AWP Recap—Part Two

Thursday night at AWP in Chicago, I was a co-host of Ragdale @ AWP, a reception for Ragdale alumni. This was held in the penthouse (22^nd floor) of the Cliff Dwellers, on Michigan Avenue facing the lake. Here are some photos of the spectacular view out the windows and from the huge terrace outside the penthouse. Thanks to Mario Duarte and Miguel Morales for these photos.

 

One of my dear friends, José Faus, stands on the terrace outside the penthouse to enjoy the view. I was fortunate to be able to invite a number of friends who are fine writers to meet the wonderful Ragdale staff. I hope all of them will apply for a Ragdale residency. I know most of them will. And I had the added pleasure of introducing people I love to one another. This was a joyous occasion, bringing people I love together with Ragdale, which I love.

 Another of my beloved organizations, Macondo, had a fantastic session featuring the incredible Dagoberto Gilb (pictured here) and Luis J. Rodriguez in a creative dialogue moderated by John Santos.

Since Luis and I were the only ones to staff our table, I had to remain in the book fair so that he could make this great session. We've decided that, at the next AWP, we will ask some other people to make commitments to help us with the book fair.

We had book signings all afternoon beginning with Michael Warr and ending with Gloria Vando. Unfortunately, I don't have photos of those. They were quite popular, and we sold books, which is the purpose of such things. Our authors had a lot of fun with them, too.

Right after the book fair closed, I hurried down Michigan Avenue to Columbia College to give a joint Latino Writers Collective-Proyecto Latina reading. Here is Diana Pando, one of the Proyecto Latina masterminds, reading with the rest of the readers in the background.

We had a receptive audience of approximately 30 men and women, which surprised me since we were competing with dozens of other AWP offsite readings. The audience was illustrious with

Francisco Alarçon, Odilia Gálván Rodríguez, Diana Garcia, Carlos Cúmpian, and many other powerful writers. The material read, poetry and fiction, was strong, humorous, and dramatic, and afterward everyone enjoyed visiting with friends not seen for a long time.

Saturday morning, Ben and I had breakfast with Francisco Aragón and Luis before Ben left for the BkMk table and Luis and I headed back to the Tia Chucha/Scapegoat table.

On Saturday, the general public is allowed into the book fair, and it became truly hectic. By this time, I was losing my voice, and I had a panel coming up at 3:00 with other members of the Latino Writers Collective to discuss our writing workshops with the children of migrant workers. I'd been sucking on cough drops earlier, but Saturday I survived on herbal cough drops.

Here is part of our panel, right to left, José Faus, Miguel Morales, and me. Not shown in this photo, Gabriela N. Lemmons.

This panel is concerned with a central project that the LWC is involved with. The work we've done with these children of migrant workers has been emotional, draining, and satisfying since our first session with them. During our meeting back in Kansas City to prepare for the panel, we swore to each other that we wouldn't cry at the AWP, even though the stories and memories always throw us into tears. As we explained the program and the impact it had on these kids, as well as their great need, we each at one time or another broke our promise, but the audience cried also.

It was the next to the last session on a day when many attendees have already left, so it was a small audience--but such a passionate and involved audience! We felt grateful to be able to have a discussion with such attentive people.

I had to apologize since my voice was mostly gone--from three solid days of speaking to thousands of people a day in the book fair, I thought. This panel brought one more reward for me. Joy Castro and I have been communicating on Twitter and by email but had never met in person. Joy had shown up at the book fair on Friday, and we met. Now, she came to our panel, and Mario Duarte caught a photo of us together.

And that's an appropriate place to end. We left after the panel, and the great joy of AWP, as always, was seeing so many dear friends, most of whom were not photographed. Deborah Miranda, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, Susan Deer Cloud, Ruth Behar, Allison Hedge Coke, Travis Hedge Coke, Susan Page Tillett, Regin Igloria, Eduardo Corral, Richard Blanco, Sherwin Bitsui, Maria Melendez, Alice Friman, Marilyn Kallett, Robin Becker, Judith Podell, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Ching-In Chen, and many others. For some of us, far-flung across the states, AWP is the one time we get together. And it's what I always look forward to the most. My one regret this time was not having a chance to attend anyone's panels. Next year, we'll fix that, though. So good-bye , my friends, it's email, Facebook, and Twitter until we meet at the next AWP again. Next year in Boston!

Books of Interest by Writers of Color: An Interview With Poet John Olivares Espinoza

This interview of John Olivares Espinoza took place in 2009. It is being published here for the first time.

I first met John Olivares Espinoza at Macondo after already arranging to bring him to Kansas City for a reading with Francisco Aragón and Brenda Cárdenas. We had several long conversations then about the writing life and again when he visited Kansas City. John is a thoughtful, soft-spoken man, who reflects deeply on what it means to give your life to this undertaking of writing the best you possibly can. It was truly a pleasure to interview him.

John Olivares Espinoza is the author of The Date Fruit Elegies (2008), the inaugural collection in Bilingual Press/Revista Bilingüe’s new poetry series, Canto Cosas. In 2009, The Date Fruit Elegies was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in poetry. Espinoza was born and raised in Indio, California to Mexican parents. He holds degrees in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside (B.A.) and Arizona State University (M.F.A), where he spent time writing about his experience working as a gardener with his brothers and father in the nearby resorts. John and his wife live in San Jose, California, where he teaches at the National Hispanic University.

LR: Your first full-length poetry collection, The Date Fruit Elegies, was the first in the new Latino poetry series, Canto Cosas, from Bilingual Press/Revista Bilingue. How did that come about?

JOE: It was a mix of not giving up and friends not giving up on me. I had been submitting my first manuscript to contests for years before Bilingual Press picked it up. The manuscript placed as finalist or semi-finalist here and there, and after a while I even started sending out queries to presses I thought I might have a chance with, but they politely declined.

At some point during graduate school I met Francisco Aragón, a poet, and at that time he was starting up his small press, Momotombo. Early on he had supported my work and manuscript while I was still in graduate school, pointing me in the direction of contests of whose judges I might have a shot with. At the AWP writers’ conference, he had even set up a private meeting with Sandy Taylor of Curbstone Press just before Sandy passed away. Curbstone took a pass on the manuscript. It was a blow to my faith in getting the book published. I was set with stashing the manuscript in my drawer and move on. Before long, Francisco was granted editorial oversight of poetry for Bilingual. This new series was to be called Canto Cosas. I guess Francisco thought highly enough my work that he took it into his own hands to expose it to a wide audience and make it the debut of the new Canto Cosas.

LR: You have a striking and unique cover for your book. Can you tell us the story behind it?

JOE: The cover art is from a loteria series by Gene Flores, and they are just a few of the dozens he has produced. The person who pointed me in the direction of Flores was Sergio Troncoso, who used Flores’ artwork for the cover of The Last Tortilla and Other Stories. The story of how Gene Flores came to be my second choice is an odd one.

In April of 2007, Bilingual Press flew me in for a pair of readings in Tempe and unbeknownst to me, the trip was also to talk about a potential book cover. From what I had heard, it was rare for an author to have a say on the cover art. It’s well known that Gary Keller, the publisher of Bilingual Press, has collected an extensive array of Chicano art for what I guess to be the Hispanic Research Center. Much of it has been collected in the beautiful two-volume set called Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art. I worked with Linda St. John, an associate editor, in choosing the cover in her office. She had pre-selected several pieces for me from CCCA and there was one that floored me. It was a painting of a skeleton in mariachi get-up strumming a guitar by George Yepes entitled “La serenata.” The truth was that the image itself had very little to do with the themes of my book, except for maybe the section of elegies, which does not wholly make the book. But it would have made for a striking cover, and one that my mom would have to set face down on her nightstand.

George Yepes is the unofficial artist for Latino Hollywood. One of my favorite filmmakers, Robert Rodriguez, collects his art. I was excited to find out that Rodriguez actually has a copy of “La serenata” hanging in his bedroom (which is kind of creepy). Perhaps with this Yepes connection Rodriguez would hire me as a studio poet. Bilingual then solicited Yepes’s permission to use the artwork, but Yepes asked to read my poems first. Yepes responded by declining the rights citing that there’s a possibility that Rodriguez might use the art in an album cover as he had with other Yepes pieces. But instead, Yepes suggested, that he create original art for my work. I was so excited. Unfortunately, Bilingual had a deadline to meet with the book, plus there were no funds to commission a cover. After another failed appeal to use “La serenta,” we moved on with my suggestion to use Gene Flores. The designer made an extraordinary cover that I am happy with, as well as so many other people,

The Date Fruit Elegies (Bilingual Review Press)


LR: Many of the poems in The Date Fruit Elegies arose out of your father’s work as a gardener and your own work with him when you were a child and adolescent. Reading the poems, it becomes clear that your relationship with your father in those years was complex but close. Was that difficult to write about?

JOE: At first it wasn’t difficult at all. At that time I was writing those poems in an undergraduate workshop and later in early graduate writing workshops. Back then I had a limited perception about audience. I really didn’t think that those poems would reach an audience outside of those 10, 15 people in the workshop. Now I have to second think how I represent members of my family in my poetry, as that is all an audience goes by. At a workshop in Macondo, Denise Chavez said about writing: “Do no harm.” It’s an adage I follow. Personally, I don’t have a problem writing poetry charged with emotion, but I have to be considerate to others.

LR: What theme or organizing principle, if any, did you use in putting the book together?

JOE: The habits we have now are one we picked up as kids. Working landscape with my dad was about near-perfection. For example, when we planted flowers in the soil during the fall, I wanted to plant the flowers any which way. My dad would not have any of that. If he saw that our flowers were being planted in a crooked line, he’d have us dig them out and plant them correctly. Even though it was a dirty job, he approached his work with nice, neat, and clean in mind. Although it may not have appeared it to anyone else, the work my dad did was deliberate.

The first draft of my manuscript had no sections. I think I may have ordered them by favorites first. Remember I was young writer with much to learn about putting a manuscript together. As I got better read and consulted friends and teachers, I began to shape my book by my work’s major themes. So the first section of the book is about growing up in California, the second are the elegies, the third are the prose poems, and lastly, a section about work. These were the themes that I wanted to represent in my first-book, which in turn represents me. With the habit I picked up as work as a kid, I wanted to achieve a “perfection” in the book, one that has every poem speak to the next and is deliberately placed. I had my flowers lined up, my weeds pulled out.

LR: In 2009, The Date Fruit Elegies was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in poetry, a high achievement for a first book. What’s next for you as a writer and teacher?

JOE: I’m chipping away at the poems, one by one. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re not. The poems still star family and early memories. I’ve also been sketching out a memoir on language.

As far as my teaching, I don’t know. Right now there are a lot of hiring freezes, or where they’re hiring, it’s freezing. Hopefully something suitable will come up for me.

LR: What encouragement and advice do you have for students and emerging writers?

JOE: You have to be in this profession of writing for the long haul. I feel there’s too much pressure for fame and veneration put on budding writers. I notice that’s the kind of language coming out of Poets and Writers and especially blogs: “The Best Poets to Come Out of Preschool” or “The Ten Under Ten.” There doesn’t seem to be a sense that being a writer, a good one, takes a lifetime of craft. Surely some have talent right out of the gates, but I’ve seen mediocre poets mature into writing astonishing verse because of hard work. I wish we treated poetry more like martial arts. New writers should focus on the writing and less on publishing and winning contests.

Back to the usual format with next week's post in my series on writers of color. Tomorrow (if I can conquer the tech) I'll post my radio interview with Michael Medrano and David Campos on Pakatelas!

Masterminds, AWP in Denver April 7-10, and Other Items

My writing office at Ragdale

National Poetry Month is here, as is the AWP and spring--three of my favorite things. Today's entry is full of random poetry- and AWP-related items.

First of all, a couple of long-promised Ragdale photos (courtesy of Irasema Gonzalez) and a link to Proyecto Latina's site where they have a slideshow of more photos taken during their visit with me at Ragdale and recordings of Diana Pando's interview with me and me reading some of my poems.

Ragdale House as Diana approaches

Now, for National Poetry Month, one of my poems about poetry readings.

COYOTE AT THE POETRY READING

He walks in late,

of course,

and sits in the back row

even though he’s on the program.

Coyote wraps a storm

around him like a protective shield,

wears his leather like armor,

stares the woman in business suit

and her partner in high-style casual

into dropping their eyes. Coyote

makes everyone nervous.

Whispers circle the room.

Who asked him to read?

“Must have been some woman,”

one bearded man says, with a sniff.

“A guy would have known better.”

“Probably thinks it’s some kind of slam,”

one professor tells another.

When they call his name,

Coyote stalks to the podium

and growls into the microphone,

while, around the room, the air

burns with after-lightning

ozone and smells of blood

and splintered bones.

---Linda Rodriguez

Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

And a link to some others.

Next is the selection of the Latino Writers Collective as one of The PITCH's four Masterminds of 2010. This identifies us as one of the creative forces of Kansas City (and gives us a chunk of change to keep doing our work--Mil gracias, PITCH!).

Finally, for everyone going to the AWP national conference in Denver, come hear the Latino Writers Collective read at 4:30-5:45 pm in Rooms 102-104, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level on Saturday. And drop by the Scapegoat Press table, Exhibit Hall A, #B13, in the Bookfair any time--especially for my booksigning at 3:00 pm on Thursday, Francisco Aragon's (The Glow of Our Sweat, his wonderful brand-new book!) at 10:00 am on Thursday, and LWC's at 10:00 am on Saturday.

Latino Writers Collective Brings Award-Winning Latino Writers to Kansas City Public Library

The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press) is the 2008 winner of the International Latino Book Award in Poetry. Reviewers have loved it. In fact, Booklist referred to it in a review as “a ravishing collection of poems,” and the El Paso Times described the book as a “compelling and exhilarating addition to Latino letters.” The anthology of new Latino poets is so highly regarded nationally that the Ford Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Southwest Airlines joined with the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture to send the editor and key contributors on a successful national reading tour. The Latino Writers Collective now brings The Wind Shifts tour to Kansas City with editor, Francisco Aragón, and two contributors, Brenda Cardenas and John Olivares Espinoza, who will read their work at the Central Library, 14 W. 10^th, on Wednesday, September 23, at 6:30 p.m. The evening will include a reception and booksigning. RSVP at http://www.kclibrary.org/event/cuarta-pagina.

Aragón is the author of Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press, 2005) and the forthcoming Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010). His work has appeared in various anthologies, including, Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies (W.W. Norton & Company), American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement (University of Iowa Press), Evensong: Contemporary American Poets on Spirituality (Bottom Dog Press) and, Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad (Ninebark Press). He directs Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) at the University of Notre Dame where he edits Latino Poetry Review. He also edits Canto Cosas, a book series out of Bilingual Press for Latino and Latina poets. He serves on the boards of the Guild Complex in Chicago, as well the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). Aragón holds degrees in Spanish from the University of California at Berkeley and New York University, and an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Davis and the University of Notre Dame, respectively. He lives in Arlington, VA and works out of the ILS’ office in Washington, D.C.

Visit his website: http://franciscoaragon.net

Cardenas' first full-length book of poetry, Boomerang, will be published by Bilingual Press in the fall of 2009. She also has a chapbook of poems, From the Tongue of Brick and Stone (Momotombo Press, 2005). She is co-editor of Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press) and has twice received Illinois Arts Council finalist awards in Poetry. Cardenas ' poems have appeared in U.S. Latino Literature Today, Poetic Voices Without Borders, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century, Prairie Schooner, and others. With Sonido Ink(quieto), a spoken word and music ensemble, she released the CD, Chicano, Illnoize: The Blue Island Sessions (DeSPICable Records, 2001).

Olivares Espinoza is the author of The Date Fruit Elegies (2008), the inaugural collection in Bilingual Press/Revista Bilingüe’s new poetry series, Canto Cosas. In 2009, The Date Fruit Elegies was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in poetry. Espinoza was born and raised in Indio, California to Mexican parents. He holds degrees in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside (B.A.) and Arizona State University (M.F.A), where he spent time writing about his experience working as a gardener with his brothers and father in the nearby resorts. John and his wife live in San Jose, California, where he teaches at the National Hispanic University.

This event will be the first in another of the Latino Writers Collective’s successful annual reading series. Cuarta Página (Fourth Page) Reading Series is co-sponsored by BkMk Press, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City Hispanic News, Letras Latinas, Mattie Rhodes Latino Cultural Arts Division, Park University, UMKC Women’s Center, The Writers Place and other community organizations. The series is made possible in part by funding from the Missouri Arts Council.