New book "With the River on Our Face" forthcoming Fall 2016

I haven't posted on this blog in quite some time, but would like to share the good news that my next poetry collection With the River on Our Face will be published this fall 2016 by the University of Arizona Press. In the coming months, I will post a link to my website with further information.

New and Expanded Edition of SOLSTICE

from the Swan Scythe Press website:

"At last, a New Expanded edition of Solstice! The first edition of this title is out of print. The second edition is now for sale, and includes some poems translated into Spanish [by José Antonio Rodríguez and Jeannie Moody], as well as additional poetry not in the first edition. Solstice has been one of our bestsellers, and we are pleased to make it available again.”

Praise for Solstice

"Emmy Pérez's poems are elegantly political, never polemical. They discover the beauty in revolution without romanticizing its hardships. From the first moment I encountered her poems, I knew I was meeting a singular voice -- one that can find lyricism in struggle, dignity in injustice. Her voice sings of landscape and longing with deftness of image and diction. What a welcome debut."

—Allison Joseph.

"The new generation of Latina poets will be noted for the work of writers such as Emmy Pérez."

—Ray González, Bloomsbury Review

Here's a RATTLE e-Review of the first edition.

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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A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line

A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, edited by Emily Rosko and Anton Vander Zee, University of Iowa Press, 2011

To read the introduction from the anthology, click here

“Whether oral or written, ancient or modern, from one hemisphere or another, most poetry has organized itself in basic units that English calls lines. In their energetic collection of brief essay-sprints, Emily Rosko and Anton Vander Zee offer us nearly seventy contemporary writers’ thoughts about poetic lines. The result is a rich and glorious variety of insights and formulations, lavishly inclusive and resolutely uncommitted to any single orthodoxy. The editors’ forthright introduction is illuminating, judicious, and open-handed. This is a book that anyone drawn to the study of poetic form and its largest meanings should know.”—Stephen Cushman, author, Riffraff, and editor, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

“A Broken Thing is a lovely, useful, and well-conceived book. From the introduction’s astute and informative discussions of the historical embeddedness of tussles over the poetic line in poetry to the essays thereafter, readers and writers will be made aware that there is, as Rosko and Vander Zee note, no consensus, an awareness that can be vital for a young poet. A Broken Thing gathers the arguments and exchanges of the day. It does not offer essays that correct or offer definitive approaches to the line; on the contrary, it gathers the hubbub of voices that any critical approach would need to take into account.”—Lisa Steinman, author, Made in America, Masters of Repetition, and Invitation to Poetry and coeditor, Hubbub

“Negotiating segmentivities (a.k.a. line and sentence) defines poetry as a mode of practice. This energetic anthology examines the line from many poetic formations, assumptions, incarnations, platforms, and positions; it faces multiple debates with panache and frankness. The range and élan of the contributors present a strikingly pragmatic sense of contemporary poetics.”—Rachel Blau DuPlessis, author, Blue Studios and Drafts

Contributors:

Kazim Ali
Bruce Andrews
Hadara Bar-Nadav
Catherine Barnett
Charles Bernstein
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Bruce Bond
Marianne Boruch
Scott Cairns
Joshua Clover
Norma Cole
Brent Cunningham
J. P. Dancing Bear
Christina Davis
Johanna Drucker
Camille T. Dungy
John Olivares Espinoza
Kathy Fagan
Annie Finch
Graham Foust
Alice Fulton
John Gallaher
Noah Eli Gordon
Arielle Greenberg
Sarah Gridley
Gabriel Gudding
Kimiko Hahn
Raza Ali Hasan
H. L. Hix
Cynthia Hogue
Fanny Howe
Christine Hume
Catherine Imbriglio
Karla Kelsey
Sarah Kennedy
Ben Lerner
Dana Levin
Timothy Liu
Thomas Lux
Joanie Mackowski
Shara McCallum
Heather McHugh
Wayne Miller
Jenny Mueller
Laura Mullen
Molly Peacock
V. Penelope Pelizzon
Emmy Pérez
Carl Phillips
Patrick Phillips
Donald Platt
Kevin Prufer
Paisley Rekdal
Donald Revell
Martha Rhodes
Alberto Ríos
Dana Roeser
MaryAnn Samyn
Robyn Schiff
Tim Seibles
Ravi Shankar
Evie Shockley
Eleni Sikelianos
Susan Stewart
Stephanie Strickland
Terese Svoboda
Cole Swensen
Sarah Vap
Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Robert Wrigley
Rachel Zucker

Carmen de la Calle - Amalia Ortiz play in San Antonio

Sunday, July 24
2:00pm Carmen de la Calle
When: Sun, July 24, 2pm – 4pm

Where:Say Si Blackbox Theatre, 1518 s. alamo, san antonio tx 78204

Description: Concert Preview Performance of the New Musical “Carmen de la Calle” written by Award Winning poet Amalia Ortiz.

Must be comfortable learning basic dance choreography *

"Synopsis: Set in 1989 San Antonio and the present, this adaptation of George Bizet’s classic opera dives deep into the themes of passion and envy in portraying the lives and struggles of the marginalized and working classes of South Texas. “Carmen de la Calle” highlights the hybridity of Tex-Mex culture by incorporating the melodrama of novellas (Mexican soap operas), spoken word, bilingualism, and the musical confluence of Mexican standards, modern Tejano, Hip-Hop and the music of 1989 pop culture.

The story begins in present day with Mercedes, who sits behind her bar and tells us the tragic story of her friend, Carmen. With the musical help of her DJ nephew and the house band, Mercedes guides the audience through a flashback of her youth in San Antonio.

Through a series of musical performances and spoken word narration, audiences will be swept up in the lives of Carmen, a gorgeous and tenacious
femme fatale factory worker and Queen of the Theo Avenue Gs, her lover Joe, a straight laced all-American Military Police officer who grew up in the Valley, and neighborhood homies like Frasquita, a female emcee with big hair, big earrings and big attitude, and Don Cairo, Carmen’s macho equal, aspiring rapper, and leader of the Theo Avenue Gs.

With live musical accompaniment provided by members of the San Antonio musical group, Los Nahuatlatos, and original dance choreography, this groundbreaking New Musical by Amalia Ortiz will engage audiences like no other.

Produced by ColectivaSA"

from http://amaliaortiz.net/