PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT: Melinda Palacio, Poet Laureate

PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT: Melinda Palacio, Poet Laureate 

 

Michael Sedano

It’s such a mark of progress when a city gets something so right as Santa Barbara has, in naming Melinda Palacio the city’s Poet Laureate for the next two years. 

The City knows what it’s doing; its Laureate webpage acknowledges Melinda as the first Chicana laureate. La Bloga shares our joy that our Friday colleague has earned this honor.

The Laureate read her inaugural eponymous poem in City Hall. Santa Barbara Is A Poem is the first Chicana poetry to grace that auditorium.

Melinda's but the first of her writers group to stand up there and read. 

WOmen Who Write, WOWW, Palacio's writing group, includes several up-and-coming writers whose work has begun gaining some of that qui meruit notice. 

Órale, Amada Irma Pérez on your extensive work with children's literature and writers; órale Mona Frazier on the upcoming YA Garden of Second Chances; órale Florencia Ramírez on the provocative Eat Less Water and a recent Earth Day recognition. Please click the links for additional information.

Women Who Write, Santa Barbara's writers group

Melinda’s inaugural poem, “Santa Barbara Is A Poem,” begins as paean to the city’s wondrous climate, a first stanza not speaking its placename, instead offering this place “Aztlán” noting “Chumash land” is just past the city limits. 

“Jacaranda”---not Jack-a-rand-a—flowers add to the city’s colorful arboreal fiesta in the next stanza. 

The City Fathers won’t get it, but the code-switched line, “Santa Barbara eres una poema” is the most Chicana line of all. And at the end, the poet reminds paradise's gente not everyone lives flawless lives in this Eden.

Palacio has told gente she’ll probably correct the grammar to make poema masculine, but “una poema” mirrors la chicanada’s fluid relationship with our heritage tongue. 

What the City’s Laureate selectors get is Melinda’s work spans public service to publication. 

Melinda’s been a tireless volunteer at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference as well as a long-ago winner of its poetry prize. 

The lively local poetry (pre-GOPlague) scene in Santa Barbara shared lots of reading events where Melinda would shine as spotlight performer. In Santa Barbara, Melinda Palacio is famous all over town in the best way. 

Out-of-town critics validate Santa Barbara’s choice, Palacio the qui meruit of numerous awards for a literary resumé that includes both poetry and fiction: 

Poetry:

Folsom Lockdown

How Fire Is a Story, Waiting 

Bird Forgiveness (review in link)

Novel: 

Ocotillo Dreams 

Casa Sedano hosted Melinda for a reading featuring Melinda’s Bird Forgiveness in a special afternoon for my wife, Barbara. 

Dementia stole poetry from Barbara. I cherish a day Barbara was struggling to read Bird Forgiveness, unable to decode the marks on the page. I read to her. We laughed at the poem about Elvis the scrub jay. 

Elvis, and Bird Forgiveness, are the final acts of poetry my Barbara lived with. I requested a reading of the poem at Melinda's post-reception reception. My Barbara was smiling with joy hearing it from the poet's lips. Barbara loved birds and is why I photograph them.

I don’t have a recording of Elvis but back in 2010, Melinda read for the 3-day Festival de Flor y Canto: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow  held at the University of Southern California (whose motto reads, "Palmam qui meruit ferat").

Melinda read in the festival's “tomorrow” schedule y mira nomás, tomorrow she's become Santa Barbara City Poet Laureate. Do enjoy Latinopia’s video of three readings. The second, “Arizona,” is puro Palacio, insightful, clever, superbly performed. 

LATINOPIA WORD MELINDA PALACIO from Latinopia.com on Vimeo.

Sabes que? I look forward to Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta for the next two years. The Poet Laureate needs to be heard, attention must be paid. Microphones qui meruit ferat.

Let the poet remind the City Fathers their pueblo hasn’t been Spanish since 1821, pero hijole, it’s always been Indio, Mestizo, Chicanx, and una poema.

Santa Barbara Is a Poem 
by Melinda Palacio 
City of Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2023-2025 

One winter she shows off like a child playing dress up in a white cape. From the ocean, admire her gentle powdered peaks, a rare dusting. Rejoice as water droplets turn to hail, to snow, a rarity in Aztlán. Chumash land impossible to reach when mud or fire threatens. 

Evergreen Pear blossoms fall like feathers, peaceful and soft. A slight breeze on a Jacaranda and it rains purple. Add leaves, golden hands, sometimes, bright red, and it’s a fiesta, nature’s party. Coast Live Oaks grow twisted, rooted like guardian angels. In the wind King Palms sway, drop fruit from a canopy of prickly crowns.

A blessing, shrouds of gray clouds hide the sky and I put hands in the earth, pull weeds and prune roses. Stay still as a rufus hummingbird motors past my ear. Walk at dusk and the moon rises over Sycamore Canyon ridge. Wait for the twinkling. Greet the Archer and Seven Sisters.

Santa Barbara eres una poema. 

Speaking Spanish in Santa Barbara means home, negates every time someone has told me to go back where I came from. I was born in this Golden State, 100 miles south of this paradise. 

Santa Barbara, you are a poem. 

It’s easy to want it all in this idyllic land. In my neighborhood known as San Roque, fruit rolls down: limes, oranges, persimmons, avocados course around a cul-de-sac, named Lucinda. When I meet her, the woman named after the street, she offers me flowers. 

My neighbor calls to her young daughter, tells her to bring a sprig of rosemary from the box marked free, a year-round bounty. An abundance of treasures from the land soured by our inability to provide an Eden for all: Housing, mental health services, jobs for all who flock to this land we call home. 

Santa Barbara is a poem.