Join us in an engaging panel with Professor Prof. Juan Casillas-Núñez, Prof. Jorge Omar Ramírez-Pimienta, and Prof. Francisco Lomelí, and Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera at the MCC theater. Some examples of Herrera's books will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.
In 2015-2017, Juan Felipe Herrera served as the 21st U.S. Poet Laureate, the first Latino appointed to that most distinguished position. In 2012-2014 he also served as the California Poet Laureate. He has produced 37 books, exhibiting a penchant for creative experimentations through language, themes, and styles in the broadest sense of the word. His trajectory spans over half a century with numerous landmark works on mixed media and a dogged avant-garde poetics, ranging from memoirs, travelogues, unofficial epics, manifestoes of resistance, theatrical pieces, neo-indigenist incantations, (im)migration treatises, chronicles or documentaries, ethno-biographies, visual renditions (i.e. "mud drawings"), transborder crossings, "undocuments", revolutionary discourse, calligraphy, poetry interfaced with collages and murals, barrio-centric profiles, young adult novels, children's literature, linguistic rendezvous, intertextual soirees, justice re-articulated, and of course multiple incursions into mixing or remixing aesthetic forms--a kind of literary synthesizer, including transgeneric writings. Some of his writings echo Whitman-esque lyrics, Allen Ginsberg's unconventional poetics, Dylan Thomas' sentiments, Alurista's Spanglish, Pablo Neruda's artful politics, Federico Garcia Lorca's rural imagery, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, the Beat Generation's anarchism, Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Gloria Anzaldua's border consciousness, Teatro Campesino's agitprop representations, and of course many others. He can adeptly meander between philosophical riddles and sardonic commentaries, cathartic tongue-in-cheek humor and syllogisms, uplifting children's books and the role of (im)migration. He has a way of transcending his humble migrant roots as a "people's poet" by also capturing the big picture of transnational social movements. He is both personal and universal. He has won most of the major awards and recognitions that an American can receive: the PEN/Beyond Margins award, the American Book Award from Before Columbus Foundation, America's Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, and MacArthur "Genius" Award, among others.
Co-Sponsors: Chicana/o Studies Department, Chicano Studies Institute, Comparative Literature Department, Dean of Social Sciences, English Department, Global Latinidades Center, Luis Leal Endowed Chair, MultiCultural Center, Spanish & Portuguese Department, and Vice Chancellor of DEI
