I’m trying to get my blog momentum back, but it’s not going to be easy: I’m currently in residence at Vermont College of Fine Arts up in snowy Montpelier. Yesterday it was ten degrees below zero, this morning it felt warmer: three below. And while I was up here I finished editing my forthcoming book of stories, Men without Bliss, and reading nominated books for the National Book Critics Circle (finalists for the award will be announced next week in San Francisco!), and of course, my teaching duties: poetry workshop, poetry lecture, poetry chit-chat.

Last night Brigit Pegeen Kelly came up to awe the audience with her work. The fan club is rather sizeable so I won’t flash my membership card too loudly, but I will say what a treat it is to listen to this rather reclusive poet, who makes rare appearances. This was also my first time meeting her. When I took a job a few years ago at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she’s on faculty, folks assumed (as did I) that I would become chummy with her. Alas, she was on leave, and when she finally did return to teach I had already moved on to greener pastures back to New York City. She’s a brilliant poet, and a nice lady.
The poetry chit-chat going around here is AWP. I know it’s a bit early but not really: it’s right around the corner. The buzz is that it sold out: 7,200 people registered. And unlike past AWP conferences, there will be no on-site registration this year. If you didn’t register beforehand you are SOL. The next challenge will be to fit all attendees into the keynote speaker’s auditorium, which seats only 4,000. Well, it was bound to happen, the growth spurt, and especially for the NYC conference. I’ll be posting more about all matters AWP before and after the conference. During last year’s jamboree in Atlanta, this acronym was one of the top ten search engine phrases plugged into Technorati. Wow.
Anyway, another project I just completed was editing the new and selected volume of poetry for Chicano poet Alurista:

The volume celebrates a twenty-plus year relationship between this important poet and his publisher, Bilingual Press. Alurista is a hero of Chicano letters, and a key figure in the formation of Chicano identity. He is alternately referred to as “the poet laureate of Aztlán” or the “poeta-maestro,” both fitting titles given the significance of his artistic and political contributions to el Movimiento Chicano of the late 60s and early 70s. Besides his consistent creative output, in 1967, while a student at San Diego State University, he co-founded MEChA, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán. He helped draft El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán of 1969, giving it its title and preamble on that fateful March in Denver, Colorado at the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference hosted by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales. In 1977 he founded and edited Maize, an early journal (and later small press) dedicated to Chicano and Third World literature and criticism that also sponsored the first Floricanto festivities.
He has also been excluded, like many writers of color, from the white canons, and therefore remains obscure and unrecognized by readers outside the Chicano cultural landscape. Alurista is nationalistic, political, and an outspoken critic of the Republican Party. It has been an honor working on this project, and I’m extremely excited to see this manuscript become a book to be released in 2009.
Hmm, I’m using the word “political” again. I think I’m home. So wáchale, haters: Chicano in da house!

01.04.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under AWP, Books, Education, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.