Gracias to Richard Yañez for passing this on from the San Antonio Current: I thought I’d link the brief interview here since there has been some lively web discussion on poetry book prizes and first books: Naca’s wonderful manuscript, Bird Eating Bird, was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa in the National Poetry Series book competition and is forthcoming in 2009 with HarperCollins.
Three of Kristin Naca's poems appear in the pages of OCHO #15, which I guest edited a while back, which also features the work of 14 other fine Latino and Latina poets. The price is a reasonable $8.00 now. When I set out to guest edit OCHO, I chose poets who, at the time, had not yet published a first full-length collection. To refresh our memory, those poets were:
Lisa Alvarado
Oscar Bermeo
Xochiquetzal Candelaria
Diana Marie Delgado
Jose B. Gonzalez
Octavio R. Gonzalez
Raina J. León
elena minor
John Murillo
Kristin Naca
Emily Pérez
Ruben Quesada
Peter Ramos
Carmen Gimenez Smith
Rich Villar
And so: it is heartening to look over this list today because: since the publication of OCHO #15, Lisa Alvarado and Peter Ramos have published their first full-length books: Raw Silk Suture (Floricanto) and Please Do Not Feed the Ghost (BlazeVOX), respectively!
And: Raina J. León has a first full-length book, A Canticle of Idols (WordTech), forthcoming shortly---a collection that was among the final three manuscripts that Valerie Martínez deliberated over, long and hard, before settling on The Outer Bands by Gabriel Gomez for the second edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.
And who was the third by, you might ask?
The third was by Salvadoran-born, Los Angeles-based poet William Archila. His first full-length book, The Art of Exile, is forthcoming, soon, in the Canto Cosas series at Bilingual Press---with a wonderful introduction by none other than...Yusef Komunyakaa.
Showing posts with label Lisa Alvarado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lisa Alvarado. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Origins of PALABRA PURA
PALABRA PURA was a gift. It's been the most gratifying project I've been involved with in the last year and a half. The context from which it arose and how it has unfolded, and continues to, is emblematic of the main points I've been trying to convey here.
Gracias to Lisa Alvarado for asking, and gracias to La Bloga for inviting her on board.
Gracias to Lisa Alvarado for asking, and gracias to La Bloga for inviting her on board.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
A La Bloga Contributor writes on Palabra Pura
"WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20
Palabra Pura: Another Take
[by Lisa Alvarado (Thursday)]
Last night, I had the pleasure to attend Palabra Pura's reading featuring Sandy Florian and Raúl Niño. Once again, over a pre-reading dinner (presided over by the Guild's Executive Director Ellen Placey Wadey, board members and poets Mike Puican and Mary Hawley, and the MC, poet and diosa Johanny Vasquez) I was able to have a far ranging, relaxed discussion with Sandy about her work. She's a master of prose poetry that is haunting, complex, dream-like, and we all got the scoop that the next day she was to fly out the very next day to prepare for a residency in France.
We were joined by Raúl at the California Clipper and I have to say being in the audience was a singular treat. I was part of a crowd in a full room of rapt listeners, including a young Latino who read a new piece in the open mic section, who was encouraged by Ellen after the reading to come back again.
The pairing of Florian's layered, imagistic writing about the everyday and the divine and Nino's clean, spare etchings of private moments reverberated in my mind even on the train into work today.....That, compays, is why poetry is food for the soul at the deepest level...at least for this writer, and I suspect, many of Bloga's readers.
Lisa Alvarado"
***
My thanks to Lisa Alvarado for contributing this post to La Bloga and which I'm re-posting here. I wasn't able to attend. I'd invited Sandy Florian to read for Palabra Pura as I had the pleasure of hearing her read last fall: Joyelle McSweeney, who was co-curating "Chloe's Cabaret" with Cornelius Eady and I this past year, had invited her to read from her collection, Telescope (Action Books, 2006)
A note on my previous post:
I was meeting with ILS' web designer a few days ago to discuss Latino Poetry Review's template. One of the ideas we were kicking around was having a backdrop that would, in essence, be what I'll call "virtual wallpaper." On it would be the faintly inscribed names of Latino and Latina poets. The day I was compiling a list of names, Roberto Tejada, author of a wonderful book of poems, Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), forwarded me a press release from Wesleyan University Press about a book slated for next month called something like American Poets in the 21st Century. He was passing this along to point out, once again, the complete absence of Latino/a voices. As I began to cobble together my "virtual wallpaper," it occurred to me to give it the same title as this anthology, with a subtitle: "Another Sampling."
I was inspired by Spike Lee.
Do The Right Thing (1989) remains, arguably, Lee's most important film. There is a moment in the film when a DJ interrupts his radio broadcast and yells out, "Roll Call!" and then he unleashes, in his cool DJ voice a litany of names.....
Nora Zeal Hurston,
James Baldwin
Langston Hughes
Richard Wright
Ralph Ellison
Ray Charles
Aretha Franklin
Charlie Parker
Thelonius Monk
Billie Holiday
Jackie Robinson
and on and on. I remember feeling quite moved sitting in that theater taking in this catalogue of names---Americans who had enriched and defined our culture.
Letras Latinas, on however modest a scale, aspires towards doing that for Latino poets and writers within American literature. And I need your help.
Palabra Pura: Another Take
[by Lisa Alvarado (Thursday)]
Last night, I had the pleasure to attend Palabra Pura's reading featuring Sandy Florian and Raúl Niño. Once again, over a pre-reading dinner (presided over by the Guild's Executive Director Ellen Placey Wadey, board members and poets Mike Puican and Mary Hawley, and the MC, poet and diosa Johanny Vasquez) I was able to have a far ranging, relaxed discussion with Sandy about her work. She's a master of prose poetry that is haunting, complex, dream-like, and we all got the scoop that the next day she was to fly out the very next day to prepare for a residency in France.
We were joined by Raúl at the California Clipper and I have to say being in the audience was a singular treat. I was part of a crowd in a full room of rapt listeners, including a young Latino who read a new piece in the open mic section, who was encouraged by Ellen after the reading to come back again.
The pairing of Florian's layered, imagistic writing about the everyday and the divine and Nino's clean, spare etchings of private moments reverberated in my mind even on the train into work today.....That, compays, is why poetry is food for the soul at the deepest level...at least for this writer, and I suspect, many of Bloga's readers.
Lisa Alvarado"
***
My thanks to Lisa Alvarado for contributing this post to La Bloga and which I'm re-posting here. I wasn't able to attend. I'd invited Sandy Florian to read for Palabra Pura as I had the pleasure of hearing her read last fall: Joyelle McSweeney, who was co-curating "Chloe's Cabaret" with Cornelius Eady and I this past year, had invited her to read from her collection, Telescope (Action Books, 2006)
A note on my previous post:
I was meeting with ILS' web designer a few days ago to discuss Latino Poetry Review's template. One of the ideas we were kicking around was having a backdrop that would, in essence, be what I'll call "virtual wallpaper." On it would be the faintly inscribed names of Latino and Latina poets. The day I was compiling a list of names, Roberto Tejada, author of a wonderful book of poems, Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), forwarded me a press release from Wesleyan University Press about a book slated for next month called something like American Poets in the 21st Century. He was passing this along to point out, once again, the complete absence of Latino/a voices. As I began to cobble together my "virtual wallpaper," it occurred to me to give it the same title as this anthology, with a subtitle: "Another Sampling."
I was inspired by Spike Lee.
Do The Right Thing (1989) remains, arguably, Lee's most important film. There is a moment in the film when a DJ interrupts his radio broadcast and yells out, "Roll Call!" and then he unleashes, in his cool DJ voice a litany of names.....
Nora Zeal Hurston,
James Baldwin
Langston Hughes
Richard Wright
Ralph Ellison
Ray Charles
Aretha Franklin
Charlie Parker
Thelonius Monk
Billie Holiday
Jackie Robinson
and on and on. I remember feeling quite moved sitting in that theater taking in this catalogue of names---Americans who had enriched and defined our culture.
Letras Latinas, on however modest a scale, aspires towards doing that for Latino poets and writers within American literature. And I need your help.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Dinner
by Lisa Alvarado
A mandala.
The wheel of life
on blue and yellow salad plates.
I arrange asparagus
spoke by spoke,
anointing them
with sacred oil;
extra virgin,
green
like my hope.
I want so much to please you.
So delicate; my effort
is excruciating.
I have never caressed a lover
as tenderly as I rub
thyme
rosemary
garlic
into the chicken
you will eat over conversation.
You will not think of me.
I am a whisper
a shadow.
Silently,
I slip in and out of rooms;
bearing gifts
you only see as a meal.
Dessert arrives.
Poached pears
blushing like a maiden;
surrounded
by sauces, candied flowers.
You say it is too pretty to eat.
But all I offer is consumable.
My skill
my craft,
all perishable;
to be created each day.
I am Sisyphus
loading the dishwasher,
only to do the same
tomorrow.
from THE HOUSE KEEPER'S DIARY (La Onda Negra Press)
performed for PALABRA PURA
at the California Clipper on May 16, 2007
Posted with permission of the author
A mandala.
The wheel of life
on blue and yellow salad plates.
I arrange asparagus
spoke by spoke,
anointing them
with sacred oil;
extra virgin,
green
like my hope.
I want so much to please you.
So delicate; my effort
is excruciating.
I have never caressed a lover
as tenderly as I rub
thyme
rosemary
garlic
into the chicken
you will eat over conversation.
You will not think of me.
I am a whisper
a shadow.
Silently,
I slip in and out of rooms;
bearing gifts
you only see as a meal.
Dessert arrives.
Poached pears
blushing like a maiden;
surrounded
by sauces, candied flowers.
You say it is too pretty to eat.
But all I offer is consumable.
My skill
my craft,
all perishable;
to be created each day.
I am Sisyphus
loading the dishwasher,
only to do the same
tomorrow.
from THE HOUSE KEEPER'S DIARY (La Onda Negra Press)
performed for PALABRA PURA
at the California Clipper on May 16, 2007
Posted with permission of the author
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