Juan Felipe Herrera
As a “natural wonderer, dreamer, traveler… mega listener…and only child,” poet Juan Felipe Herrera grew up in California’s San Joaquín and Salinas Valleys “listening to everything and everyone,” he says, and those habits led him “to the magical lands of words, stories, ideas, books, songs, riddles and ultimately writing.”
Herrera, the 2015-17 U.S. Poet Laureate, will be in Syracuse this week as the opening poet for the Point of Contact (Punto de Contacto) 2024 Cruel April Poetry Series.
Herrera will lead creative writing workshops for students and community members on Wednesday, April 3, and Friday, April 5. Both sessions are from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at La Casita Cultural Center, 109 Otisco Street in Syracuse.
His public poetry reading is Thursday, April 4, from 6 to 8 p.m., also at La Casita.
We sat down with Herrera to discuss his poetry and creative work and learn about his creative process.
Forms change as you change, and as everything changes. I love experiments, which is what the mind does every split second.
Let’s be free. I love drawing and writing at the same time, even cartoons. Let’s peek into our inner selves and life at large, close and far as far can be. NASA all of a sudden wants poems installed in their robotic interplanetary spacecrafts. We can do that too, with our creativity.
Juan Felipe Herrera
As a child my hobbies were listening and imagining—about clouds, fields, trees, forests, roads, lakes, peoples’ stories, friends’ chats about literature, libraries, downtowns, wharfs, my mother’s [fabulous] conversations with my aunt.
In high school I became a total fan of art, from the Renaissance to pop art, and a fan of the great philosophers, from Socrates to Sartre. All these ingredients were my fuel for thinking, writing, experimenting, visualizing and creating materials from sculpture, watercolors, oils, acrylics, clay, plaster and vermiculite. By the time I took a pencil and an ink pen, writing was non-stop.
Poetry is everywhere. Poetry can be made with cardboard, sticks, AI, stones, ink, paper or seaweed.
Move on from dusty ideas and approaches, as beautiful as they may be. Be like a chimpanzee leaping from branch to branch. Scream a little. Life is like that.
Life. Meditation. Laughter. Compassion, kindness, song. Remembrance. Ancestors. Peace. Reflection. Awareness. Games. Surprise. Togetherness and humanity. Knowledge. Culture and social response.
Juan Felipe Herrera
I look forward to being in Syracuse for the first time. I look forward to everything and everyone, the earth itself, the children, youth, teachers and those who create programs for the people. I look forward to creating with all; let’s open new doors and touch the sky and the earth and all beings with kindness.
My goal is open; may it be the goal of all [to have] happiness and inner expression. The more open, the better. The more flow, the more we discover and come together.
The Cruel April Poetry Series is held annually in observance of National Poetry Month. (The title is derived from the T.S. Eliot poem “The Waste Land.”)
This year’s programming was expanded to invite broader audience engagement, says Teresita Paniagua, La Casita’s executive director of community engagement. The writing workshop grew out of a partnership with Environmental Storytelling Central New York, which is coordinated by Brice Nordquist, associate professor and dean’s professor of community engagement in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Jacob Gedetsis ’21, writing center coordinator and lecturer at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Following Herrera, additional poets participating in the series are:
In concert with the Cruel April Reading Series, Punto de Contacto publishes a bilingual literary journal, “Corresponding Voices,” featuring new poems from the invited readers, including Herrera. The journal is edited by Tere Paniagua, the University’s executive director of cultural engagement, and Jules Gibbs, poet, author, instructor in the College of Arts and Sciences and curator of the Cruel April poetry reading series.
(Photos courtesy of Blue Flower Arts)
