Felicitaciones are in order for two members of the CantoMundo familia.

CantoMundo Fellow Laurie Ann Guerrero has won the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, sponsored by Letras Latinas and University of Notre Dame Press. Guerrero’s work will be published by University of Notre Dame Press.

The judge for this year, Francisco X. Alarcón, shared his thoughts on Guerrero’s collection on the Letras Latinas blog:
A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying by Laurie Ann Guerrero is a stunning collection of moving poems. Here, poetry is both universal and very local; the personal turns collective in the mode of Tomás Rivera’s Chicano classic …Y no se lo tragó la tierrra / And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him. The authenticity and the plurality of the poetic voices strike the reader for their uncommon accomplished originality.

This is the poetry of both saints and sinners (and even murderers). The poet conjures up Pablo Neruda, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sylvia Plath, and rooted in the best Latin American, Chicano/a, and contemporary American poetics, is able to render an effective poetic version of Nepantla, the land where different traditions meet, according to Anzaldúa. These poems make the reader laugh, cry, cringe, lose one’s breath, and almost one’s mind, at times.

Tongue becomes the ever-present image. In the opening poem, “Preparing the Tongue,” a cow’s tongue is sliced in preparation for cooking, “…I choke down / the stink of its heated moo, make carnage / of my own mouth, add garlic.” The poet handles pen and butcher knife with the same great dexterity. Upon summoning up childhood memories, the poet pleads, “Open your jaw. / Let the eye of your tongue see … / how we licked the fat black olives from tamales…” Yes, here, poems become ultimately licking tongues.

A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying is a collection of poems that would haunt the reader and won’t be easy to forget. I celebrate and praise the power of these poems that engage the great diversity of human reality with empathy, and do this, also with tremendous imagination. These poems restore my faith in the power of poetry.

Brazos, Carry Me, by Pablo Miguel Martínez, a CantoMundo co-founder and fellow, received Honorable Mention.

Here’s the press release:

Mayor Castro announces nationally renowned author Carmen Tafolla as San Antonio’s inaugural Poet Laureate

On April 3, 2012, San Antonio will become the first major city in Texas to appoint a Poet Laureate. Mayor Julián Castro will formally announce nationally renowned author and poet Carmen Tafolla as the Poet Laureate in keeping with the SA2020 goal of turning San Antonio into “a brainpower community that is the liveliest city in the nation.” The initiative applies to the Arts & Culture as well as Education vision areas. The honorary position was created to promote the literary arts and literacy within the community as well as foster a greater appreciation of the poetic arts through the reading and writing of poetry. The Poet Laureate will serve a two-year term and will commit to a minimum of three City sponsored and selected public appearances for each year of service. The Mayor’s announcement and reception will take place on Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. at City Council Chambers in the Municipal Plaza Building, 114 W. Commerce St. The event is free and open to the public.

“I can think of no one more worthy of this honor than Carmen Tafolla. She’s not only an accomplished poet and educator; she is a homegrown talent who embodies the power and poignancy of art in our community. I am proud to call her San Antonio’s first Poet Laureate,” Mayor Julián Castro responded to the determination by the Poet Laureate selection committee. The announcement follows the Mayor’s State of the City address where he called for San Antonians to “be bold and invest in the city’s future” through education, early childhood education in particular.

The City’s Office of Cultural Affairs received 21 nominations representing 15 local poets. The selection committee was comprised of poetsfrom around the country: Francisco Aragon (San Francisco, CA), Catherine Bowman (Indiana), Cyrus Cassells (Texas), and Valerie Martinez (New Mexico). The application process opened in November 2011 and nominations were accepted until January 18, 2012. The committee review process took approximately six weeks.

Tafolla’s goal as Poet Laureate, she believes, is to bring the joy of literature into the daily lives of the people of this great pueblo, and to empower the expression of their own poetic voices in our young and old alike. She believes strongly that a multicultural dual-language education is one of the greatest gifts we can provide our children, and that effective family literacy is heavily dependent on the availability of stories and literature to which people can relate culturally and realistically. “Literacy and literature cannot be realistically separated if we hope to have an impact on all of our residents,” says Tafolla. “Powerful stories that reflect our reality reverberate inside us, and give us meaning. Literature cannot afford to be elitist or disconnected from the community.”

Her first solo collection of poetry, Curandera, was published in 1983, and gleaned her recognition as a master of “code-switching,” the art of alternating between formal and colloquial Spanish and English, as a literary technique. She has been called “a world class writer” by Alex Haley, and a “pioneer of Chicana literature” by Ana Castillo. Tafolla has published five books of poetry, including the award-winning Sonnets to Human Beings, translated into German in 1992, Spanish in 1994, and Bengali in 2006; the most recent collection, Rebozos, will be published in September 2012.

One of her most-loved children’s books is That’s Not Fair! Emma Tenayuca’s Struggle for Justice / ¡No es Justo! La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia, which tells the true and inspiring story of pecan shellers in the 1920s and 1930s in San Antoniostruggling for better pay and working conditions and the young woman who became a hero for the cause. Other children’s books, including What Can you DO with a Paleta? and What Can you DO with a Rebozo?, have won the prestigious Americas Award, presented to Tafolla in 2010 at the Library of Congress, the Charlotte Zolotow, for outstanding picture book writing, and two American Library Association (ALA) Notable Children’s Books. Her latest children’s book, Fiesta Babies, was named one of the Top Ten Best Books for Babies by the Fred Rogers Corporation. These only represent a sampling of her awards.

“Truly, she reaches all segments of the population, from the academic literary experts to the kindergarteners,” Texas State Senator Leticia Van de Putte enthusiastically stated in her nomination letter for Dr. Carmen Tafolla, who serves as Writer-in-Residence for Children’s, Youth & Transformative Literature in the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies under the College of Education & Human Development at the University of Texas as San Antonio. “I congratulate San Antonio for having a responsible government that supports the arts because it promotes our great city as a great place to live and raise families,” Van de Putte continued.

For more information about the San Antonio Poet Laureate Initiative, please contact Diana Hidalgo at the Office of Cultural Affairs at 210.207.6568 or e-mail at diana.hidalgo@sanantonio.gov.

Visit www.sahearts.com, your guide to arts and culture in San Antonio.

Elizabeth Acevedo
Anthony Cody
Angel Garcia
Juan Luis Guzmán
Carmen Giménez Smith
Raina J. León
Ruben Quesada
José Antonio Rodríguez
Jose Javier Zamora

¡Felicitaciones!

The fellowship is designed to give a post-graduate writer–without a book–the time, space, and support to finish her first manuscript. The fellowship is also made to give the fellow professional experience in arts-administration with the Center, and editorial experience with West Branch. They provide health insurance and an award of $20,000. All is renewable for a subsequent year.

Congratulations, Carolina!!!

http://www.pw.org/content/latino_poets_connect_at_cantomundo

CantoMundo joins Cave Canem and Kundiman– established organizations that support Black and Asian American poets respectively–in providing generative and critical space for poets of color in the United States. In honor of the inspiration provided by these organizations, CantoMundo featured Cave Canem co-founder Toi Derricotte as its inaugural Keynote Speaker in 2010, and Vekas Menon, Kundiman board member as the 2011 Keynote Speaker.

photo by JW Stovall

CantoMundo is proud to announce that one its inaugural fellows, Eduardo Corral, has garnered a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award. Corral, winner of the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, was one of ten recipients to received this year’s coveted prize.

Poets Aracelis Girmay and Roberto Tejada will be our Faculty for CantoMundo 2012!

Check out the Admission page on our site, www.cantomundo.org, for more details on how to apply for admission.

Deadline for applications is Saturday, December 31, 2011.

Check out our FaceBook page for some great photos. We’ll be loading some up on the site in the coming weeks.

Thank you to all the Fellows and to Benjamin Alire Saenz and Naomi Ayala for making CantoMundo 2011 so memorable.

Award-winning poets Naomi Ayala and Benjamin Alire Sáenz will read from their acclaimed poetry collections at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 9, 2011. The event is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow.

This free event is hosted by CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics. CantoMundo provides a space where Latina/o poets can nurture and enhance their poetics; lecture and learn about aspects of Latina/o poetics currently not being discussed by the mainstream publishers and critics; and network with peer poets to enrich and further disseminate Latina/o poetry. The Center for Mexican American Studies of the College of Liberal Arts of the University of Texas at Austin is the primary sponsor of CantoMundo. www.cantomundo.org

Biographies
Naomi Ayala is the author of two books of poetry, Wild Animals on the Moon and This Side of Early. Her third book of poems, Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations is forthcoming from Bilingual Review Press. Her translation of Argentinean poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s most recent book of poetry, The Wind’s Archeology/La arqueología del viento, was published by Vaso Roto Ediciones in Mexico in 2011. Naomi lives in Washington, DC and teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD and the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMASS-Boston. She is a member of the Board of Directors of DC Advocates for the Arts. Distinguishing herself as a poet who writes in both Spanish and English, Naomi’s most recent work in Spanish appears in Al pie de la Casa Blanca: Poetas hispanos de Washington, DC (North American Academy of the Spanish Language, 2010). Her most recent work in English is included in The Poet’s Cookbook: Recipes from Germany and Poems by 33 American Poets with German Translations.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s first collection of poetry, Calendar of Dust (1992), won the American Book Award. His first novel for young adults, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (2004) was an ALA Top Ten Book for Young Adults and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second novel for teens, He Forgot to Say Goodbye (2010) won the Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award and the Southwest Books Award. Saenz is the author of a collection of short stories, Flowers for the Broken (1992), the novel Carry Me Like Water (1995), several children’s books and six collections of poetry. Saenz has received the Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship and the Lannan Poetry Fellowship.

More than 20 nationally recognized Latino poets from across the U.S. will gather in Austin, Texas, for CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics.

On Friday, July 8, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., these poets will present a free poetry reading that will be open to the public at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center. A reception will follow the reading.

These participants in CantoMundo represent the best of Latina/o poetry in the United States. Some of the featured award-winning and nationally recognized poets include: Millicent Borges Acardi (New York City), Francisco Aragón (Washington D.C.), Oscar Bermeo (California), Eduardo Corral (Arizona), Carolina Ebeid (Austin, Texas), Amalia Ortíz (Texas/California), Luivette Resto (California), and ire’ne lara silva (Austin, Texas), among others.

CantoMundo provides a space where Latina/o poets can nurture and enhance their poetics; lecture and learn about aspects of Latina/o poetics currently not being discussed by the mainstream publishers and critics; and network with peer poets to enrich and further disseminate Latina/o poetry. For the complete list of CantoMundo poets, please visit www.cantomundo.org.