Self-interview as Letras Latinas update (aka The Pivot)

LETRAS LATINAS has made a pivot.

What do you mean?

Notice, for example, that this year we did not announce a 2014/2015 season, as we have done in years past. Last year’s “season” bordered on insane for its sheer number of events: 17! 

Are you not doing anymore events?

Far from it. But we’re being far more restrained in our reach. Our focus will continue to be Washington, D.C., though perhaps with less frequency 

(A private literary salon for Laurie Ann Guerrero on May 1; 

Tim Z. Hernández at the Library of Congress on May 6, for example)

and events on campus.

So what’s the pivot?

Our students. That’s the lens we see things through now while asking the question: Will it enrich our students?

But yesterday (October 28, 2014), you seemed to hint coyly at some big splash a year from now, that would involve, let’s see: Rosa Alcalá, Carmen Giménez Smith, Roberto Tejada, and Rodrigo Toscano…..What was that all about?

Our students.

How so?

The graduate MFA poetry workshop will be adopting Angels of the Americlypse, and so we’re inviting Rosa, Carmen, Roberto, and Roberto to come to campus for two full days of activities—mostly to benefit our students. That will be Letras Latinas’ big ticket item that term.

And so what’s with the photograph up above of that dude smirking in front of what appears to be some colorful window display?

Oh, that’s Paul.

Paul? 

Well, the students in my Latino/a Poetry Now class so enjoyed Dan Vera’s visit on September 10 that I decided to ask Paul Martínez Pompa, who’s just in Chicago, if he’d be willing to come for a night in order to visit my class. I’ve been teaching his work (from The Wind Shifts and from his Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize-winning My Kill Adore Him) and I thought it’d be cool for them to meet and ask Paul questions about his work.

And?

It was great. He arrived last night. I put him up on campus for a night, and this morning he was our special guest. My students had each drafted some questions, and so we had a nice extended  Q & A punctuated with Paul reading a poem at regular intervals.

Then I took Paul to lunch, and we were joined by Letras Latinas Associate and MFA candidate  Ae He Lee, who confided in me afterwards how enriching it was to talk poetry with Paul over a meal.

Anything else?

Not really, except: if you look at that window display Paul’s standing in front of, you’ll notice, just to the left of him, and underneath the Speaking Wiri Wiri poster for Dan Vera’s reading, two gems from our small press publishing past?

Small Press Publishing Past?

Momotombo Press. Two titles: Paul’s Pepper Spray (Introduction by the new Poet Laureate of Los Angeles Luis J. Rodriguez), and beside it Brenda Cárdenas’ From the Tongues of Brick and Stone (Introduction by Maurice Kilwein Guevara). 

Paul got all nostalgic on me when he saw his Momotombo chapbook…

Anything else?

Just our students. That’s the pivot.

Louder Than A Bomb: Amalia Ortiz and Paul Martínez Pompa

Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival
presents a reading with Amalia Ortiz and Paul Martínez Pompa
Saturday, February 26 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Columbia College Chicago - 1014 S. Michigan
This event is free and open to the public.

Amalia Ortiz is a Tejana actor/writer/activist, now living in California, and the creator and star of Otra Esa on the Public Transit, a powerful one-woman stage show about destination and destiny. Amalia performed on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO and the NAACP Image Awards on FOX. Amalia's poem "Women of Juárez" was published in the 2006 textbook, The Line Between Us, by ground-breaking publisher Rethinking Schools. Amalia has performed for the First Lady at the National Book Festival in D.C. Her poetry tours include South by Southwest (twice), the Def Poetry College Tour, Slam America National Bus Tour and the documentary Busload of Poets. She coached for Brave New Voices' youth poetry camp and slam championship in San José, after touring California with MadMedia/Reset Collective's What Are You Doing Tonight?.

Paul Martínez Pompa earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and served as a poetry editor for Indiana Review. His chapbook, Pepper Spray, was published by Momotombo Press in 2006. In 2007, his poetry and prose appeared in two anthologies: The Wind Shifts, New Latino Poetry and Telling Tongues, A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience. His first, full-length collection of poetry, My Kill Adore Him, was selected by Martín Espada as winner of the 2008 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2009. He now lives in Chicago and teaches composition, poetry and creative writing at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois.

For a full festival schedule, please visit youngchicagoauthors.org.

Reading Report: Paul Martínez Pompa at louderARTS

Paul Martínez Pompa at louderARTS
Photo courtesy of louderARTS
Originally uploaded by OBermeo

On April 19th, Paul Martínez Pompa graced the stage of one of New York City's most respected reading series–louderARTS at Bar13. Co-curator Marie-Elizabeth Mali* recounts the highlights of his feature for Letras Latinas:

I’ve been looking forward to Paul Martínez Pompa’s  feature for louderARTS ever since reading his first book, My Kill Adore Him, which won the 2008 Andrés Montoya Prize.

He kicked off his 20-minute set by reading from an Exquisite Corpse he participated in along with 11 other poets, coordinated by John Michael Martinez. The poem responds to a question about the current state of Latino letters. He read from his contribution, called “Who?” including the lines, “. . . Mexo-lite so white folk don’t choke. Where my mojados at, black? I pass for snow. Down, ‘cause my asshole is brown . . .”

With that, our delighted audience knew we were in for some good political writing from the go.

He followed with several poems from the book, starting with “Retablos: 10 Deleted Tongues,” a poem about language and assimilation. A moment that called forth moans from the crowd: “I will not speak Spanish in class. I will not speak Spanish in class. I will not speak.”

Paul next joked about how every Chicano poet has to write a poem about each of these three subjects: Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, and his/her grandmother, and read the two out of three that he’s written. Rich Villar, of the Acentos Foundation, called out that it works that way for Puerto-Rican poets, too. I agree, there are some subjects that span Latino/a cultures, especially for those of us in the diaspora.

“A Lesson in Masculinity,” a very short poem, had us all laughing, about his mother teaching him to wipe and his Papi saying, “No–men don’t wipe, they shake.”

He followed with a poem about cops and mistaken identity (“Officer Friendly”), another including the image of marking the parking spot in Chicago you’ve dug out of the snow with an ironing board, milk crate, lawn chair, whatever you can find (“Elegy for Winter”), a moving poem for his sister (“Sieve”), a tongue-in-cheek poem on chain clothing stores (“Banana Republic Politick”), and a poem about El Gato Negro, a transgender bar primarily for Latinos in Chicago that no longer exists (“Men Watching Men”).

He ended his set with a poem sending up the stylistic differences between “academic” and “performance” poets on the mic, called “Ego Slippin’.” Written in two parts, “The Performer” and “The Academic,” he repeated the line “Look at me” in various ways for both parts. He performed them heavily in the first part and stared at the paper in the second. He had our audience, one that bridges academics and performance, in hysterics with that apt commentary.

His skill at bringing subjects relevant to many Latino/as into his poems in an intimate, personal way was in evidence throughout his set. His work, though often pointed, never came across as heavy-handed. To all who say political work doesn’t have grounding in craft, I say you should read Paul Martínez Pompa’s poetry. His writing is well-crafted on the level of sound, word choice, and line, and it’s permeated by the world we live in, finely witnessed.

Check back on the www.louderarts.com website for streaming audio of the reading, which should be posted in a few weeks. You’ll also find our schedule of upcoming features there, as well as audio of other readings and writing prompts.

* Marie-Elizabeth Mali is a Venezuelan-American and Swedish poet who lives in New York City. She is a co-curator of louderARTS: the Reading Series at Bar 13 Lounge and Page Meets Stage at the Bowery Poetry Club and is a poetry editor for TIFERET: A Journal of Spiritual Literature. Her work has appeared in Calyx, MiPOesias, and RATTLE, among others. www.memali.com

2 Interviews with Paul Martínez Pompa

This might be as good a time as any to re-visit two interviews with Paul Martínez Pompa, winner of the 3rd edition of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.

The first is over at the Momotombo Press website, and was conducted by Eduardo C. Corral HERE.

The second is the VIDEO INTERVIEW Paul agreed to for the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. The interview runs just under an hour, but I think it's well worth a look and a listen.

LETRAS LATINAS IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE:

The winner of the 2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
is Paul Martínez Pompa for his manuscript, Men Watching Men.

"This is one tough, smart poet. The poems of Paul Martínez Pompa are gritty and visceral, but never cross the line into sensationalism. They are poems that vividly evoke the urban world, especially Chicago, without ever lapsing into urban cliché. They are poems that seek justice for the Latino community without ever resorting to the overheated language that all too often consigns poetry of social conscience to oblivion.

Martínez Pompa is a poet of the image, a poet of strong diction, a poet of meticulous craft. He puts that craft at the service of los olvidados, the forgotten ones, from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys’ bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner’s Office. Yet this poet’s keen eye, sense of humor and gift for irony help these poems to rise above the wreckage of their circumstances. Nowhere else will you find a poem celebrating a Mexican grandmother’s phone call to the local Pizza Hut.

Martínez Pompa’s observation of a garbage truck may remind us of Williams and his poem about a fire engine; his compassion for the damned may bring Whitman or Hughes to mind. Paul Martínez Pompa, however, is very much his own man and his own poet, independent and honest. His is a unique voice, speaking the truth with clarity. Welcome."

--Martín Espada, Judge
2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
*
The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, named after the late California native and author of the award-winning book, The Iceworker Sings, supports the publication of a first book by a Latino or Latina poet in collaboration with University of Notre Dame Press. The Prize provides a space for artists who, while part of the largest and fastest growing minority in the United States, are also increasingly diverse in their modes of literary expression. The Prize, therefore, does not privilege any particular style, subject matter, or aesthetic. While not losing sight of the traditions and conditions that gave rise to that literary expression, the Prize has as its goal to nurture the various paths that Latino poetry is taking in the 21st Century. The Prize is awarded every other year and administered by Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Letras Latinas seeks to enhance the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame with a focus on projects that identify and support emerging Latino and Latina writers. Letras Latinas actively seeks to collaborate with individuals and organizations to more effectively carry out its mission.

Letras Latinas Oral History Project (Revisited)

If there's an area I've come to appreciate, in particular, since joining the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), it's preservation. I feel good about our Oral History Project. And yet, it's been on hold in the last year with a backlog of interviews that have yet to post on the ILS website. I need to look into what's going on.

There are, nevertheless, a number of interviews that are available for viewing. They've been mentioned before, but I'm taking a moment to mention them again, and link to the page that has them. The subjects currently available for viewing are:

Brenda Cárdnas

Sandy Florian

Sheryl Luna

Urayoán Noel

Michelle Otero

Paul Martínez Pompa

Barbara Jane Reyes

Lidia Torres

Robert Vasquez

The interviews last anywhere from 45 minutes to 60 minutes.

Have a look see, at your leisure---HERE.