightsabers     Don’t hate

on my habit of waking up     to make breakfast     for roosters

I believe in god most      on top of a mountain      or tumbling

down a waterfalled river      Yes      I have ogre ankles

and chapped lips              Yes              Memory is the key

to combination locks     Yes     Sometimes I sweat more than steak

Love makes you feel smart            the same way feeling

unlovable tells you you’re dumb      Some days I feel as degraded

as a Band-Aid       on a bug bite             It’s okay it’s okay

besides my own death            I can make anything useful

Daniel Eduardo Ruiz was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico and lives in Florida. A recent Fulbright Scholar to Chile, his poems can or will be found in Juked, Southern Indiana Review, The Journal, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere.

For Immediate Release: December 10, 2015

LATINO STUDIES AND CREATIVE WRITING PARTNER TO CONTINUE FUNDING OPPORTUNITY AT NOTRE DAME

The University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), in close collaboration with Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program, is pleased to announce the continuation of a two-year graduate assistantship for an incoming M.F.A. candidate in poetry beginning in the fall of 2016.

The recipient of the assistantship will be selected from the pool of students admitted to the Creative Writing Program by the M.F.A. poetry faculty, including Orlando Menes, ILS Fellow, and Joyelle McSweeney, current director of the Creative Writing Program. The selected candidate, in addition to the tuition waiver all admitted students receive, will have a stipend for each of his/her two years in the program. The selected poet will work with the ILS’ literary initiative, Letras Latinas.

"The Creative Writing Program's dynamic partnership with Letras Latinas exemplifies our view that activism, collaboration, publications and translation are all facets of the writing life. We're delighted by this assistantship," said Joyelle McSweeney, the current director of the program.

The selected candidate will succeed current second-year M.F.A. candidate Ae Hee Lee (‘16), who has held the assistantship since the Fall of 2014, and whose duties include creating content for Letras Latinas Blog and assisting with an undergraduate course on Latino/a poetry in the Fall.

"I have met many writers through Letras Latinas. I’ve had the chance to interview some of them, and have shared friendships and readings with others. This is why—as someone who was born in South Korea but grew up in Peru—I have found this work of fostering fellowship among Latino/a writers as something valuable and heartening. Assisting with a course on Latino/a poetry has also been enriching. It provided pedagogical tools that may serve me in the future. However, the true delight has been witnessing students come into an awareness of U.S. Latino/a voices through poetry and the beauty of words," said Lee.

The continuation of this stipend is consistent with the ILS’ mission of providing funding opportunities to graduate students in Latino Studies. "The Institute for Latino Studies advances understanding of the fastest-growing and youngest population in the United States and in the U.S. Catholic Church. Graduate education is an essential component of this mission, as is our ILS literary initiative, Letras Latinas. We are delighted to partner with the Creative Writing Program in this important venture," said ILS co-directors Luis Fraga and Timothy Matovina

Since its creation in 1999 the Institute for Latino Studies has played a vital role in fostering understanding of the U.S. Latino experience. Building upon the outstanding intellectual legacy of Julian Samora, a pioneering Latino scholar and professor, the Institute supports interdisciplinary initiatives in Latino Studies as a key component of the University’s academic mission.

The Creative Writing Program is a two-year course of study, culminating in a Master of Fine Arts in English. It is a literary immersion program, inviting students to engage in the writing life of the university by taking courses in literature, the writing of poetry and/or fiction, and a wide range of electives suited to the particular interest of the student. The writing life of the program also includes participating in a range of editorial and/or teaching opportunities, as well as this Latino Studies assistantship.

For further information contact:

Joyelle McSweeney, 

Director of Creative Writing

Joyelle.McSweeney.5@nd.edu

Notre Dame to host a gathering of Latin@ poets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: please share…

Notre Dame to host a gathering of Latin@ poets

The University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), in close collaboration with the Creative Writing Program, is pleased to present on October 28-29 “Angels of the Americlypse: readings and colloquia—new Latin@ poetries and literary translation,” featuring:  

Rosa Alcalá

Carmen Giménez Smith

Roberto Tejada

Rodrigo Toscano.

Angels of the Americlypse, the title of a recent anthology of new Latin@ writing, provides the context of this mini-conference, whose aim is to further the dialogue among Latin@ poets seeking to complicate and enrich discussions in the field. “As the conversation about race evolves, so do the shifting boundaries and markers of Latinidad, and in the case of this anthology and many of the most exciting work being written by Latin@s, aesthetics itself," said Carmen Giménez Smith, co-editor of the volume.

On the mornings of October 28 and 29, students in Notre Dame’s MFA program will conduct video interviews with the four poets. "This gathering exists at the nexus of politics, poetics, translation, publishing, scholarship and activism. We're excited to welcome our accomplished guests into our vibrant community," said Joyelle McSweeney, poet, playwright, critic and current Director of Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program.

On the afternoons of October 28 and 29 at 2 PM in 110 McKenna Hall the poets will take part in a public panel and roundtable discussion, respectively. The first, titled “Latino Poetry In Relation,” will be introduced and moderated by visiting poetry scholar Michael Dowdy, an associate professor of English at Hunter College (CUNY). The second, titled “The Politics of Translation,” will be introduced and moderated by Johannes Göransson, poet, translator, and assistant professor of English in Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program.

The evening of October 28 at 7:30 PM, Alcalá, Giménez Smith, Tejada and Toscano will give a collaborative performance of their work in the Eck Auditorium at the Eck Visitors Center. The event will be LIVE-STREAMED at: http://latinostudies.nd.edu/angels for a national audience. “This is a first for Letras Latinas,” said Francisco Aragón, faculty member at the ILS and director of its literary initiative. “We’ve reached out to the Poetry Foundation in Chicago and the Academy of American Poets in New York, among others, including the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona—in fact, I just learned that they will be hosting a viewing party in Tucson. Our hope, really, is to have the national poetry community “attend” our event via the web to experience what Notre Dame will be offering that night,” Aragón said. There will also be a pre-reading reception at 6:15 PM, and the campus bookstore will be on hand to sell books.

The two-day gathering builds upon the legacy of a Latino poetry conference that took place on the Notre Dame campus in the Fall of 2002, organized in large part by professor of English Orlando Menes, in which poets from the previous generation gave readings and took part in panel discussions. In reflecting upon this newer wave of writers, Menes, who is now the Poetry Editor of Notre Dame Review, said, "These are poets who take estrangement seriously—not as an attitude, not as a fad, not as an affectation—but as a heartfelt call to speak their truth in communal fellowship." 

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies, strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame. The initiative emphasizes programs that support newer voices and foster a sense of community among writers.

The Creative Writing Program at Notre Dame is a course of study with the flexibility for students to initiate a variety of literary lives through exposure to a range of aesthetics, a global literary orientation, course work in historical and contemporary literary forms, and interaction with visiting authors and scholars.

In addition to the Creative Writing Program, campus co-sponsors include: the Henkels Lecture Fund at the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts; Department of American Studies; Department of English; the Graduate School; Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; the José E. Fernández Hispanic Studies Initiative.

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the poets

Rosa Alcalá is the author of two books of poetry: Undocumentaries (2010) and The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (2012), both from Shearsman Books, as well as two chapbooks: Undocumentary (Dos Press, 2008) and Some Maritime Disasters This Century (Belladonna Books, 2003). Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), which Alcalá edited and translated, was runner-up for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Alcalá has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowship for literary translation (poetry) for translating Vicuña. She has also translated the work of Lila Zemborain, Lourdes Vázquez, and other poets, with translations included in the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Carmen Gímenez Smith is the author of four books of poetry: Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press, 2013), Goodbye, Flicker (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), The City She Was (Center for Literary Publishing, 2011) and Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona Press, 2009). She is also the author of: Bring Down the Little Birds (University of Arizona Press, 2010), a memoir. Her most recent book, Milk and Faith, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and her memoir was the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award. She was also the winner of the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. She is Associate Professor of English at New Mexico State University’s graduate program in creative writing, while also serving as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press.

Roberto Tejada is the author of three poetry books: Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), Exposition Park (Wesleyan University Press, 2010), and Full Foreground (University of Arizona Press, 2012). He founded and co-edited the journal: Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. Tejada has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowship for literary translation (poetry) for his work with Jose Lezama Lima. He is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Tejada is also the author of art histories that include: National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), and Celia Alvarez Muñoz (UCLA/CSRC; University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Tejada has published critical writings on contemporary U.S., Latino, and Latin American artists in: Afterimage, Aperture, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, SF Camerawork, and Third Text.

Rodrigo Toscano’s newest book is: Deck of Deeds (Counterpath, 2012). His previous book, Collapsible Poetics Theater (Fence Books, 2008), was a National Poetry Series selection. Other books of poetry include: To Leveling Swerve (Krupskaya, 2004), Platform (Atelos, 2003), The Disparities (Green Integer, 2002), and Partisans (O Books, 1999) He was the recipient of a 2005 New York State Fellowship in Poetry. His poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Against Expression, Diasporic Avant Gardes, Poetic Voices Without Borders, and Best American Poetry. Toscano’s Spanish language poetry appears in the anthology Malditos Latinos, Madlitos Sudacas. His poetry has been translated into French, Dutch, Italian, German, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Catalan. Toscano works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers and the National Institute for Environmental Health Science.

the panel & roundtable moderators:

Michael Dowdy is Associate Professor of English at Hunter College (CUNY), where he teaches courses in twentieth-century American poetry, Latina/o literature, and multiethnic literatures of the United States. He has published on modern and contemporary poetry, with a focus on Latino poetry. Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization, a book-length study of Latino poetry which puts Latino and Latin American poets into conversation, was published in 2013 by the University of Arizona Press. Dowdy’s critical essays on Latino poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in MELUS, College Literature, Appalachian Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, and in Acknowledged Legislator: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Martín Espada, which was published in 2014 by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. He is currently working on a project on documentary poetics and editing a volume in Wesleyan University Press’s American Poets in the 21^st Century series that includes a number of Latino/a poets. 

Johannes Göransson is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, teaching in the Creative Writing Program. He is the author of several books, including Haute Surveillance (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2013), Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011), Dear Ra (A Story in Flinches) (Starcherone Books, 2008), Pilot (Johann the Carousel Horse) (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Astrophe Books, 2007). As a literary translator (from the Swedish) his titles include Aase Berg’s Dark Matter (2012), Transfer Fat (2012) and Remainland: Selected Poems of Aase Berg (2005), as well as Henry Parland’s Ideals Clearance (2007). Goransson’s critical and creative work explores genre, aesthetics, and the limits of the autonomous text. He has written on subjects ranging from gurlesque poetry to Sylvia Plath to translation theory.

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Contact: faragon@nd.edu