Latinx Poetics Anthology Launch Celebration

Join us for a celebration of University of New Mexico Press’s landmark anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, featuring editor Ruben Quesada and poetry readings from eleven contributors. This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry collects personal and academic writing from Latino, Latin American, Latinx, and Luso poets about the nature of poetry and its practice. At the heart of this anthology lies the intersection of history, language, and the human experience. The collection explores the ways in which a people's history and language are vital to the development of a poet's imagination and insists that the meaning and value of poetry are necessary to understand the history and future of a people. The Latinx community is not a monolith, and accordingly the poets assembled here vary in style, language, and nationality. The essays not only expand the poetic landscape but extend Latinx and Latin American linguistic and geographical boundaries. 

Ruben Quesada is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of Revelations and Next Extinct Mammal and the translator of a collection of  selected poems by Luis Cernuda titled Exiled from the Throne of Night. He has  served as an editor and coordinator for The Rumpus, Kenyon Review, AGNI,  Pleiades, and the National Book Critics Circle board. He lives in Chicago,  Illinois.

Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and translator who lives in Chicago; his most recent book is Written after a Massacre in the Year 2018. Borzutzky’s 2016 collection, The Performance of Becoming Human won a National Book Award in Poetry. He teaches in the English and Latin American  and Latino Studies Departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

Blas Falconer is the author of three poetry collections, including Forgive the Body This Failure, and a coeditor of two essay collections, The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity and Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. Falconer’s poems have been featured by Poetry, Kenyon Review, and the New York Times, and his awards include fellowships from the National  Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and Poets and Writers. 

Sean Frederick Forbes is an assistant professor-in-residence of English and the director of the creative writing program at the University of Connecticut. Providencia, his first book of poetry, was published in 2013.  He serves as the poetry editor for New Square, the official  publication of the Sancho Panza Literary Society, of which he is a  founding member. In 2017, he received first place in the Nutmeg Poetry Contest from the Connecticut Poetry Society. 

Carlo Matos is the author of twelve books, including As Malcriadas or Names We Inherit and We Prefer the Damned. Matos has received grants and fellowships from Disquiet ILP, CantoMundo, Illinois Arts Council, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and La Romita School of Art. He is a founding member of the Portuguese American writers collective Kale Soup for the Soul and a winner of the Heartland Poetry Prize.

Raina J. León, PhD, is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia. A poet and writer, she is the author of Canticle of  Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks profeta  without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. León has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Obsidian Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. She also is a founding editor of the Acentos Review, an  international online quarterly journal devoted to the promotion and  publication of Latinx arts.

Sheryl Luna’s Magnificent Errors received an Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize from University of Notre Dame; her other collections include Seven and Pity the Drowned Horses. Luna has received fellowships from Yaddo, Anderson Center, and  CantoMundo, and she has received an Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award, and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. 

Orlando Ricardo Menes is professor of English at the University of Notre  Dame, where he teaches in the MFA program and edits the Notre Dame Review. Menes is the author of seven poetry collections, including The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds ,  Memoria, and Fetish. His poems have appeared in several prominent  anthologies and in such literary magazines as Poetry, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Yale Review, Harvard Review, and Hudson Review, among many others.

Tomás Q. Morín is the author several books, including the poetry collection  Machete and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways.  Morín’s work has appeared in TheNew York Times, The Nation, Poetry, Slate, and Boston Review. He is a Civitella Fellow and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow,and teaches at Rice University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.  

ire’ne lara silva is the author of four poetry collections, including furia and Blood Sugar  Canto, two chapbooks , and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won a Premio Aztlán. silva coedited Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúa Borderlands with Dan Vera.. Her awards include a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, a Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. 

Born in Mexico, Natalia Treviño grew up in South Texas, and is the author of the poetry collections VirginX and Lavando la Dirty Laundry, which has been published in a dual-language edition in Albanian and Macdonian. Treviño’s honors include an  Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Menada Literary Award. She is a professor of English and an affiliate Mexican American studies faculty  member at Northwest Vista College.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. Guests over the age of five must show proof of vaccination and booster up to the level to which they are eligible for their age group. Guests over the age of 18 must show ID alongside their proof of vaccination. If you cannot meet these requirements, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.