Hinojosa Honored. Conference News. Feb's First On-line Floricanto

Michael Sedano

Mail Bag
Lifetime Achievement Award to Rolando Hinojosa

La Bloga's mail bag brings fabulous news from Houston's Arte Público Press.

La Bloga friend Rolando Hinojosa was rumored to be in line for the Cervantes Prize, next time the award cycles to the Americas for a winner. La Bloga is pulling for Hinojosa, who writes in English and Spanish, to win that prize. For now, Rolando is aptly recognized by the National Book Critics Circle with its Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

Hinojosa-Smith joins the roster of former honorees including Pauline Kael and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Studs Terkel, Joyce Carol Oates, and PEN American Center. The award recognizes outstanding and longstanding work from any sector of book culture that affects a book and contributes to United States arts and letters.

Hear Hinojosa read three sections from a work-in-progress at the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15799coll79/id/191


Conference on Rudolfo Anaya: Tradition, Modernity, and the Literatures of the U.S. Southwest

La Bloga friend Roberto Cantú brings the most arrestingly interesting academic conferences to Southern California and the east side of the LA basin. May 2-3, Cantú surpasses himself with a conference dedicated to La Bloga friend Rudolfo Anaya and literature of the US Southwest.

Scholars from New Mexico to old Germany will lecture, moderate, and sit panel presentations.

Four keystone fiction writers take the lectern during the conference, Ana Castillo, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Reyna Grande, and Mario Acevedo.

The conference on the campus of California State University Los Angeles in El Sereno is free and open to public visitors for just the cost of parking or a short walk from the bus station.

The conference is sponsored by Cal State L.A.'s Gigi Gaucher-Morales Memorial Conference Series, the College of Arts and Letters, the College of Natural and Social Sciences, the Department of Chicano Studies, the Department of English, the Barry Munitz Fund, and the Emeriti Association.

See the conference website for details.

Call for Papers

Wayne State Hosts Latin America Studies Conference: Movimiento 2.0

One of the most popular arguments among movimiento veteranas veteranos concerns dates. Did the movimiento die? When was its last day? The never-ending argument is moot, given the research direction of young scholars today who see a burgeoning new movimiento.

Wayne State University Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies hosts its 5th Annual La Academia del Pueblo Latino/a and Latin American Research Conference on April 26, 2014. The conference bears a provocative title, El Movimiento 2.0: Youth, Identity, Empowerment.

Organizers call for papers that include perspectives on media, criminalizing brown, language rights, ethnic studies programs, latinization of the EUA. The attitude and content sound so provocative it offers a third reason, after Verner's ginger ale and the art institute, to visit Detroit.

Details for applicants--due 14 February--at the conference website.



Call for Artists
Conjunto Festival Poster Contest

The only artist guaranteed to win the $1000 overall prize is one who enters her his work by the February 28 deadline. Click here for the rules page.

Floricanto Poet Seeks Solace Along the Border

People read horror stories about crossing the southern border of the US with a sense of helpless dread. Informed by novels, news stories, and familia, gente comfortably housed over here know the lethal perils of getting here from over there. Dreadful, but not helpless, you can help.

That's the proposition of double-CD album Border Songs. Produced by a group of artists--musicians and poets--committed to easing suffering and ending death along the USA/Mexico border, Border Songs promises all profits from sale of this CD will be donated to Tucson-based humanitarian group No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson observing its tenth anniversary organizing along la frontera.

Per the website No More Deaths, "Each purchase of Border Songs provides 29 gallons of water, or the equivalent in food or medical supplies, to people in need."

Sample and order the CD at internet sales site CD Baby.

Robert Neustadt, "Maricopa Shuffle" in today's On-line Floricanto, sings one of the songs, as does Pete Seeger. Readers include Margaret Randall and Denise Chavez.


La Bloga On-line Floricanto: Poets Responding to SB 1070 Poetry of Resistance
Edward A. Vidaurre,  Robert Neustadt, Jesus Cortez, Francisco X. Alarcon, Anne Elizabeth Apfel

"Hermano" by Edward A. Vidaurre
"Maricopa Shuffle" by Robert Neustadt
"Soy YO" by Jesus Cortez
"One Solstice - One Earth / Un Solsticio - Una Tierra" by Francisco X. Alarcon
"Prayers...brought us here..." by Anne Elizabeth Apfel

Hermano
By Edward A. Vidaurre

leaves on the retama
have been gone for a while now.
As has my brother, who left behind

his pants on the mesquite
branches just under
la baya de muérdago y anacua.

Where did you go, hermano?

Was it you who ate from
the prickly pear? Was it your blood
I saw on the concrete slab
near the cattle crossing beyond
the chaparral? Did you

drink from the soupy air
when you got thirsty
and the hunger pangs set in?

I'll be back soon, leave me
your water bottles, even if
empty.

Born in L.A., CA in 1973, Edward Vidaurre has been been published in several anthologies and literary journals. His book 'I Took My Barrio On A Road Trip' (Slough Press) was released in 2013. Vidaurre's second collection of poems is scheduled to be published in 2014 through Otras Voces Publishing.



Maricopa Shuffle
By Robert Neustadt

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, he’s a great big guy
He can lock you up and make you cry
Take you undies, turn’m pink
Keep you in a cage until you stink.

No, don’t try to feed your family today
That’s not the Arizona way
No señor, you can’t stay.
No, don’t try to feed your children today
That’s not the Arizona way
No señor, you can’t stay.

Mama’s little baby
Hates sheriff Joe
Cuz he took mama and made her go.
Sheriff took mama and
Locked her up tight
Baby’s gonna end up alone tonight.
Papa’s little baby
Hate’s sheriff Joe
Cuz he took papa and made him go.
Sheriff took papa
Chained his feet
Baby’s gonna end up on the street.

Yeah, we’re doing the Maricopa Shuffle
Brown people, shackled feet
Hungry families on the street.

Phoenix Arizona, such a nice town
But if you’re brown don’t show your face
Sheriff’s gonna get you, chase you down
Send you down south for being brown.

Yeah, Sheriff’s volunteer possy’s gonna chase you down
Throw your ass out of town
For being brown
Yeah, Sheriff’s gonna hunt you down
Throw your ass out of town
For being brown.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, he’s a great big guy
He can lock you up and make you cry
Take your undies, turn’m pink
Keep you in a cage until you stink.

No, don’t try to feed your babies today
That’s not the Arizona way
No señor, you can’t stay

Yeah, we’re doing the Maricopa shuffle
Brown people shackled feet
Hungry families on the street.

Yeah, sheriff’s gonna hunt you down
Throw  your ass out of town

For being

Robert Neustadt is Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American Studies at Northern Arizona University. He has published two books and numerous articles on Latin American culture, literature, music and politics. In 2010 he began taking students on extraordinary field trips to the Arizona, Mexico border. He has written about these experiences in an article in UTNE Reader: 
The impact of these experiences on the border brought him to co-produce the Border Songs CD, a double album of music and spoken word, in English and Spanish, about the border and immigration.  He also contributed a song to the album, http://www.bordersongs.org
All of the contributing artists donated their work and ALL proceeds from Border Songs  are donated to No More Deaths / No más muertes, a volunteer organization that provides water and humanitarian aid for migrants in the Arizona desert and to recently deported people on the Mexican side of the border.



Soy YO
By Jesus Cortez

Antes de ser ilegal, mojado, soñador, indocumentado,
americano sin paepeles, hijo bastardo de amerika
hijo abandonado, cruzado cruzando fronteras,
antes de ser ridiculizado por nuestro ingles,
antes de ser temido por mi piel color de tierra fertil,
antes de que las esposas pudieran cortar mi piel,
antes de que las noches se llenaran de luces
de falsedades que le llaman civilizacion,
de ciudades fabricadas con mentiras y explotacion,
antes de ser todo esto

mi abuela fue

llamada india, fue insultada por ser mujer,
la trataron de domar, la trataron de matar por dentro,
la trataron de usar, de cambiar

y dejamos de ser Indigenas para ser mexicanos,
y fuimos odiados igual, y fuimos abandonados
con hambre, con lombrices que no perdonan edades,
con piojos que no perdonan las ganas de dormir

y ahora? Que somos? somos hijos adoptivos,
hijos no queridos de dos banderas, de una tierra
que alguien dividio para separarnos,
y llamarnos como quicieran...

y ahora?

Soy nada de lo que dicen,

SOY Yo

pesadilla caminante, poeta sin tapujos,
llanto de alegria, llanto de frustracion,
llanto de amor, llanto de muerte

llanto de vida

soy YO, no soy lo que digas TU.

Jesus Cortez is an undocumented worker who loves his family, poetry, books, knowledge and life. He hopes that his words will shed light on many issues affecting those who are oppressed and margninalized.  For him poetry is one of many tools needed to help bring about change.



One Solstice - One Earth / Un Solsticio - Una Tierra
By Francisco X. Alarcon

Francisco X. Alarcón, award winning Chicano poet and educator, is author of twelve 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)  His latest book is Ce•Uno•One: Poems for the New Sun (Swan Scythe Press 2010). His 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. His previous bilingual book titled Poems to Dream Together (Lee & Low Books 2005) was awarded the 2006 Jane Addams Honor Book Award. He teaches at the University of California, Davis. He created the Facebook page, POETS RESPONDING TO SB 1070 . 



Prayers...brought us here...
By Anne Elizabeth Apfel

Because the energy asked...
Because I felt their prayers move me..
I let my flute...take me there...
and what I saw....while standing in the energy...
of what on the surface was pretending to be helpful...
What I saw underneath that ..as I stood with my seeds in my hands..
ready to offer them to the wind...my presious seeds......waiting to find the earth...
waiting to find a place to grow their roots..and become...the next generation...
were drugs..and guns...and I began ....to play my flute there...
as I stood there..in the energy of the prayer of those who had asked...
One by one....they disappeared....hands filled with cash......trying to survive..
and there was no Garden....Only monsters burying the wasted energy...Nuclear...
Filling their pockets laughing at nothing will grow here now..naming their own
seeds after this horrific mess ..............
and you will clean it up...because you saw it...........Bless You Sir....
And there we stood together with Cuhtahlatah his wife....
Until Only the horses were left standing....the old grandfathers....looking out
From the eyes of horses......saying stand your ground...we are not leaving either...
And so I stood with my flute........as the energy washed over me like a wave....
I ducked under it..........taking my flute with me.....and we......lived.......to speak again..
It is not always to confront the energy....with your body....but with your energy......
When you see no way through the energy......do not take on the energy..it's energy..
It's formless......wait...little one.......until your moved to move....and then the energy
Will take you where your going......take a deep breath.......as you form into spirit.....
Never allow the energy to turn you .....into it's own likeness.....or you will surely die....
As you become it.......the warrior....dies ...rather than allowing it to turn their spirit....
and if there were no choice in the energy but to live as a dark one or die as the light...
then we as warriors would die.....with our spirits poised....to return...and battle the darkness
This is the nature of human turning to spirit...Doneho

Anne Apfel is a Poet who lives in Buffalo, New York...You Can find her Poems in Kim Shuck's Rabbit and Rose...A Former Issue of La Bloga and the Yellow Medicine Review..Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 Editions...Check out her Face Book Page...Poetry In Motion for the Occasional Poem....Paired at times with her Own Photography..