Mexi-versos: Mexican and Mexican American Poetic Encounter, Friday April 6th 2pm

Mexi-versos: Mexican and Mexican American Poetic Encounter

Based in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The University of Texas at Austin, this initiative aims to bring to campus contemporary poets on an annual basis. The event consists of a one-afternoon poetry reading by and conversation with a number guest poets. This year the event is a collaboration between the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS).

All events take place in Meeting Room 1.106 of the Student Activity Center (SAC) at The University of Texas at Austin.

2:00 P.M Opening Remarks: Professor Jill Robbins (Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese) and Professor Domino R. Perez (Director, Center for Mexican American Studies)

2:15-3:45 P.M. Poetry Reading (in Spanish): Guest poets: Jacob Lenin Cárdenas Loya (Ciudad Juárez, Mexico), Óscar David López (Monterrey, Mexico). ; Presenter: Professor Professor Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba

3:45-4:30 P.M. Poetry Reading (in English): Guest Poet: Emmy Pérez (McAllen, Texas); Presenters: Professor Deborah Paredez

4:30-5:15 P.M. Roundtable with Guest Poets (bilingual); Moderator: Professor Luis Cárcamo-Huechante

Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS).

Co-sponsored by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS); the Department of English; the Mexican Center at LLILAS; and the Graduate School at The University of Texas at Austin.

Guest Poets:

Jacob Lenin Cárdenas Loya is a poet and artist, born in Ciudad Juárez in 1989. He wrote his first Rap poems while living in the city of Chihuahua in 2004. Since he came back to Ciudad Juárez, in 2008, he has produced several songs, based on his Rap lyrics. Cárdenas Loyola is a Rap poet who links his writings and his songs to the experience of social violence in his native Ciudad Juárez as well as the reality of living on the US-Mexico border. His first record Historias del Mictlán was produced in 2010 by Estrago Records, it is a collection of rap songs in memoriam of his brother Otoniel, murdered in Cd. Juáres in 2009. Jacob has been an active participant in the present juvenile movement of hip-hop, one of the most important cultural expressions addressing the current turmoil of the drugs war in this city.

Óscar David López was born in Monterrey, México, in 1982. He is a writer and performer. He is the author of the books of poetry Roma (2009), Perro semihundido (2008), and Gangbang (2007). He also has published a novel entitled Nostalgia del lodo/La nostalgia de la boue (2005). In collaboration with RZKXPX, he has co-authored the EP The Gangbang Show (2008). Poet Oscar David López received the Premio Nacional de Poesía Joven Francisco Cervantes in 2009, and the Prix de la Jeune Littérature latino-américaine in 2004-2005. He has been a fellow at the Centro de Escritores de Nuevo León in 2005; and, in 2006, he was an artist in residence at the Maison des Écrivains Étrangers et des Traducteurs de Saint Nazaire, France. In 2010, López produced ROMAAMOR. CAJA DELUXE, a project that brought together 30 Lectores Fílmicos, a literary, musical and visual art project that engages cinema as its primary source of aesthetic dialogue. Currently, he holds a fellowship from the Young Writers program of the National Endowment for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) from Mexico, for the years 2011 and 2012.

Emmy Pérez is a poet and creative writing teacher, originally from Santa Ana, California. She is the author of a collection of poems, Solstice (Swan Scythe Press, 2003; 2nd ed. 2011). She holds degrees from Columbia University and the University of Southern California. She has lived on the US-Mexico border, from El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley, for over a decade. She has taught writing workshops in juvenile and adult detention centers, and currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English at The University of Texas-Pan American. Poet Emmy Pérez has received poetry fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2009, she received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, New York Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and other publications. Currently, she is a CantoMundo Poetry Fellow, a member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop, and a contributing editor for Texas Books in Review and The Writer's Chronicle.
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