BORDEÑO CHRONICLES / Francisco Delgado

Exhibition BORDEÑO CHRONICLES
paintings and drawings by Francisco Delgado
DATE/TIME: Opening reception: Wed, April 30, 2008 6:00pm
LOCATION: UNAM San Antonio
600 Hemisfair Park / San Antonio, Texas, 78205
EXHIBITION DATES: April 30 – July 24
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

"El Paso artist Francisco Delgado believes in making visible the struggles of communities of immigrants in the United States and with the same passion also celebrates their successes. With his characteristic satire and black humor, his art works reflects the culture of the United Sates–Mexico border. His message transcends race and social class perimeters and unites communities in a language of universal truth.

Delgado graduated from UT El Paso with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and received a Master’s from Yale University in the same field in 2002."

from La Bloga: Daniel Chacón on In the Grove's special issue: homage to Andrés Montoya. Also info on how to help Libreria Martinez from closing down... it's in my hometown of Santa Ana, where I bought my first tall stack of books by Chican@s.

New Titles from Achiote Press

The spring edition of Achiote Seeds, Semillas de Achiote is now available. It's an honor to have work in this chapjournal with Cristina García (Dreaming in Cuban), Brenda Cárdenas (From the Tongues of Brick and Stone), and Gabriela Erandi Rico. The work by these three women, including the cover art by Celia Herrera Rodríguez, is beautiful.

And very much looking forward to reading María Tuttle's chapbook Saramé, also just published by Achiote Press. The chapbook is an excerpt from her "historical/archival novel about the life of an aspiring Opera singer in El Paso."


Saramé and Semillas de Achiote: only $12 for the pair, and available through the Achiote Press website.

¡Viva las mujeres y Achiote Press!

Craig Perez and Jennifer Reimer, the co-founders of Achiote and the editors, have put together a very impressive chapbook and chapjournal series. Their titles sell out quickly and it's easy to see why with the wonderful line-up of poets, including Barbara Jane Reyes, Mónica de la Torre, Javier O. Huerta, Truong Tran, Francisco X. Alarcón, Alfred Arteaga, Oscar Bermeo, Dolores Dorantes, Rich Villar, and many more.

About the press, from the website: "... We named our press after the Achiote tree because we believe poetry has the very same powers to enrich our surroundings, inspire our passions, enhance our senses, and heal our wounds.

To us, Achiote represents the unrepresentable, transnational, migratory, and adaptive. Achiote Press asks what it means to bear witness, to use adaptation as resistance, to cross borders, to map ourselves onto a dislocated world, to speak in exile, and to suffer diasporic hunger."

Thank you to the co-founders for this important work.

"I like songbirds. Two years ago I bought a chachalaca... for eighty pesos. I knew that a storm was coming when the chachalaca began to coo; it was like a companion for me but, Jesus Christ, they robbed it from me. Now I don't have a chachalaca to distract me."



María Sabina
from María Sabina: Selections

"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.

A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.

A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."






from Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism (translated by Joan Pinkham)

Maria Tuttle's "Saramé" chapbook & new Achiote Seeds chapjournal

April 25
Spring Edition Release Party & Reading
Ethnic Studies Library, Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley Campus
6:00 - 8:00 PM
Free

from the Achiote Press website:
"Achiote Press will celebrate the release of our Spring issues with a party on Friday, April 25th at the Ethnic Studies Library on the UC Berkeley campus. The event will feature special readings by former Achiote contributors Barbara Jane Reyes (Poeta en San Francisco) and Truong Tran (Within The Margin), and Oscar Bermeo (Anywhere Avenue). Maria Tuttle will read from her new Achiote chapbook, Saramé. This chapbook contains an excerpt from Tuttle's historical/archival novel about the life of an aspiring Opera singer in El Paso. Gabriela Erandi Rico will read from her contributions to the new Achiote Seeds chapjournal. Javier Huerta, author of Some Clarifications y otras poemas, will perform selections from the other contributors to the journal: Cristina García, Emmy Pérez and Brenda Cárdenas. Poet Oscar Bermeo will emcee the night.

We'll have food, drinks and music. The event is free, open to the public and we welcome families and children.

Sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Graduate Group, Asian American Studies Program, and Chicano Studies Program."

"between the sun and our ancestors"

"... we are reminded of the necessary relationship between the poem's speaker and the seeing light, between the sun and our ancestors, and between our ancestors and this landscape of beasts."

With gratitude to Gina Franco for writing about my poem "When Evening Becomes Stellar."

Valley International Poetry Festival & 2nd Annual Poetry Pachanga

WHAT: "Valley International Poetry Festival & "2nd Annual Poetry Pachanga"
SEE FULL DAILY SCHEDULE
Featured Poet: Amalia Ortiz
WHEN: April 24, 25, 26, 27, 2008
WHERE: Click Here to see a list of Venues across the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas
ADDRESS: Headquarters: Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center--225 E. Stenger St., San Benito, Texas
TIME: Event times will vary throughout the weekend.
FYI: Most or all events will be Free and open to the public. Books, Chapbooks, CDs, T-shirts, etc., for sale.

excellent book; happy it's back in print!

..."When I come home the garden will be budding,
White petals breaking open, clusters of night flowers,
The far-off music of a tambourine.
A boy will pace among the passionflowers,
His eyes no longer two bruised surfaces.
I'll know the mouth of my young groom, I'll touch
His hands. Why do people lie to one another?"



poem excerpt from "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh
XXI Dynasty"
from Letters to a Stranger
by Thomas James


Letters to a Stranger
Thomas James
edited by Lucie Brock-Broido, Mark Doty

“Letters to a Stranger is a book of dark intensities and deeply felt connections, both haunted and haunting, at once brooding, sensual and lucid . . . The voice in these poems – painfully lonely and filled with longing, estranged and religious – has stayed with me for more than twenty years. It deserves to be remembered.”
—EDWARD HIRSCH, The Washington Post

gloria

"For you writing is an archetypal journey home to the self, un proceso de crear puentes (bridges) to the next phase, next place, next culture, next reality. The thrust toward spiritual realization, health, freedom, and justice propels you to help rebuild the bridge to the world when you return 'home.' You realize that 'home' is that bridge, the in-between place of nepantla and constant transition, the most unsafe of all spaces.... you don't build bridges to safe and familiar territories, you have to risk making mundo nuevo, have to risk the uncertainty of change... Change requires more than words on a page -- it takes perseverance, creative ingenuity, and acts of love..."




from "now let us shift... the path of conocimiento... inner work, public acts"
by Gloria E. Anzaldúa
from this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation
edited by gloria e. anzaldúa and analouise keating

Aimé Césaire, 1913-2008

"...and there, rocked by the flux of a
never exhausted thought I nourished the wind, I unlaced the
monsters and heard rise, from the other side of disaster, a
river of turtledoves and savanna clover which I carry forever
in my depths..."



-from "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land"
by Aimé Césaire
(translated by Annette Smith and Clayton Eshleman)



"Published: April 18, 2008

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique (AP) — Aimé Césaire, an anticolonialist poet and politician who was honored throughout the French-speaking world and who was an early proponent of black pride, died here on Thursday. He was 94." - By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nueva Onda Poets
Poetry Night
Thursday April, 17th
6:00-8:45pm
Dustin Sekula Library
Edinburg, TX

Remembering Gloria: A Night of Poetry

Remembering Gloria: A Night of Poetry!

"We invite the public to join us in a celebration of Gloria Anzaldúa’s legacy, as we present an evening of her poetry on Thursday, April 10, 7:00 PM at the Palm View Branch Library (in McAllen, TX). Various people from the Valley will take a turn reading Anzaldúa’s poetry out loud. Afterward, share your thoughts on Anzaldúa during a reception with light refreshment.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was born in the Rio Grande Valley in 1942, attended Pan American University and became a major influence in redefining Chicano/a identity and language. Although she left behind an internationally acclaimed legacy, including books of poetry, essays, and fiction, she has been neglected in her own backyard – the Rio Grande Valley.

This event is free. Bring your family and friends and find out about the Rio Grande Valley’s secret treasure!"

For more information on Remembering Gloria: A Night of Poetry, contact Priscilla Suarez at the Palm View Branch Library at 688-3322.




*

"A kiss on the eyes--takes away sleeplessness."

****

"A kiss on the head--wipes away memory."





from "A kiss on the head"
by Marina Tsvetaeva
Selected Poems

Congrats to Junot

Many congratulations to Junot Díaz for winning the Pulitzer Prize!!!!!!!




***

"Black as--the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness
that sucks at light. I love your vigilance

Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you
in those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds."



from "Insomnia"
by Marina Tsvetaeva
from Selected Poems

readings today in ept

Poetry reading and booksigning: Sheryl Luna (Pity the Drowned Horses), Erika T. Wurth (Indian Trains), and Gabriel Gomez (The Outer Bands) reading at 2pm, Westside Barnes and Noble, Sunland Park, El Paso, TX.

*****

BorderSenses and El Paso Community College’s Community Education Program invite the community to attend a reading and reception in honor of the Memorias del Silencio: Footprints of the Borderland project.

The Main Library of El Paso
Date: April 5, 2008
Time: 7:00 pm

Contamination in Mission, Tejas

I recently attended an eye-opening presentation by Iris Rodriguez about the contamination in Mission, deep south Tejas near the border, here in the Rio Grande Valley, where past and current residents have been subject to the long-lasting effects of chemical contamination and environmental racism.

"The Helena Chemical Plant site was used to manufacture and pack pesticides from 1950to 1972. It housed over 20 chemical companies that produced 18 pesticides and chemicals. Of these, eight were named part of 'The Dirty Dozen' by the United Nations, targeting them as the 'world's most dangerous chemicals.'

According to the U.N., these chemicals 'are among the most dangerous of all man-made products or wastes, causing death, disease and birth defects among humans and animals'..."

There will be a screening of the trailer for the upcoming feature documentary on the contamination in Mission this Sunday, April 6th at 7pm at the Border Theater in downtown Mission.

Click here for the recent writeup in the Rio Grande Guardian

For more information about the contamination, please visit www.Mission-Texas.com.

"I know the realm of death because I've arrived there. It is a place where there is no noise, because noise, no matter how slight, is bothersome. In the peace of that realm, I see Benito Juárez."



-María Sabina
from María Sabina: Selections
edited by Jerome Rothenberg