UTSA co-sponsors lectures by renowned "poets from the desert"
(Nov. 29, 2001)--The Mexican Cultural Institute with the support of UTSA, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) at San Antonio will present "A Poetic & Cinematographic Session with Three Poets from the Desert" at 7 p.m. Dec. 4-6. The events are free and open to the public.
The Dec. 4 and 5 events will feature Jimmy Santiago Baca from Santa Fe, N.M., lecturing in English, Jorge Humberto Chavez from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, lecturing in Spanish, and Enrique Servin from Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico, lecturing in Spanish. The three poets will conduct a book signing after the lectures.
The Dec. 4 event will be in the Buena Vista Street Building Auditorium Room 1.328 at the UTSA Downtown Campus. The Dec. 5 event will be at UNAM, 600 HemisFair Park.
The Dec. 6 event will feature a showing of the film "Blood In, Blood Out" at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, 1301 Guadalupe St., with commentary by Baca, the film's writer and producer. Chavez and Servin will also partipate in the event.
Books written by Jimmy Santiago Baca include "Healing Earthquakes," "A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet," "Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio," "Immigrants in Our Own Land," "Black Mesa" and "Martin and Meditations on the South Valley." His awards and honors include the National Endowment of Poetry Award, National Hispanic Heritage Award, Wallace Stevens Chair at Yale, Berkeley Regents Award, Southwest Book Award and American Book Award.
According to publisher Grove/Atlantic, Baca has been called an heir to Pablo Neruda and one of the best poets in America today. At the age of twenty-one, he was illiterate and facing five to ten years in a maximum-security prison for selling drugs. Five years later he emerged from prison with the ability to read and a passion for writing poetry. Baca spent his childhood on small farms in New Mexico, his adolescence in orphanages and detention centers, his years as a drug dealer in San Diego and Arizona, and experienced an extraordinary personal transformation under harrowing conditions behind bars.
Jorge Humberto Chavez, professor of sociology, aesthetics and literature at the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, was awarded the Colima National Award of Poetry 1981 and David Alfaro Siqueiros Scholarship in 1994 and 1997. His writings include "Bar Papillio: 5 Poets of Cibola," "El Libro de Poemas," "Caminarias al Viento," "La Lluvia desde el Puente" and "From 5 to 7 p.m."
Enrique Servin, a poet and translator born in Chihuahua, has a law degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Chihuahua and is a language expert with extensive skills in 13 languages. He received the David Alfaro Siqueiros Scholarship and the Chihuahua Literature Award and was director of "Solar" magazine. He was chair of cultural ethics at the Institute of Chihuahua and is an expert on contemporary poetry in many languages.
For more information call Teresa Cruz, UNAM at San Antonio, at (210) 227-0123.
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UTSA co-sponsors lectures by renowned "poets from the desert"
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