I feel compelled to say that I include the nationalization
categories in my bio, one for visibility,
but two, to undermine them; they're in quotation marks.
I beg your patience.
I have the honor tonight of introducing
both a poet and a book.
Out of print and never really included in the lineages
of any poetry coterie or school, Akrílica
was an uncategorizable mystery to those of us lucky enough
to encounter it.
Poet and editor Carmen Giménez Smith
was so moved by the book's restless inventiveness,
that she borrowed its name for the Akrílica book series
at the publishing house she co-founded, Noemi Press.
With a supporting investment from Francisco Alarcón
of Letras Latinas at Notre Dame, the Akrílica book series
has become arguably the most important incubator
of innovative Latinx poetry in the US.
Carmen has gone on to serve now as publisher and executive
director at Graywolf Press, but she has left the Akrílica book
series and all of Noemi in the capable hands of our own Sarah
Gzemski and her co-editors, Anthony Cody and Suzi Garcia.
But one last thing.
One of the last things Carmen did at Noemi
was to convene Anthony Cody and myself as co-editors
to bring the second edition of Akrílica the book
to a new generation of readers.
The Akrílica we launched tonight includes a new introduction,
a new interview with Juan Felipe,
reproductions of photographs, and original artwork
from his archives, and bold design
by the poet and artist Doug Kearney.
Do we have the video?
Thank you.
There should be a video coming up.
I kept joking, if you see the promo material for Juan Felipe
and I, Juan Felipe is the tío.
And I'm the tío in training with our mustaches.
[LAUGHTER]
This is not an easy video to watch necessarily,
but we'll talk about it.
So the Akrílica we launch tonight
includes a new introduction, a new interview,
the reproductions of the photographs,
and the design by Doug Kearney.
Translator- poet Rosa Alcalá, Suzi Garcia, hanta samsa,
J. Michael Martinez joined Carmen, Anthony, and myself
in creating all new translations,
not because the first edition translations needed correction,
but because Juan Felipe imbued the original work
with enough complexity and irrepressible energy
that it lends itself to almost infinite
reading and reimagining.
We're lucky to launch the book here
in the context of a beautiful exhibition of Juan Felipe's art
over in the Poetry Center Gallery.
And tonight, we get to welcome poet, artist,
community coconspirator, and poetry tío Juan Felipe Herrera.
Juan Felipe's work has earned a long list of accolades,
including the Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Award,
fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,
the National Endowment for the Arts and UC Berkeley.
The recent publication of his selected poems,
Half the World in Light, earned a National Book Critics Circle
Award for Poetry and the PEN Beyond Margins Award.
Last year, the Fresno Unified School District
dedicated an elementary school to his name.
[APPLAUSE]
He served as the 21st poet laureate of the United States
from 2015 to 2017.
And just a few days ago, he was awarded the Poetry Society
of America's Frost Medal for Lifetime achievement.
[APPLAUSE]
But what kind of poetry could properly
be celebrated without grounding its appraisal in the context
of our actual lives?
Both halves of the world know they are constantly
trading light and the dark.
These last few days, I've been thinking
of the poet Divya Victor, who teaches at Michigan State
University, where three students were recently murdered
and another five injured by a gunman who
walked the campus with a list of his intended victims.
In response, Divya Victor posted, quote,
"to imagine creative writing without
a trauma-informed approach has been reckless for decades.
But especially now, the field must turn away
from serving the mandates of publishing and academic markets
to imagine first and foremost that writing
remains for young people a kind of survival
after repeated national betrayals."
Trauma-informed may not be how Juan Felipe would
describe his work, but can we say whole- human- informed?
Can we say life-informed?
Can we say kindness-informed?
Tonight, I celebrate Juan Felipe's work
because in his writing for children, for the stage
and for screen, in his poems ranging from documentary,
to lyric, to experimental, to theatrical, to just buckwild,
in his visual art, and in his pedagogy, most of all, realized
most fully in the collaborative writing and art
making space known as Laureate Lab, Juan
Felipe and his friends have long been imagining,
developing, and lovingly practicing
exactly the kind of revolutionary approach
that Divya is calling for.
I celebrate Juan Felipe to remind us
that amidst our various crises, we are not alone.
When Juan Felipe says of his own writing practice
that he hopes to, quote, "generate kindness,"
it is a kindness that emerges from and returns us back
to our capacity for care.
Reading Juan Felipe, I know that kindness is older than betrayal
and will outlive it.
Wordplay is older than literature and will outlive it.
In a Zoom meeting in which we were finalizing
the proofs for Akrílica, my co-editors and I
asked Juan Felipe to read our translation
of the book's final poem called "Forever Maga."
Importantly, that's Maga as in Magdalena, not as
in the political slogan.
The poem breaks itself open, leaving its own occasion
and evolving into a voice that seems
to speak the entire book's transgenerational wisdom
and mischievous encouragement.
As Juan Felipe read, it felt like that voice took us
by the hand, like it was reaching from decades past
to propel us forward.
Keep going.
You're not alone as you make things hopefully worthy
of being placed in the hands of those younger still.
I've asked the Poetry Center to loop
the video above of the last scene of the 2017
film, The Florida Project.
The film follows a young girl who celebrates most of her days
even as her young mother's attempts to make
ends meet risks sinking both of them
deeper and deeper into a pool of risk.
In this final scene, the girl knows
she'll be taken from her mother by child protective services.
And so she goes to see her best friend one last time.
I cannot explain this.
But hearing Juan Felipe read our version
of "Forever Maga," the way he trusted our translation,
our words to join with his words and with his breathing,
it felt like he was our spiritual friend
and older brother taking us by the hand,
rushing us past the gatekeepers.
We are not headed into a commercial playground,
but into the promise--
the kids are going to Disney World--
but into the promise as fierce as a child's belief
of a freer, more tender world.
Reading Juan Felipe, we sense poetry's kindness generator
is at full power.
And when you finally feel it, all you have to do
is reach out, take its hand, and run.
Please welcome Juan Felipe--
[APPLAUSE]
--Herrera.