Tulum 2011 Faculty:  Diane Wakoski

 Reading in Tulum, 2011

Diane Wakoski was born in Whittier, California and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she participated in Thom Gunn's poetry workshops. Her early work was part of the "deep image" movement that also included Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly, among others. She also cites William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg as influences and her later work is more personal and conversational in the Williams mode. She has published over forty books of poetry, including Emerald Ice : Selected Poems 1962-1987 (1988) and the four volumes of her The Archaeology of Movies and Books sequence, Argonaut Rose (1998), The Emerald City of Las Vegas (1995), Jason the Sailor (1993), and Medea the Sorceress (1991). A book of essays, Towards a New Poetry was published in 1980. She is best known for a series of poems collectively known as "The Leather Jacket Diaries." She won the prestigious William Carlos Williams award for her book Emerald Ice. Wakoski taught creative writing at Michigan State University for many years.

Tulum 2011 Faculty:  Jerome Rothenberg

Jerome Rothenberg is the author of over seventy books of poetry, including Poems for the Game of Silence, Poland/1931, A Seneca Journal, Vienna Blood, That Dada Strain, New Selected Poems 1970-1985, Khurbn, and most recently, A Paradise of Poets and A Book of Witness (all from New Directions). Describing his poetry career as "an ongoing attempt to reinterpret the poetic past from the point of view of the present," he has also edited seven major assemblages of traditional and contemporary poetry: Technicians of the Sacred (tribal and oral poetry from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania), Shaking the Pumpkin (traditional American Indian poetry), America a Prophecy (a radical revision of the poetries of the North American continent co-edited with George Quasha), Revolution of the Word (American experimental poetry between the two world wars),  A Big Jewish Book (subtitled "Poems & Other Visions of the Jews from Tribal Times to the Present"), and Poems for the Millennium (two volumes, co-edited with Pierre Joris).He has also been involved, since the late 1950s, with various aspects of poetry performance, including two radio soundplays written and performed for Westdeuttscher Rundfunk (Cologne), the last  of which ("That Dada Strain" / "Der Dada Ton") was staged in 1985 and 1987 in collaboration with bassist Bertram Turetzky and director Luke Theodore Morrison in California and New York.  Rothenberg was  the editor/publisher of Hawk's Well Press in the early 1960s and of four poetry magazines since then: Poems from the Floating World, some/thing (with David Antin), Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics ("a first magazine of the world's tribal poetries"), and New Wilderness Letter (a magazine of poetics across the spectrum of the arts). In 1968 he received a Wenner-Gren Foundation grant-in-aid for the experimental translation of American Indian poetry, and he has also been an active translator from German, with works including New Young German Poets (City Lights, 1959), the Broadway version of Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy" (1964), and books of poetry by Eugen Gomringer, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Kurt Schwitters. His own selected poetry, Poems for the Game of Silence, has appeared in French, Spanish, Swedish and Flemish editions, and he has been translated extensively into French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Polish, Japanese, Lithuanian, Chinese, and Finnish.  Rothenberg's first collection of writings on poetics, Pre-Faces (New Directions, 1982), received the American Book Award in 1982.  Symposium of the Whole, an anthology of writings on ethnopoetics co-edited with Diane Rothenberg, was published by the University of California Press in 1983, and new editions of Technicians of the Sacred (University of California Press), Shaking the Pumpkin (University of New Mexico Press), and Revolution of the Word (Exact Change) appeared in 1985, 1986, and 1998.  A condensed version of A Big Jewish Book (entitled Exiled in the Word) is in print from Copper Canyon Press.  His full translation of Federico García Lorca's previously untranslated Suites was published as part of Lorca's Collected Poems (Farrar Straus Giroux) with separate publication scheduled by Sun & Moon Press for 2001.  PPPPPP (Poems Performance Pieces Proses Plays Poetics), a selection of the poetry and poetics of Kurt Schwitters, co-edited and translated with Pierre Joris, appeared (Temple University Press, 1993) and was later reprinted by Exact Change.  The two volumes of the Rothenberg-Joris anthology, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, appeared in 1995 and 1998, and recent books of his own poetry include Gematria (Sun & Moon Press), An Oracle for Delfi (Membrane Press / Light & Dust Books) Pictures of the Crucifixion (Granary Books), and A Paradise of Poets (New Directions, 1999).   A collection of writings by various hands, The Book, Spiritual Instrument, co-edited with David Guss (Granary Books, 1996), and a larger anthology, A Book of the Book, co-edited with Steven Clay, has recently appeared from the same publisher.  In 1994 Rothenberg was the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award for The Lorca Variations (poems) and the PEN Center USA West Translation Award for PPPPPP.  A second Josephine Miles Award was given in 1996 for Poems for the Millennium, and he received a Doctorate of Letters from the State University of New York in 1997 and an Alfonso el Sabio Translation Award for lifetime achievement in 2004 .  In 1999 and again in 2001, 2003 and 2006 he was a co-organizer of the People’s Poetry Gathering, a three-day festival, under joint sponsorship by City Lore and Poet’s House in New York City.  His translation of the Czech modernist Viteszlav Nezval (with co-translator Milos Sovak) appeared as Antilyrik & Other Poems (Sun & Moon Press) and Green Integer, 2000, for which he received a second PEN Center USA West Translation Award in 2002, and Green Integer also published his translation of García Lorca’s Suites in that same year.  A selection of his later poems, A Cruel Nirvana, appeared in a Spanish translation in 2001 and in French in 2002, and a volume of new poems, Un livre de témoignage, was published in a French edition in 2002.  A Book of Witness (new poems (New Directions) and María Sabina (selections, with commentaries, from Univ. of California Press) appeared in 2003, and titles published in 2004 included A Book of Concealments (new poems, from Chax Press), 25 Caprichos, after Goya (new poems, bilingual edition, Kadle Books, Tenerife, Spain), Picasso’s The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems (Exact Change, also with Pierre Joris), and Writing Through: Selected Translations and Variations (Wesleyan University Press), which was a finalist for a PEN American Center Award for Poetry in Translation in 2005.   Books scheduled for 2006 and 2007 include Triptych (poems, from New Directions), China Notes & the Treasures of Dunhuang (Ahadada Books, Tokyo and Toronto), Etnopoetica no milenio (Azougue Editorial, Rio), and Nuveos Modelos, Nuevos Visiones: Prosa Selecta (Editorial Verdehalago, Mexico). Jerome Rothenberg received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1976, was a University of California Regents Professor in 1971 and a Visiting Research Professor with the Center for Twentieth-Century Studies (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee), where he helped to organize "the first international symposium on ethnopoetics" in  1975.  From 1972 to 1974 he lived at the Allegany Seneca Reservation in western New York State, and from 1976 to 1986 he taught extensively at the University of California, San Diego.  During that time he also held other visiting professorships, including the Distinguished Aerol Arnold Chair in Literature at the University of Southern California, and in 1986 he was appointed as the visiting New York State Writer in Residence of the New York State Writers Institute in Albany. From 1986 to 1988 he had a tenured appointment as a full professor with the State University of New York in Binghamton.  Since 1989, Rothenberg has been a professor of visual arts and literature at the University of California, San Diego (Professor Emeritus since 1998).   In 2009, he completed editing, along with Jeffrey C. Robinson, Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic & Postromantic Poetry, a large assemblage of nineteenth-century romanticism, postromanticism, and early modernism. In 2010, the anthology won an American Book Award, The Before Columbus Foundation.  Also scheduled is a new volume of his selected essays, Poetics & Polemics, from the University of Alabama Press’s Modern & Contemporary Poetics Series, and a full translation into French of Technicians of the Sacred was published by Editions José Corti (Paris) in 2008.  He was elected to the Academy of World Poetry in 2001 (UNESCO). His blogcan be foundhere

Tulum 2011 Faculty:  Paul Hoover

Reading in Tulum w/Maria Baranda reading translations

Paul Hoover was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia and currently resides in Mill Valley, California.  Hoover has published twelve poetry collections including: Corazón (bilingual poetry chapbook), translated by María Baranda, Puebla des las Angeles, México (LunArena Press, 2009), Sonnet 56 (Les Figues Press, 2009); Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006); Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn, 2005), nominated for the Northern California Book Award; Winter Mirror (Flood Editions, 2002); Rehearsal in Black (Salt Publishing, 2001); Totem and Shadow: New & Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1999); Viridian (The University of Georgia Press, 1997), winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series competition; and The Novel: A Poem (New Directions, l990).His other poetry books include Somebody Talks a Lot (The Yellow Press, l983) and Letter to Einstein Beginning Dear Albert (The Yellow Press, l979).  His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Sulfur, The New Republic, Hambone, and The Iowa Review, among others. It has also appeared in numerous anthologies including five volumes of the annual anthology The Best American Poetry (Scribners).  With Maxine Chernoff, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hoelderlin (Omnidawn, 2008) which won the 2009 PEN USA Translation Award. With Nguyen Do, he edited and translated the anthology, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008), and Beyond the Court Gate: Poems of Nguyen Trai, 1380-1442 (Counterpath Press, 2010). He has also published a collection of literary essays, Fables of Representation(University of Michigan Press, 2004) and a novel, Saigon, Illinois (Vintage Contemporaries, 1988), a chapter of which appeared in The New Yorker.  He is editor of the anthology Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (W. W. Norton, 1994) and co-editor since 1971, with Maxine Chernoff, of the annual literary magazine New American Writing (Oink Press). He wrote the script for the 1994 independent film Viridian, directed by Joseph Ramirez, screened at The Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a founding board member of the Midwest’s leading independent poetry reading series, The Poetry Center at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, he curates the deYoung Poetry Series at San Francisco’s deYoung Museum of Fine Art.  He won the Jerome J. Shestack Award for the best poems to appear in American Poetry Review in 2002. Paul won the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, 1994-95; the Carl Sandburg Award, Chicago’s leading literary prize, for his collection, Idea (The Figures, l987) and the l984 General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers for poems later included in Nervous Songs (L’Epervier Press, l986). In 1980, he was awarded an NEA Fellowship in poetry.  He is a Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

Tulum 2011 Faculty:  Mark Weiss

Reading in Tulum, 2011

Mark Weiss currently lives in NYC. Mark Weiss is an art dealer, former film maker (a film of his is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art), psychotherapist and social worker, occasional teacher of writing, literature, film making, history and psychology.  Weiss has published the following books and chapbooks of poetry:  As Landscape (Chax Press, 2010); Different Birds appeared as an e-book (Shearsman Books, 2004); Figures (Chax Press, 2001); Fieldnotes (Junction Press, 1995); A Block-Print by Kuniyoshi  (Four Zoas/Nighthouse Press, 1994); Intimate Wilderness; (New Rivers Press, 1976); Letter to Maxine (Heron Press, 1974). Other books:  Stories as Equipment for Living: Late Talks and Tales of Barbara Myerhoff, which he edited with Marc Kaminsky (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2005). Weiss has edited and translated the following books: Editor: The Whole Island (La Isla in peso): Six Decades of Cuban Poetry  (Univ. of California Press, 2009; Translating and editing, with Harry Polkinhorn of Luis Cortes Bargalló’s book-length poem, Al margen indomable (To the Unconquerable Shore) (forthcoming); Notas del país de Z / Notes from the Land of Z, by Gaspar Orozco (Chihuahua, MX: Univ. Autonoma de Chihuahua, 2009);  Stet: Selected Poems of José Kozer (Junction Press, 2006); Cuaderno de San Antonio / The San Antonio Notebook (La Paz, B.C.S., MX: Editorial Praxis, 2004), by Javier Manríquez; Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California, with Harry Polkinhorn (Junction Press, 2002) (a bi-lingual anthology) and he translated and edited: “The New Cuban Poetry,” a fifty-page special section of Poetry International VI (2002).

Mark Weiss is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale, and the Rhode Island Creative Arts Center.  Among Mark's other literary activities, he founded and directed the West End Poetry Series from 1972 to 1975 and the Educational Alliance West Reading Series from 1988 to 1989, as well as coordinating readings at the Ear Inn from 1985 to 1987, all in New York. He was editor and publisher of the journal Broadway Boogie from 1973 to 1977 and a producer of special programs in the arts for WBAI-FM New York from 1975 to 1976. In 1991 he founded, and is currently Editor of Junction Press, a publisher of poetry.

He has also translated poems numerous Latin American and French poets.  Mark Weiss is a graduate of Johns Hopkins and Columbia University, and he has taught at the Brooklyn Museum School, Columbia University, Hunter College, University of Connecticut, SUNY-Old Westbury, Hunter School of Social Work, Pima College, University of Arizona, and University of California–San Diego.

Tulum 2011 Faculty: Jen Hofer

Reading in Tulum, 2011

Jen Hofer was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2002 she moved from the Centro Histórico in Mexico City to Cypress Park in Los Angeles, where she currently lives and works.

Jen Hofer is the author, co-author or editor of the following books and chapbooks of poetry and prose:

Aerial #10: Lyn Hejinian, critical volume co-edited with Rod Smith, Edge Books, Washington, DC (forthcoming).

from the valley of death, Ponzipo, Denver, CO (forthcoming).

Laws, Dusie Books, Winterthur, Switzerland (forthcoming).

one, Palm Press, Long Beach, CA: 2009.

or mountains or mountains, in collaboration with Sawako Nakayasu, Dusie Kollectiv, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2009

     (available at http://www.smallanimalproject.com/text/mountains/).

The Route, in collaboration with Patrick Durgin, Atelos, Berkeley, CA: 2008.

lawless, Seeing Eye Books, Los Angeles: 2003.

slide rule, Subpress Collective, Honolulu, HI: 2002.

laws, A.bacus, Issue #139, Potes and Poets Press, Elmwood, CT: July, 2001.

as far as, a+bend press, Davis, CA: 1999 (re-issued 2010).

Jen Hofer has made many handmade artist’s editions and tiny books:

trouble, Dusie Kollektiv, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2010.

13 things i would photograph for you if i could, handmade artist’s edition, 2009.

Tangelo, in collaboration with Patrick Durgin, 2009.

conditions, handmade artist’s edition, 2008.

re    ember, in collaboration with Dan Machlin, 2008.

going   going, (available at http://www.dusie.org/goinggoing.pdf).

condition of anonymity, handmade artist’s edition, 2007.

99 Concerns, in collaboration with Deborah Stratman, 2006.

transportaciones, based on Myriam Moscona’s velo verde, 2006.

aws (chapbook version), Dusie Kollectiv, Winterthur, Switzerland: 2006 (available at http://www.dusie.org/)

Within the field of translation, Jen has published the following books and collections:

Ivory Black, translation of Negro marfil by Myriam Moscona, Les Figues Press, Los Angeles, CA (forthcoming).

sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a bilingual edition of books two and three of Dolores Dorantes, by Dolores Dorantes, 

     Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, Denver, CO and Chicago, IL: 2008.

lip wolf, translation of lobo de labio by Laura Solórzano, Action Books, Notre Dame, IN: 2007.

Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA and
     Ediciones Sin Nombre, Mexico City: 2003.

Jen’s poetry, prose and translations are included in numerous anthologies, most recently:

Encyclopedia, Vol. 2 F-K, ed. Tisa Bryant, Miranda Mellis and Kate Schatz (forthcoming).

The FSG Book of 20th-Century Latin American Poetry, poems by Myriam Moscona, ed. Ilan Stavans (forthcoming).

Poets on Teaching, ed. Joshua Marie Wilkinson, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City (forthcoming).

Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days, ed. Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker, Univ. of Iowa Press, Iowa City: 2010.

no gender: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards, ed. Julian T. Brolaski, erica kaufman and E. Tracy Grinnell, Belladonna

     Books and Litmus Press, NY: 2009.

The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry, poems by Gamaliel Churata, Alfredo Silva Estrada, Eugenio Montejo and Rosamel del   

     Valle, ed. Cecilia Vicuña and Ernesto Livon Grosman, Oxford University Press, New York: 2009.

The noulipian Analects, ed. Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim, Les Figues Press, Los Angeles, CA: 2007.

War and Peace #3, ed. Judith Goldman and Leslie Scalapino, O Books, Oakland: 2007.

Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico, poems by Jorge Fernández Granados, Malva Flores and Alicia García-Bergua,

     ed. Luis Cortés Bargalló and Forrest Gander, Louisville, KY, Sarabande Books: 2006.

Reversible Monuments: An Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Poetry, poems by Malva Flores and Claudia Hernández del Valle-  

     Arizpe, ed. Mónica de la Torre and Michael Wiegers, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA: 2002.

Jen has published poems, prose and translations in many journals, including:

1913, antennae, Aufgabe, Black Clock, BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Calque, Chain, Circumference, critiphoria, HOW2, Jacket, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Letras Libres, Mandorla, Mar con Soroche, mark(s), ON Contemporary Practice, OR, {out of nothing}, Punto de partida, Vanitas, and With + Stand.

Jen Hofer received a B.A. from Brown University and M.F.A.s in Poetry and in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. She taught at The Border Lab for Writers in Tijuana, the Community Humanities Education Program in Los Angeles, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and the University of Iowa, and in 2009 she was the Moseley Chair in Poetry at Pomona College. She currently teaches poetics in the MFA programs at California Institute of the Arts and at Otis College of Art and Design, and teaches writing in the BFA program at Goddard College. She regularly translates catalog essays and other exhibition-related texts for institutions such as The Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museo del Barrio, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Tulum 2011 Featured Reading:  Luis Cortés Bargalló

Reading w/Mark Weiss translating, Tulum 2011

Luis Cortés Bargalló, a poet, translator and editor, was born in Tijuana B.C. in 1952 and currently resides in Mexico City.

Luis Cortés Bargalló is the author of the following books of poetry:

Filos de un haz y envés,  (Trilce Ediciones) 2007

Talleres de Saturno (circa)La lampara del cuerpo (El aduanero)

Por el ojo de una aguja (selección) (an anthology of his poetry) (Biblioteca del ISSSTE) 1999

Al margen indomable, (Mexico City: Conaculta) 1996

La soledad del polo, (Mexico City: Ediciones Toledo) 1990

El circo silencioso, (Fondo de Cultura Economica) 1985

Terrario, (Latitudes Press) 1979

In addition, he has published the following books:

Editor: Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico, with translations by Forrest Gander and Lineas Conectados: Nueva poesia de los  

Estados Unidos (Sarabande Books, Louisville, KY) 2006; Editor: Piedra de serpiente – Poetry and Prose of Baja California. (2 vols.), (Mexico City: Conaculta) 1993; Editor: Poetas de una generación 1950-1959 (1989); Parvada (1985) an anthology; A translation of William Carlos Williams’ Kora in Hell (Tolucd: UAEM) 1986; A translation and essay about Gary Snyder, Anthology (Mexico City: UNAM) 1984; Asamblea de poetas jóvenes (1980) an anthology; Siete poetas jóvenes de Tijuana (1974) an anthology.

In addition, Bargalló has published volumes of translations of the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Robert Bly, Marianne Moore and Gary Snyder, among others.  Bargalló has collaborated on a great number of literary magazines and supplements over the years, including: La Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económica, Revista de la Universidad de México, Casa del Tiempo, Hojas, La Jornada Semanal, Trafalgar Square y El Último Vuelo. At the age of 23 he founded and published the magazine, El Zaguán.  His editorial expertise led to work on the following publications: Dirección General de Publicaciones de la SEP, Editorial Penélope, Dirección de Literatura del INBA, Praxis, Gráfica Editorial, Ediciones Toledo y Joan Boldó i Climent Editores. He is also an independent publisher.

Bargalló has been a recipient of grants from the U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture (Rockefeller/Bancomer/FONCA) and is a member of Mexico's National System of Creators of Art since 2001 (Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte). He was the Director of the Poetry Workshops at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California from 1974 a 1975 in Tijuana.  Bargalló studied communication science at Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA); Mexican literature and songwriting at the Universidad Iberoamericana-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UIA-UNAM), and music at the National Conservatory of México) (CNM), in Mexico City.

Tulum 2011 Featured Reading: Rocío Cerón

  Reading in Tulum 2011

Rocío Cerón (Ciudad de México, 1972).

Página web: http://rocioceron.blogspot.com

Tulum 2011 Featured Reading: Carla Faesler

Carla Faesler is the author of four books of poems: Anábasis Maqueta, (National Price of Literature “Gilberto Owen”. Editorial Diamantina, 2004), No Tú sino la Piedra, (Ediciones El Tucán de Virginia 1999), Mi alma es un fantasma, poesía y fotopoesía, (fall 2010) and the plaquette Ríos sagrados que la herejía navega, (Ediciones Mixcóatl, 1996). Her work is included in many anthologies, including: Sin puertas visibles (Without Visible Doors), by editor and poet Jen Hofer (Pittsburg University Press, USA, 2003), 16 Balas, an anthology of contemporary mexican poetry by the poet and anthologist Antonio Orihuela (Fundación Juan Ramón Jiménez, Moguer, Andalucía, España, 2008), Del silencio hacia la luz, Mapa Poético de México. 1960-1989, (Adán Echeverría anthologist, México, 2009), Nosotros que nos queremos tanto, Contemporary Poetry of Mexico, (El Billar de Lucrecia, México, 2008), V Siglos de Poesía Femenina en México, XVIth to XXth centuries, (Bicentenary Collection of the Estate of México, 2010).  Faesler has participated in numerous international literary festivals, including: Festival de poesía Caracól 2009, Tijuana, BC, México, Feria del Libro Bilingüe de Ciudad Juárez, México, 2007, the “Festival Internacional Letras de San Luis” México, 2006, the “Segue readings” at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC, 2006, the “Poesía 100% Festival” 2003, organized by the Fundación Pablo Neruda in Santiago de Chile andthe O Miami Poetry Festival in April 2010. In April 2010 she was a participant in the New Writing Series at the University of San Diego, California.  In June 2009, she participated in a “film-poems” project realized in Tangier, Morocco, by Tamaas Foundation, in which four poet-filmmaker pairs collaborated in the creation of experimental films. The same project was also screened at the International Film Festival of Berlin 2010.  Carla Faesler co-founded along with Rocío Cerón, MotínPoeta, a collective initiative that promotes interdisciplinary projects featuring poetry as the starting point. For the last few years she has been working on projects of photo-poetry and video-poetry: http://www.youtube.com/user/motinpoetacanal. With MotinPoeta, she co-produced Urbe probeta (2004) and Personae (2007), two CD’s that reunite the collaborative work of poets, music producers and sound artists.

Tulum 2011 Featured Reading:  Feliciano Sánchez Chan

Reading w/Jonathan Harrington translating, Tulum 2011

Feliciano Sánchez Chan is a notable Maya language poet, dramatist, essayist, professor and a leading expert on Maya culture. His extensive bio can be found here   One of his poems can be found here translated from Maya to Spanish.

Tulum 2011 M.F.A./Poetry or Literary Translation Candidate - Karen Lepri

Karen Lepri has been working closely Carla Faesler, since Spring 2010, translating her work from her most recent book and her forthcoming manuscript. Karen is currently a M.F.A. Poetry candidate at Brown University and studies with Forrest Gander. Karen is the first to participate in a new USPiM program which features a current M.F.A./Poetry or Literary Translation candidate with a focus on Mexican poetry/Latin American Studies presenting a workshop concentrating on the process of translation.

Merida 2010 Faculty: Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman has published more than forty books of poetry.  Anne's poems can be found in countless anthologies, including: Breaking the Cool: Interviewing and Reading Beat Women Writers, Univ. of Mississippi Press; Women of the Beat Generation,  Conrai Press and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, W.W. Norton, 1994.  Waldman's work has also appeared in films and video and numerous audio recordings. She has collaborated with an astronomical number of creative persons, including artists Elizabeth Murray and George Schneeman, musician Don Cherry and dancer Douglas Dunn.  Her poems have been translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese.  In the 1970s, along with Allen Ginsberg, Anne began to study with the Tibetan Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.  In 1974, with Trungpa, Ginsberg, and others, Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, in Boulder, CO (now Naropa University), where she remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the Director of Naropa's famous Summer Writing Program.  As a poet, performer, cultural/political activist, professor, collaborator and scholar.

Merida 2010 Faculty: Mark Doty

Chichen Itza Observatory, 2010

Merida 2010 Faculty:  Pedro Serrano

Pedro Serrano is the author of six books of poetry, including Nueces (2008) and Desplazamientos ("Displacements"), Editorial Candaya - Candaya Poesia 5 (2007), with a CD by the author.   His poems can be found in several anthologies, including:  Líneas Conectadas: nueva poesía de los Estados Unidos (Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico), Ed. Luis Cortés Bargalló, translation ed. Forrest Gander,  Sarabande Books (2006) and Reversible Monuments: An Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Poetry, Eds: Mónica de la Torre & Michael Wiegers, Copper Canyon Press, 2002.     With Carlos Lopez Beltran, he edited and translated the groundbreaking anthology, La generación del cordero: Antología de la poesía actual en las Islas Británicas (The Lamb Generation), Trilce Ediciones (2000), which brought together translations of 30 contemporary British poets. He has translated Shakespeare's King John into Spanish, Norma Ediciones (2001) as well as the poems of Irish poet, Matthew Sweeney, No arroje piedras a este letrero, Trilce Ediciones (2001).    Pedro wrote the libretto for the opera, Las Marimbas de l'Exil/El Norte in Veracruz (music by Luc LaMasne), which toured through France and Mexico to great acclaim. He has pubilshed essays and poems in Mexican publications, Letras Libres, Casa del Tiempo, Diálogos, Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económica, Vuelta y Cartapacios and in Spanish publications Babelia, Revista de Libros, Rosa Cúbica, Revista Atlántica de Poesía, Sibila, El Rapto de Europa, Guaraguao and Frontera.   Pedro has taught classes in Poetry and Philosophy on the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona.  He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Mexico.  He holds a doctorate in Spanish literature and is currently a Professorin the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, where he is Editor of their online ezine, Periodico de Poesia.

Merida 2010 Featured Reading & Guest Workshop: José Vicente Anaya

Merida 2010 Faculty: Martin Espada

Martín Espada has published eight books of poetry, the most recent being Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas (Smokestack, 2009), released in England and La Tumba de Buenaventura Roig (Terranova, 2008), a bilingual edition published in Puerto Rico.   His books of poems, The Republic of Poetry, (Norton, 2006), received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Espada's other projects include the book, Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog), an audio book of poetry, Zapata's Disciple (South End, 1998), a collection of essays and El Coro: A chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (Univ. of Massachusetts), an anthology.  Espada has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award,  Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and many others. Martin Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York. He is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and Latino poetry.

Merida 2009, 2010, 2011:  Jonathan Harrington

Merida 2010 Featured Reading & Guest Workshop: Pura López Colomé

Merida 2009 Faculty:  C.D. Wright

  Celestun beach, 2009

Merida 2009 Faculty:  Bob Holman

Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatan (ESAY), Merida 2009

Bob Holman is a poet, multimedia producer, poetry activist and performance poetry professor who lives in New York City.  Bob has published six books, most recently A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture, 2006), praise poems paired with photographs of artists by Chuck Close. He’s also put poetry on television, radio and the Web, producing The United States of Poetry for PBS, appearing on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and serving as poetry commentator on WNYC and NPR. Currently, he teaches “Exploding Text: Poetry in Performance” at Columbia University and is the founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club.

Merida 2009 Faculty:  Jack Collom

Merida 2009 Faculty:  Mónica de la Torre

Merida 2009 Faculty:  Forrest Gander

With Monica de la Torre, ESAY, Merida 2009 (Photo: Jack Collom)

Forrest Gander is known for the richness of his language and his undaunted lyric passion. A translator, essayist, and the editor of two anthologies of Mexican poetry, Gander is the author of more than a dozen books, including collaborations with notable artists and photographers. His many books include his gemlike first novel As A Friend (2008); the poetry collections Eye Against Eye (with photographs by Sally Mann), Torn Awake, and Science & Steepleflower; and the essay collection, Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory & Transcendence. Core Samples from the World, a book of poems, haibun, and collaborations with three notable photographers: Graciela Iturbide, Raymond Meeks, and Lucas Foglia will be released by New Directions in 2011. Translations include Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho, which was the finalist for the PEN Translation Prize, and, with Kent Johnson, The Night by Jaime Saenz. Watchword, a translation of the Villaurrutia Award-winning book by Mexican poet Pura Lopez Colome, and Spectacle & Pigsty, a co-translation with Kyoko Yoshida of selected poems by contemporary Japanese poet Kiwao Nomura, will be released from Wesleyan and OmniDawn Press, in the Spring of 2011. Gander's essays have appeared in many national magazines including The Nation, The Boston Review, and American Poetry Review.  In 2008, Gander was named a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, one of 50 artists to be recognized for artistic excellence, unique artistic vision, and significant contributions to their fields. Gander is also the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim, Howard, and Whiting Foundations, and he has received two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry. With poet C.D. Wright. Gander lives in Rhode Island, where he is professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brown University. He teaches courses on phenomenology and poetics, Asian-American literature, and translation.

Merida 2009 Featured Reading:  Coral Bracho

Reading at MELL, Merida 2009 (Photo: Ileanna Portillo)

Merida 2009 & 2010 Featured Readings:  Briceida Cuevas Cob

Briceida Cuevas Cob was born in 1969 in Tepakan, Calkiní, in the province of Campeche on the Yucatán Peninsula. She writes in both Yucatec Maya and Spanish languages.  Briceida is the author of one book of poetry: U yok´ol auat pek´ ti´ u kuxtal pek (The Lament of The Dog In Its Existence), Casa Internacional del Escritor, (Bacalar, Quintana Roo, Mexico) 1995.  Her poetry has appeared several anthologies:Palabras de los Seres Verdaderos, Antologia de Escritores Actuales en Lengues Indigenas de Mexico, Tomo Dos: Poesia (Words of  the True Peoples: Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Indigenous-Language Writers, Volume 2: Poetry), eds. Carlos Montemayor and Donald FrischmannTexas University Press 2005; Je Bix K'iin (Como el sol, "Like the Sun"),  INI (Instituto Nacional Indigenista - now CDI-Comision para del Desarollo de los Pueblas  Indigenas de Mexico), Rockefeller Foundation, Letras Mayas Contemporáneas, Tercera Series 1, 1998; Tumbén Ik ´t´anil ich Maya´ T´an (Modern Poetry in the Maya Language), (Valencia, Spain) 1994; Flor y Canto (Flower and Song), the INI and Unesco, (Tabasco, Mexico) 1993. Includes work by five indigenous poets from the south.  And one book about the daily life of a Maya woman: Je Bix K'iin (Como el sol, "Like the Sun"), INI (Instituto Nacional Indigenista - now CDI-Comision para del Desarollo de los Pueblas Indigenas de Mexico) (1998) Rockefeller Foundation, Letras Mayas Contemporaneas, Series 3.   Briceida's poetry has been published in several literary magazines and newspapers in Quitana Roo, Campeche, Yucatán and Mexico City.  Ms. Cuevas Cob has been a member of the literary group Génali since 1992.  She participated in the Poetry Workshops in Mayan Tongue at the arts center of Calkiní, coordinated by Waldemar Noh Tzec, from 1992 to 1994. In 1996, Briceida received a scholarship from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes para Escritores en Lenguas Indígenas (Mexico's National Fund for the Culture and the Arts for Writers in Indigenous Languages).  She is a founding member of the Asociación de Escritores en Lenguas Indígenas (Association of Writers in Indigenous Languages) in Mexico. She currently serves as their secretary for professional education.  In 2002, Briceida Cuevas Cob took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam. She has also had the opportunity to participate in conferences and symposiums on indigenous language and literature in Spain, France, United States and Mexico.  She has given extensive readings worldwide, including Harvard University and a night of contemporary indigenous Mexican poetry at both the Guggenheim Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. An excellent article about her poetry can be found here   And one of her poems here

Merida 2009 Featured Reading:   Valerie Mejer

Poet, painter, and essayist Valerie Mejer was born in 1966 in Mexico City. Her poetry books include Geografías de Niebla, Esta Novela Azul, Ante el Ojo del Cíclope, and, later this year, De la ola, el atajo. Her poems in English have appeared in Poetry London, Hunger Mountain Review, Fascicle and Nimrod. She has translated (in collaboration with E. M. Test) Charles Wright's Apalaquia/Apalachia and Pascal Petit's The Zoo Father/ El Padre Zoológico. She is the recipient of two FONCA grants, the Spanish Government’s “Gerardo Diego 1966” International Award, and a recent grant from Sistema Estatal de Creadores to translate the Australian poet Les Murray. Valerie's poems can be found at the Poetry London website (Previous Issues) see issue #50  here  and at the Fascicle website (Archives - see Issue #1) here