New U.S. Poet Laureate: Juan Felipe Herrera

June 10, 2015 Juan Felipe Herrera Named U.S. Poet Laureate from the Academy of American Poets at poets.org Academy of American Poets Chancellor Juan Felipe Herrera is the new U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Herrera is the first Mexican American poet to hold the position. “Juan Felipe is someone who believes that poetry can make a difference in people’s lives and communities,” said executive director Jennifer Benka in a Washington Post article announcing the news. “He will bring an enthusiasm and electricity to the role of poet laureate that is sure to spark new and wider interest in the art form among people of all ages.” Herrera was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2011. Chancellorship is an honorary distinction. Chancellors provide artistic guidance, champion our programs and poetry, and judge our largest prizes for poets, including our $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award.

Juan Felipe Herrera was born in Fowler, California, on December 27, 1948. The son of migrant farmers, Herrera moved often, living in trailers or tents along the roads of the San Joaquin Valley in Southern California. As a child, he attended school in a variety of small towns from San Francisco to San Diego. He began drawing cartoons while in middle school, and by high school was playing folk music by Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.

Herrera graduated from San Diego High in 1967, and was one of the first wave of Chicanos to receive an Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) scholarship to attend UCLA. There, he became immersed in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, and began performing in experimental theater, influenced by Allen Ginsberg and Luis Valdez.

In 1972, Herrera received a BA in Social Anthropology from UCLA. He received a masters in Social Anthropology from Stanford in 1980, and went on to earn an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1990.

His interests in indigenous cultures inspired him to lead a formal Chicano trek to Mexican Indian villages, from the rain forest of Chiapas to the mountains of Nayarit. The experience greatly changed him as an artist. His work, which includes video, photography, theater, poetry, prose, and performance, has made Herrera a leading voice on the Mexican American and indigenous experience.


Juan Felipe Herrera is the author of numerous poetry collections and other works that include video, photography, theater, prose, and performance, making him a leading voice on the Mexican American and indigenous experience. Read more about his life and work, watch exclusive video of the poet performing his work, and more.

Additional information about Herrera can be found at a Library of Congress web guide. An excellent profile of Herrera appears at The New York Times. Further New York Times coverage appears here. More at the Los Angeles Times and NPR.

A video on California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. This is part of the documentary film "Go Chanting, Libre," which profiles four Chicano poets who participated in the Poetry in the Schools program. Produced in 1984 by Ed Kissam and Rick Tejada-Flores for KRCB TV. For more information and to order a DVD, contact info@paradigmproductions.org

HALF-MEXICAN

by Juan Felipe Herrera

Odd to be a half-Mexican, let me put it this way

I am Mexican + Mexican, then there’s the question of the half

To say Mexican without the half, well it means another thing

One could say only Mexican

Then think of pyramids – obsidian flaw, flame etchings, goddesses with

Flayed visages claw feet & skulls as belts – these are not Mexican

They are existences, that is to say

Slavery, sinew, hearts shredded sacrifices for the continuum

Quarks & galaxies, the cosmic milk that flows into trees

Then darkness

What is the other – yes

It is Mexican too, yet it is formless, it is speckled with particles

European pieces? To say colony or power is incorrect

Better to think of Kant in his tiny room

Shuffling in his black socks seeking out the notion of time

Or Einstein re-working the erroneous equation

Concerning the way light bends – all this has to do with

The half, the half-thing when you are a half-being

Time

Light

How they stalk you & how you beseech them

All this becomes your life-long project, that is

You are Mexican. One half Mexican the other half

Mexican, then the half against itself.

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Footnotes: Re: Mexico Volcano see this page. flayed: to skin; removed skin from a carcass. claw feet: deformed foot; mythical figures with "claw feet"; an eagle with "claw feet"; in design and furniture "claw fott". Kant (German philosopher (1724–1804): considered the most significant Western philosopher. "Kant was the philosopher of human autonomy, the view that by the use of our own reason in its broadest sense human beings can discover and live up to the basic principles of knowledge and action without outside assistance, above all without divine support or intervention," from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Einstein (1879-1955): born in Germany and considered the greatest physicist. For more see this page. 

Herrera with UC Riverside students for a poetry reading.