Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
and is a poet, playwright, screenwriter, memoirist,
and novelist.
His many honors include the National Endowment
of the Arts Award, International Prize and the Barnes and Noble
Discover Award, both for his memoir, A Place
To Stand, the American Book Award for the novel in verse,
Martin and Meditations on the South Valley, a Pushcart
Prize, and the International Hispanic Heritage Award,
among others.
Baca has been featured on NPR, HBO's Def Poetry Jam,
and PBS's The Language of Life with Bill Moyers.
As with any success, Baca's achievements
have been hard-fought.
The poet found himself convicted on charges of drug possession
at the age of 21 and used his years of incarceration
to teach himself to read, to write, and to see himself
and his heritage in the body of a poem, one word at a time.
Since then, Baca has been awarded the Berkeley Regents
Fellowship and the Wallace Stevens Fellowship
from Yale University.
And he has taught in prisons, detention centers,
and community centers throughout the United States.
In Working in the Dark--
Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio,
a book of essays which won a Southwest Book Award,
Baca describes himself as this.
"I am a fool and a king, genius and imbecile,
for this is what it is to be a poet.
In my poems, whatever has been crippled in me,
my hope and love and trust and endurance,
rises again in spume of fire, unleashing bird wings
and jungle howls.
My poems beckon those who are dry into the rain, those
without love into lovers' beds, call
those who are silent to cry out and moan in reverie."
I have the pleasure of introducing
to you this afternoon Mr. Jimmy Santiago Baca.
[APPLAUSE]