Guest Writer: Interview with the Poet: Francisco X. Alarcón. On-Line Floricanto.

Guest Interviewer: Jorge Argueta

This interview was done by TALLERES DE POESÍA, a poetic organization of El Salvador. Salvadorian poet Jorge Argueta, who lives in San Francisco, California, and narrator/poet Manlio Argueta, Director of the National Library of El Salvador, are organizing the First Festival of Children's Poetry of El Salvador (November 3-5, 2010). For more information visit the Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001174590167&ref=ts



TDP: Tell us about your greatest satisfactions as a poet?

FXA: There are several things that have given me great satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment during my trajectory as a poet. One of the greatest satisfactions is to have been able to contribute for the opening of new publication possibilities for Latino writers who live in the U.S. through an independent publishing house, Children’s Book Press of San Francisco, California.

I served first as a translator (Spanish to English; and English to Spanish), consultant, and then, as an editor of several children’s books done by Chicano/Latino writers and artists who for the first time were publishing bilingual picture books for children. I also served as a Board Member of the Board of Directors of the non-profit Children’s Book Press.

For myself, it took me several years to be able to publish my first book of bilingual poems for children, “Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems / Jitomates risueños y otros poemas de primavera” (Children’s Book Press 1997) because the main editor thought that a children’s book with bilingual poems will not sell well in the U.S. But this first picture children’s book with bilingual poems was very well received by readers in general and by critics in special. It was awarded several prestigious literary awards, and it was the first of title of a series of four picture books dedicated to the seasons of the year published by Children’s Book Press.

The four books include wonderful artwork by San Franciscp-based Chicana artist Maya Chistina Gonzalez: “From the Bellybutton of the Moon and Other Summer Poems / Del ombligo de la luna y otros poemas de verano” (1998), “Angels Ride Bikes and Other Fall Poems / Los ángeles andan en bicicleta y otros poemas de otoño” (1999), and “Iguanas in the Snow and Other Winter Poems / Iguanas en la nieve y otros poemas de invierno” (2001). These picture books were also awarded several important literary prizes. The fact that around 250,000 copies of these books have been sold means that there is a big market for bilingual poetry books for children in the U.S.


TDP: Do you write another genre besides poetry?

FXA: I have also written short stories. One these short stories, titled “Las repatriaciones de noviembre” (“The Repatriations of November”), deals with a Latino family in Los Angeles, California, that is about to move to Mexico during the Big Depression in 1931 when being “Mexican” had become almost a crime. It’s a story based on real life experiences endured by my mother’s family. It was awarded a major literary prize in Texas, and it has been included in several Chicano Literature anthologies published in the U.S. and Spain, and in many Spanish language textbooks as well since it was originally written in Spanish.

At the moment I am interested in exploring different poetic forms, styles and themes, like eco-poetics. Recently I was named Editor of POETAS•PUENTES, a new poetry series of Swan Scythe Press of Sacramento that will concentrate on publishing original poetry written in Spanish and Mesoamerican indigenous languages with English translations. “Ce / Uno/ One: Poems for the New Sun / Poemas para el Nuevo Sol” –my new book of poems in Spanish, English, Nahuatl, some Gaelic and Mapuche- will inaugurate this new poetry series.


TDP: Children are natural poets, why then, children poetry workshops?

FXA: I really love to visit schools, do poetry presentations, and facilitate poetry workshops for school children. After visiting and doing hundred of classroom poetry presentations and workshops, I have learned that children from the third grade to the sixth grade are truly excellent natural poets. I have come out with Poetry Lesson Plans intended to show children how poetry really works, about the use of comparisons, similes, metaphors, and the five senses, in addition to the sixth sense that in poetry is our own imagination.

I have a poetry lesson titled “Our Dreams” in which the students write a poem visualizing themselves in the future. Students first interview older family members about the dreams these relatives had when they were children. Then the students are asked to visualize themselves in the future and write a poem about their future lives using their five senses and their imagination. As a response to amazing poems written by students of a bilingual school in Washington, DC, Oyster Bilingual Elementary School, I wrote a collection of bilingual poems illustrated by Paula Barragán, “Poems to Dream Together / Poemas para soñar juntos” (Lee & Low Books 2005). I would love to be able to participate in the First Festival of Children’s Poetry in El Salvador in order to share my own experiences and to also learn from other participants.


TDP: In your life as a teacher and as a poet who had conducted hundreds of poetry workshops, do you know of any children, any youth who had been member of gang and once they enter in contact with poetry their life had a positive changed?

FXA: Some years ago I had a very special experience at Oyster Bilingual Elementary School in Washington, DC., in which a third of the students are Latinos, a third are Anglo students, and the other third are African-Americans. The majority of the Latino students are of Salvadorian origin because there is a big Salvadorian community in the federal capital of the U.S.

In a poetry lesson I presented to sixth graders at this school, students had to write a poem using their five senses about a family member. A Salvadorian kid (to whom I would here give the fictitious name of José Pérez) wrote a striking beautiful and very moving poem in Spanish (he then translated the poem into English) about how he felt pride and was thankful for everything his dad who worked as a plumber had done for him and his whole family. I remember some of the poetic lines that went like this:

“Although society in general doesn’t appreciate much
your hard labor as a plumber that dirties your hands,
I bless the sweat on your honest forehead, father,
because you are like the strong tree that has given
protection, sustenance, shelter to our whole family…”

The poems was an ode in honor of the hard working father who had immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in order to give a better life to his children and family. When José read aloud his poem in front of the class, the teacher and librarian couldn’t contain their tears since they knew the very difficult circumstances that José’s family had undergone. The poem also impacted José’s classmates who applauded very effusively at the end of his reading of the poem. Some days later the teacher sent me an e-mail to let me know that José’s dad was so moved by the poem that he had bought a computer so that José could continue writing poems. Weeks later, the same teacher notified me that José had sent the poem dedicated to his dad to a children’s poetry contest organized by the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and that he had won a prize and had been awarded a full scholarship to attend a prestigious private academy where he was going to go for his high school with all expenses paid. This is just a concrete example of a real impact of poetry on the life on a Salvadorian boy who lives in the capital of the U.S.


TDP: You are a very dynamic poet, what are you doing right now with poetry?

FXA: This Summer I’m finishing a collection of poems in three languages (in Nahuatl, Spanish and English) "Tonalámatl: el libro de los días / the Book of Days" that deals with the Mesoamerican calendar. This would be the first time that a collection of poems in these three languages would be published in the U.S. I don’t a have a publishing house yet, but I hope that I will find a press willing to publish this unique book of poems for young readers by the end of Summer.

On Abril 24, 2010, as a direct result of the discriminatory law against undocumented immigrants known as SB 1070 that was approved by the legislature in Arizona and signed into law by the governor of that state, I created a new Facebook page, POETS RESPONDING TO SB 1070, that at the moment has 3,500 fan members and has posted and indexed around 430 poems by poet from different regions of the U.S., Mexico, Spain, Iran, and other countries of the world.

There are 10 other poet moderators who help with posting poems, links,notes, and writing comments to posted poems. This FB page is visited by more than 2,000 people every week and has become an important public forum for poetty in solidarity with undocumented immigrants. Our theme is” “Civil Right For All! –For a Humane Immigration Reform Now!” You can send poems in Englidh or Spanish or visit this FB page at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Poets-Responding-to-SB-1070/117494558268757?ref=ts


TDP: For many years you had been a friend of El Salvador, tell us how was this poetic relation?

FXA: I have felt a natural cultural affinity with El Salvador for many years that really goes beyond just poetry. My paternal grandmother was an indigenous person from the Nahuatl tradition in Mexico and I had a very close relationship with her that marked forever my whole life. The indigenous peoples known as Pipiles in El Savadot are part of this same big Mesoamerican cultural tree. I love the colloquial language known as “guanaco” that is used in El Salvador, with words like “cipotes” (“children”), “metate” (“grinding stone”), and “Cuzcatlán” that are words with Nahuatl origin; the legends of the Siguanaba and the Cipitío are now mine; one of my favorite foods are “pupusas” (“corn cakes”) that are filled either with cheese, “chicharrones” (“pork meat”), and “loroco” (a tropical flower). Of course, all this knowledge of Salvadorian culture have resulted from my close contacts, friendships, and socialization with people from El Salvador who live in the U.S.

As many other Chicanos/Latinos, I couldn’t remain indifferent or unconcerned in front of the heroic resistance of the poeple of El Salvador during the social conflict and civil war the 1980’s that only ended with the Peace Agreement of 1992. I was an active member of the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade in San Francisco headed by Chicano poet Alejandro Murguía, and with thr participation of poets like Jack Hirschman, Juan Felipe Herrera, Barbara Paschke, David Volpendesta and activists like Magaly Fernández, Tony Ryan,and Rosa María Galdámez, among others. This cultural brigade published the first bilingual anthology of Central American poetry in the U.S. and several bilingual book of poems by masters of politically committed poetry, the Salvadorian poet Roque Dalton and the Guatemalan poet Otto René Castillo.

I was also member of CÓDICES, a Salvadorian cultural center directed by professor/poet/artist Martivón Galindo in the Latino barrio of the Mission in San Francisco where Salvadorian culture is without doubt an integral part of its rich cultural rainbow. Poet Jorge Argueta, artist/muralist Isaías Matta, and narrator/poet Manlio Argueta are some of the Salvadorian who have bestowed a cultural and literary legacy to our community and whose works I treasure, study and teach at the university level as part of my teaching duties at the University of Cailfornia, Davis. I wish that in a near future I will able to visit in person the old “Cuzcatlán” of my dreams-El Salvador.

***************************************

Francisco X. Alarcón, award winning Chicano poet and educator, born in Los Angeles, in 1954, is author of eleven volumes of poetry, including, "From the Other Side of Night: Selected and New Poems" (University of Arizona Press 2002), and "Snake Poems: An Aztec
Invocation" (Chronicle Books 1992), "Sonetos a la locura y otras penas / Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes" (Creative Arts Book Company 2001), "De amor oscuro / Of Dark Love" (Moving Parts Press
1991, and 2001).

His most recent book of bilingual poetry for children, "Animal Poems of the Iguazú" (Children’s Book Press 2008), was selected as a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association, and as an Américas Awards Commended Title by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs. His previous bilingual book titled Poems to Dream Together (Lee & Low Books 2005) was awarded the 2006 Jane Addams Honor Book Award.

Children’s Book Press of San Francisco published his acclaimed “Magic Cycle of the Seasons” that includes four titles: " Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems" (1997) awarded the 1997 Pura Belpré Honor Award by the American Library Association and the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal; "From the Bellybutton of the Moon and Other Summer Poems" (1998) that received the 2000 Pura Belpré Honor Award; "Angels Ride Bikes and Other Fall Poems" (1999); his fourth book of bilingual poems for children, "Iguanas in the Snow and Other Winter Poems" (2001) received the 2002 Pura Belpré Honor Award.

He has been a finalist nominated for Poet Laureate of California in two occasions. He teaches at the University of California, Davis. He is the creator of the Facebook page POETS RESPONDING TO SB 1070 that you can visit at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Poets-Responding-to-SB-1070/117494558268757?ref=ts























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On-Line Floricanto. Poets Respond to Arizona Hatred

1. 3 Poems by Joe Navarro: "Protest Racism Every Day," "See You Later, Arizona," and "Liberate Arizona"
2. “May Day Is Not A Day to Shoot People Who Work for You” by George Wallace
3. “Spangleesh sin Barreras” by Israel Francisco Haros
4. “Morning Commute” by LisaRose Blanchette
5. “Always the lines” by Jeanette Iskat de Aldana
6. “For The People” by Stephanie Little Wolf
7. “This Life" by Carmen Calatayud
8. "Portions" by JoAnn Anglin



3 Poems by Joe Navarro: "Protest Racism Every Day," "See You Later, Arizona," and "Liberate Arizona"

PROTEST RACISM EVERY DAY

By Joe Navarro


You don't have to wait for
A day to join a march
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
A mass demonstration
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
The passage of ignorant laws
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
Someone to die
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
Everyone to feel it
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
Society to implode
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
The world to explode
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
The people who don't get it
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
Someone else to see it
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
It to be universally agreed
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
Someone else's epiphany
Protest racism every day

You don't have to wait for
Anyone's approval that it's wrong
Protest racism every day

--Joe Navarro


**************************


SEE YOU LATER, ARIZONA

By Joe Navarro


Arizona...I've decided to
Stay away for as long as it takes
To avoid narrow minded pendejos
And ridiculous flakes

I will not spend my dinero
En lugares where I'm not wanted
Gente who look like me
Maltratado and taunted

Atlantic wetbacks
Pre-fourteen-ninety-two
Landed without permission
We all know who

Now they call it theirs
A protestant English nation
Declaring hues and languages
Illegal immigration

No, Arizona...I will keep
My money away from you
Not one cent or dollar
Not many not few

Until the day you see me
And my gente as human beings
Not as hated races
And exploitable things

When you stop stopping gente
For their looks and skin
And allow honest gente work
So they can feed their kin

Then I may change my mind
And you will see my dinero
When you treat with respeto
La gente de este hemísfero

I hope you would see with
The eyes of justice and humanity
Instead of with ignorance
And race hate insanity

Too bad, I say, that it takes
Boycotts and loss of revenue
To straighten your vision
And to think things through

Hasta luego Arizona,
When everyone is equal and free
When people are not criminalized
Then you will see me

--Joe Navarro

**************************

LIBERATE ARIZONA

By Joe Navarro


Arizona, the land
Of the bright yellow sun
The land of our ancestors
Since time has begun

The land of the original
People of this hemisphere
And its cousins the winged,
Two legged and dancing deer

The land of traditions and cultures
Predating the eastern immigration
From uninvited settlers
Expanding their settler nation

To take by force
To steal is to steal
Then revise history
To bleach out the real

The know becomes unknown
By deception so you cannot see
The truth becomes untrue
In a race based democracy

When mexicanos return to
The lands of their ancestors
They are turned away by Minute Men,
Migra, police and assorted gangsters

Race, hatred, stupidity and ignorance
Have turned Arizona into a beacon light
For followers of apartheid, known as
The political and religious right

Liberate Arizona so it can be free
Free Arizona from these wretched hands
Free peoples' minds to see the truth
And allow all people to live on these lands

--Joe Navarro

-----

MAYDAY IS NOT THE DAY TO SHOOT AT PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR YOU

by George Wallace



mayday is not the day to shoot at people
who work for you -- the ones who do
the work it is beneath you to do -- no
not mayday -- not the day for vigilante
posses -- not the day to catch families
crossing the border or lock them up
in holding tanks and send them back
to their own damn country -- not on
mayday we do not beat men outside
train stations today ladies and gents
nor do we drag them behind cars
-- and we do not leave them bleeding
behind latino bars today -- no sir!
we do not sneer at shift workers who
pack food in refrigerated trucks or
insult the women behind counters
at fast food joints no not today --
the ones who wash plates set our
tables wait on us in slick friendly
fashionable downtown restaurants
serving empanadas plantain chips
black bean soup guacamole dip
and margaritas no not on mayday
-- we do not demonize the ones
who do the work we have no
inclination to do -- the jobs our
parents or grandparents did to
put us through college -- may
day is the day we honor those
who tend to the lawns we gaze
out upon on sunday morning
as we prepare to thank and to
praise the sweet lord who made
us, all for the many blessings of
being rich and american -- dish
washers busboys warehouse
workers housemaids carpenters
tin can fillers crab shell shellers
pea pickers potato peelers street
sweepers today is the day for
them -- no we do not write hate
mail to politicians today or carry
placards or call in to call-in radio
station talk show hosts -- nor do
we give fictitious names and rage
and rant we do not make speeches
or pass laws pandering to the people
who write hate mail -- no not on
mayday we don't -- mayday is the
day of the able bodied workers who
sweat and sway inside buses and vans
-- who slave in kitchens and ride on
the backs of pickups and dump trucks
-- the day for those who are unafraid
of honest work for minimum pay --

men who bend down and whisper secrets
into our pregnant soil

women who scrub our toilets at night

-----

Spangleesh Sin Barreras

by Israel Francisco Haros Lopez

Let there be
no borders
between our poems
and our prayers
no borders
between our marching feet
our picket signs
and our songs
our intellect
our yollotl
y nuestras almas


Israel Francisco Haros Lopez
2010


-----

Morning Commute by LisaRose Blanchette


“Already?!”
“Can’t be. It’s too soon.”
“They’re slowing them all down.
They’re stopping them.
Damn.
It is a checkpoint.”
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Mi comadre breaks the silence.
“It must have been a tip.”
“Yeah, musta been.”


And that’s how we calmed ourselves
Carpooling to work today
The two of us
Showered
Sweet-smelling
Well-dressed
Nicely-groomed
Professional-looking
Brown-skinned
Women.

Passing the checkpoint
On the other side of the road
In Thatcher, AZ
That was never there before.




©LisaRose Blanchette
Tuesday, May 25, 2010




Always the lines by Jeanette Iskat


Always the lines
the hate drawn
over arbitrary
borders
the forgetting
the water
we share
because we're so busy
planting flags
naming each
other
the
other.

Saying
my
ship
boat
raft
plane
ensuing stamp
gives
me
an answer
that
calls me safe
and
you unwanted
forgetting
time
before
ship
boat
raft
plane
ensuing stamp.

They
renamed
us
too
refuges
took away
our bloodlines
a
name
too
hard
a
religion
too
complicated
demanded
we
forget
it
if we wanted to stay.

Forget your water.

But
water
flows
in
the dry
places
hides
in white snake caverns
clear fishes
swimming in unseen arcs
when earth shakes
splits us all open
it gushes
out
and
we
must
all swim.


Jeanette Iskat
copyright 2010

-----



Poem for the People by Stephanie J Little Wolf


Poem for the People 1

I have a Dream
Where we are all
Holding hands and marching
Red white black brown and yellow,
We march forward to the gulf
Covering our bodies in oil
(Its OK its a light grade oil, not as heavy as a dark grade)
we can march into the sea with our papers
Wrap the Enron BP green sea weed
Around our bellies
I will dip my Social Security card in the oil,
I will sweep my birth certificate across the surface of the sea
I will make a human boom to block the creeping mess
from getting to the shore of our hearts
I will take my passport
And hold it up above my head
So I will be cleaned
The oil will be cleaned off of me
So I do not become an endangered species.
And I will always be this legal,
And I will share it
I will share my legality.


Poem for the people 2

I am an escape artist
I slip my name
my skin
my sky watchers
And my thunder-
I can be invisible
And illegal
I can be invincible
And Illegal again.
I am not counted
And I count all of them
Red or white
Those who taunted
My mixed identity.
"How" says the native guy
Mocking my heavy black
Braids, my tamed mane,
"Who?" says the white guy
At my yard sale
As he tugs on those same braids
"Why?" says the
Canadian border guard
With the Texas accent
who detained me 3 hours
For not having a bank statement
As I moved my life
To Alaska.....
"Where?" said my family
As I left them
To wonder at my
Absence -
I no longer ask "when?"
As I dream of a better life
In a place where now
I am visible
Invincible
And legal-
I can count on my self
For I have chosen to wear
my skin again.

-----

This Life, Now by Carmen Calatayud



I’m greedy for death
when I see coffins,
forlorn at the thought
of having to go on.

This addiction to the dark
has brought coats covered
in cat hair and ocean salt stuck
in my locks from swimming at night.

The blood from hundreds of cuts
pools in my hand. I cup it like
a chalice of liquid rose from
a summer I’m proud I survived.

A fetus is gone but I’m pregnant
with poems and blue-green veins
that stir from the grip of my fist.

My dead sing lullabies that sew
the scar of my unborn son
and fill my head with thunderstorms
intended to keep me away, to keep me

here, grounded, wailing, unwilling
to understand. But I do. I take death
in my hands and squeeze it to collect
its sad orange pulp.

Is it wrong to follow the ghosts?

They line up with whimsical clothes
and handsome half-smiles, their talk like
popcorn in a faraway field. I hear them
say no, denying my entrance again.

There are miles of handkerchiefs to iron.
There’s a city of hearts to sweep up.
There are lines that need to be written.
There’s another black dress waiting to be worn.




-----



PORTIONS

By JoAnn Anglin

We eat from each other’s plates
the tines of our forks clang in
the passing of morsels.

My spoon enters your mouth
your salt spills across my napkin
bad luck creeps over us both.

We don’t have to exchange love to
know how we need each other --
we have cooked this situation together

me looking into your eyes, you looking
into mine. If we help each other, we
can avoid or heal scalds and cuts.

We can stir our pots together. We can
watch over each other’s shoulders. We
can call out the warning.


JoAnn Anglin
June 11, 2010



-----


BIOS

1. 3 Poems by Joe Navarro: "Protest Racism Every Day," "See You Later, Arizona," and "Liberate Arizona"
Joe Navarro is a creative writer, poet, teacher and community activist. He is originally from San Francisco, CA, previously lived in Oakland, CA and Denver, CO, but currently lives in Hollister, CA. His poetry is shaped by people’s struggles for self-determination, justice and equality.

2. “May Day Is Not A Day to Shoot People Who Work for You” by George Wallace
George Wallace is Editor of Poetrybay.com, author of nineteen chapbooks of poetry, and the first poet laureate for Suffolk County, LI NY. He teaches at Pace University in Manhattan, and has been selected as writer in residence for the Walt Whitman Birthplace for 2011.

3. “Spangleesh sin Barreras” by Israel Francisco Haros
Israel is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley with a degree in English and Xicano Studies and an M.F.A. from California College of the Arts. He is both a visual artist and performance artist. His work is an attempt to search for personal truths and personal histories inside of american cosmology. The american cosmology and symbolism that he is drawing from is one that involves both northern and southern america that was here before columbus. The work both written and that which is painted is attempting to mark and remark historical points in the americas and the world.The mark making attempts to speak to the undeniable presence of a native america that will continue to flourish for generations to come.The understanding which he is drawing from is not conceptual but fact and points to the importance of honoring and remembering ancestral ways of living as a means of maintaining healthy relations with all humans,the winged, all those that crawl on this Earth, all Life, the Water, the Sacred Fire, Tonanztin, Tonatiuh,the Sacred Cardinal Points,everything inbetween, above and below and at the center of self and all things in the universe.
　
His Poetry can be heard at www.reverbnation.com/waterhummingbirdhouse
He can be found creating poetry and arte on Facebook

4. “Morning Commute” by LisaRose Blanchette

A Brooklyn native and Arizona gypsy, LisaRose Blanchette currently resides in San Carlos, AZ, Apache Nation. Though lacking formal writing training, she finds inspiration in everyday events, creating her observational poetry. When not writing volumes of snot and drivel for her PhD in education policy, she removes her egghead, puts on her dancing shoes and wolf-tracks after the band Los Lobos. This used to frighten the band members, but they have become accustomed to a headless stalker after all these years…

5. “Always the lines” by Jeanette Iskat de Aldana
Jeanette Iskat de Aldana is a painter, found object artist and poet living and working in Los Angeles. She grew up around the world and is interested in our collective history and humanity. You can find her online at Facebook or hanging out in Boyle Heights at Corazon del Pueblo. She's working on her first book of poetry and is a newlywed.

6. “For The People” by Stephanie Little Wolf
Stephanie Little Wolf is a singer, songwriter, poet and research technician. She attended Cabrillo Junior College, she attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she was a member of the Creative Writing Program. She graduated with honors with a BA in Writing and Literature in 1996.

Her studies and interests include DNA research, Anthropology, Archeology, and Sociology, pre-Columbian life in North America and the development and domestication of the dog in prehistory.

Of Lakota and Yaqui decent, Stephanie has lived and worked in Alaska for many years, preserving her family's bloodline of sled dogs which she inherited in 1989.
She has worked with Native Alaskan foster children and her sled dogs, developing a healing environment for abused and neglected children as they learn to care for and run sled dogs.

In addition to her work with children and dogs, Stephanie has worked with Native non-profit organizations in Alaska to preserve Athabascan culture and language, and has followed this up with a pocket dictionary project at the Alaskan Native Language Center, at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where she worked to preserve the Lower Tanana Dialect of the Athabascan language family.

7. “This Life" by Carmen Calatayud
Carmen Calatayud is a psychotherapist in Washington, DC. Born to a Spanish father and Irish mother, her poetry has appeared in journals such as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, Slow Trains, Red River Review and PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art. Her poems are anthologized in various collections, including DC Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press) and Mondo Barbie (St. Martin’s Press). Her poetry manuscript Cave Walk was a runner-up for the 2010 Walt Whitman Award and a finalist for the 2010 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Calatayud won a 2003 Larry Neal Award for Poetry. She lived and wrote in Tucson in the 1990s, where she worked as a literacy advocate.

8. "Portions" by JoAnn Anglin
JoAnn Anglin lives in Sacramento and is active with Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol/ Writers of the New Sun, and belongs to the Sacramento Poetry Center. She has worked as a poet in the schools and has written articles on poetry and on the arts in general. Her poems have been published in Poetry Now, Rattlesnake Review, The Pagan Muse, and several other anthologies. She has co-hosted poetry series in Sacramento and been a featured poet at varied Northern California poetry readings. JoAnn’s chapbook of poems, Words Like Knives, Like Feathers, was published by Rattlesnake Press.