Dan Vera @ ND: photo gallery with commentary

Dan Vera's recent visit to Notre Dame was, I think, what Letras Latinas aspires to. In other words, it hasn't always been the case. One of the adjustments we've made in the last couple of years, as the poster above indicates, is shifting all of our events to the evening....with plenty of lead time, and in consultation, as a rule, with the Creative Writing Program (they hold their events on Wednesdays, too). Dan's reading was scheduled in direct and early consultation with CW.  

Getting the local press to notice doesn't happen overnight. It sounds like a cliché, but it still holds true: building and sustaining relationships is the key. I met Howard Dukes of the South Bend Tribune in the Fall of 2013. We made an appointment, he came to my office, we had a nice chat, and I gave him free books. He did a nice piece on the grande on-campus finale of of Latino/a Poetry Now. And then something highly unusual happened last spring: somehow Howard got wind that Laurie Ann Guerrero was going to be reading on campus (I was swamped and forgot to make my local press contacts because, among other reasons, I was travelling in from DC and I can only do so much), and I found out that he wanted to interview Laurie. Result? This. And so this year, remembering to put Howard on my check list, I contacted him, and he came through.

I also contacted the student reporter from The Observer who wrote a nice piece last year for our Latino/a Poetry Now finale, and she responded by saying she'd been promoted to News Editor, and so she assigned Dan's reading to new student journalist named Hunter. Dan's reading was his very first assignment, and he did a splendid job. 

But lest one thinks these relationships happen overnight, they don't. In the Fall of 2011, when we launched Latino/a Poetry Now at Harvard University, I contacted The Observer then and made the pitch to them to cover our off-campus launch. I'm grateful to say they said Yes, and published this. In short, it's work, and more work, and if you're lucky, and keep at these relationships, they can and do pay off.

Dan Vera, Jonathan Diaz, Suzi Garcia, Francisco Aragon

missing: Ae Hee Lee

Arguably the most important aspect about these writer visits is to try and create spaces and situations where our students can interact and be enriched. On Dan's first night, Tuesday, keeping in mind the spirit of the Letras Latinas Writers Initiative, we set up a dinner with our Latino/a grad students in Creative Writing. And yet (I'm sorry I don't have a photo of this) no less enriching and important was that Dan had the opportunity to hang out and chat other CW grad student poets who were kind enough to come to the reading on Wednesday night, and who we invited to join us for drinks afterwards. They were Chris Holdaway, who hails from New Zealand, and is active in small press publishing with a cool press out of New Zealand called Compound Press. And Nichole Riggs, who hails from Tucson, AZ, and who, like Chris, is a first year student, and will be working with Action Books during her stint at Notre Dame. And speaking of Action of Books, also in attendance in show of support was current Creative Writing Director Joyelle McSweeney.

Tom Anderson

Professor Tom Anderson, current Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literature, has been one of Letras Latinas' most loyal and consistent supporters, when it comes to our on-campus events. A consumate book buyer and collector, our visiting writers can always count on his support. Tom has also been instrumental in providing co-sponsorship via the  José E. Fernández Hispanic Studies Caribbean Initiative when our writers (like Dan) have connections to el Caribe. 

Dan, signing

Putting on these events is a team sport. And it starts with our Events Coordinator, Laly Maldonado, who got Dan squared away with his lodging, and who made sure we had a room, and a pre-reading reception. Here's Laly after having purchased books not only for the Institute's library for her and other members of her family.

Francisco Aragon, Tom Anderson, Dan Vera, Marisel Moreno

Equally supportive as Tom Anderson has been Associate Professor Marisel Moreno, with whom Letras Latinas has been steadily collaborating since Marisel and I worked together to bring Junot Diaz to Notre Dame in the Fall of 2009. Marisel has been particularly involved, in terms of classroom visits, with writers such as Fred Arroyo and William Archila, writers Marisel has now included in her syllabi, and her scholarly interests.

210-214 McKenna Hall, just before the reading

We set up 80 chairs and this optic seems to suggest that nearly all chairs were filled, if not all, eventually. Those in attendence were overwhelmingly students, including a good number from the across the way, at Holy Cross College--thanks to the collaboration of poet George Klawitter, C.S.C, who taught some of Dan's poems in his Advanced Composition class.

winner and judge

Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press, 2013), the published book, wouldn't exist in its current form had Orlando Menes not selected it. Orlando did the honors of introducing Dan.

Dan at the podium

Audience members taking in some Wiri Wiri

Group photo with "Migrant Voices" class

On Dan's last day, he had a great session with Professor Marisel Moreno's "Migrant Voices" class

MFA Testimonio: A follow-up to yesterday's announcement

University of Notre Dame

As a follow-up to yesterday’s press release announcing a new partnership between Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies and Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program, Letras Latinas Blog would like to flesh out a bit the “story behind the story.” For example: what, exactly, was meant by saying that MFA alum Lauro Vazquez “was the model” for this new Latino Studies assistantship? Quite simply, this: Lauro was able to work for Letras Latinas (and receive a modest stipend in return) during his time as a Notre Dame MFA student because of an ad-hoc, one-time-only arrangement between The Graduate School and the Institute for Latino Studies. It was an experiment of sorts: Letras Latinas had never had a graduate student assistant, let alone a promising poet enrolled in ND’s MFA program. Yesterday’s release meant to highlight the beginning of a more formal arrangement and give it some context (highlighting Lauro in large part). What follows is more context—a fuller, more complete picture.  If anything, I'd like to consider it a piece whose audience is: Latino/a poets applying to MFA programs this year.  —FA

 MFA Testimonio

by Lauro Vazquez

Yesterday I was hanging out with Thade Correa, who also graduated from Notre Dame’s MFA program last spring. And in talking about our MFA experience I had the following thought: If one starts with the presumption that an MFA experience is judged by the quality of the poems one leaves with, then I think I might—contrary to what winning the Sparks Fellowship suggests—have fared quite poorly (I’m saying this with a batch of rejections in my left hand).

But if on the other hand—my right hand, my “shaking hands” hand for example—one judges the experience based on meaningful relationships that were born of that hand, then I think I might have fared, and will fare quite well.  What I am trying to say is that I left the program with a solid network of people who I feel are invested in my work and growth. This is the kind of growth that can’t really be measured, it’s an inward growth and I’ve been lucky enough to experience it.

I’ve been fortunate, overall, to have had really great mentors and teachers along the way.  I was lucky, for instance, to have been admitted to the first CantoMundo gathering back in 2010, this was before I did the MFA program and my identity as a poet was just starting to coalesce. Well, some of the poems that I wrote in Albuquerque that summer ended up in my application for Notre Dame’s MFA program. I think Joyelle McSweeney was a huge champion and believer of those early poems, which I presumed were good enough to convince (or trick?) her into advocating for my admission into Notre Dame’s program.

I had written on my Facebook page, shortly after graduating, that I was very happy to have had studied under “Master Poets” Joyelle McSweeney, Orlando R. Menes, and Johannes Göransson, who are on the permanent faculty there. But also Susan Blackwell Ramsey, who was a visiting faculty member. And I really do feel that way, that these are master poets, and so each one, in his or her own way, was fundamental in nourishing those early poems into what Orlando has generously called a “sophisticated fusion of myth and history.”

With Joyelle, for example, I felt free to explore and conceive of poetry in many other ways than just as what is on the page. Joyelle has an amazing ability to enter into your poems and to wear them like clothes, and to force them to walk out into the world.

Joyelle McSweeney

Johannes’ interest in the kitsch also prodded me into thinking deeply about the relationship between poetry and aesthetics, his interest in translation—particularly “weird” or “impossible” translations—opened up my language and reading of poetry to fascinating wordplay.

Johannes Görannsson

With Orlando I was able to take a course on Caribbean literature that was really tailor-made to my dual interest in history and poetry. His guided reading of authors like Walcott, Carpentier, Morejón, Hernández Cruz, and others were important models for creating my own portraits of the historical figures I’m trying to paint in my poems.

Orlando Menes

And, finally, Susan’s ardent belief in the power of stories and narrative (and humor, which I am still trying to master) gave me the tools to do what I am trying to do.

Susan Blackwell Ramsey

And what I am trying to do, on the surface, might seem simple: and that is the very human need to tell these stories, these marvelous lies that tell the truth behind the lives of certain historical figures. Figures that have left their mark on my imagination and whose stories I just need to tell: everyone from Nicaragua’s Augusto Cesar Sandino; to Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs; to Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, who was born a slave in Texas and later went on to be an anarchist in Chicago; to William Lamport—an Irishman condemned to death by the Inquisition in 17^th century Mexico and whose life gave birth to the fictional myth of McCully’s Zorro.

And so, if you’re a Latino/a poet who’s applying, or thinking about applying, to an MFA program with an eye towards enrolling next Fall, do consider Notre Dame: perhaps you’ll get to work with these fine mentors, as I was lucky enough to.

November 16, 2013

Chicago, IL

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: New Funding Opportunity for Latino/a Poets...

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

The University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), in collaboration with Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program, is pleased to announce the creation of a two-year graduate assistantship for an incoming M.F.A. candidate in poetry beginning in the fall of 2014.

The recipient of the assistantship will be selected from the pool of students admitted to the Creative Writing Program by the M.F.A. program, in consultation with the Institute for Latino Studies. The selected candidate, in addition to the tuition waiver all admitted students receive, will also receive a $12,500 stipend for each of his/her two years in the program. The selected poet will work with the ILS’ literary initiative, Letras Latinas.

M.F.A. alum Lauro Vazquez (‘13), the current third-year Creative Writing Sparks Fellow, served as a model for the creation of the assistantship. “The experience we had with Lauro was such a positive one that we wanted to explore a way of repeating it, but in a more formal manner” said Francisco Aragón, ILS faculty member who oversaw Vazquez’s work with Letras Latinas.

Among the projects Vazquez carried out while pursuing his graduate degree was organizing the inaugural young poets gathering, which brought to Notre Dame Latino/a writers from other graduate programs around the U.S. They convened last April, along with Latino/a M.F.A. candidates at Notre Dame, for a weekend of fellowship and networking, as well as an informal poetics seminar offered by award-winning poet and Notre Dame professor Orlando Menes. "Organizing the poetry retreat felt like a supplementary thesis in a way—like the culmination of the work I'd been doing at the Institute, work that involved not only creating content at Letras Latinas Blog, but also creating spaces to foster community. The retreat was among the most meaningful things I did as a graduate student, and I got a definite sense that it was meaningful for the others too," said Vazquez.

The recipient of the new assistantship will be tasked with developing this project further, now named the Letras Latinas Writers Initiative, as a coordinator. But no less important is providing the incoming M.F.A. candidate with opportunities for growth, as a writer. “Lauro has made tremendous strides as a poet who grounds his cross-cultural poetics in a sophisticated fusion of myth and history,” said Orlando Menes, who directed Vazquez’s M.F.A. thesis. “I look forward to mentoring the next generation of Latino poets who see culture as fertile soil for their poetics,” Menes added, looking ahead to working with the selected candidate.

The creation of this stipend is consistent with the ILS’ mission of providing funding opportunities to graduate students in Latino Studies. According to ILS Director, José Limón:  “Together with our intense faculty recruitment, this ILS graduate funding opportunity in creative writing, under the direction of our esteemed colleague, Orlando Menes, is the first major step toward and model for the creation of an ILS-focused program of graduate study within the cognate departments of the College of Arts and Letters. In the future, we want any student contemplating graduate work in Latino Studies to put Notre Dame at the very top of his or her list of programs.”

Since its creation in 1999 the Institute for Latino Studies has played a vital role in fostering understanding of the US 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 the new Latino Studies assistantship.

For further information contact:

Orlando Menes, 

Director of Creative Writing

Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies

omenes@nd.edu