When life gets heavy, as it has been this year, turning to poetry can be a welcome catharsis, allowing us to view life through another's experience. For those of you yearning for some raw human connection, tonight will be a treat. The West Texas A&M University Distinguished Lecture Series and Department of English, Philosophy and Modern Languages will host a virtual reading with award-winning Latinx poets Wendy Trevino and Natalie Diaz in “Poetry of Displacement” tonight at 6:30pm. Today, I was joined in the studio by Dr. Andy Reynolds, who will emcee the online event. Hear our full interview, and a few poems, on the link below.
The reading will be accessible via Zoom. It's open to the public, so join in. The Zoom link is:
https://wtamu.zoom.us/j/94919576380?pwd=VVRXaDJxYlN2VWo0eUk3ZTBzRmF1UT09
Meeting ID: 949 1957 6380
Passcode: 254883
MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT: “This annual event is a priority for the WT Spanish program that allows us to amplify voices on campus that are not always heard,” said Dr. Andrew Reynolds. “It is a pleasure and honor to host high-profile Latinx women writers on campus each fall.”
Trevino was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and now lives in San Francisco. She has published chapbooks with Perfect Lovers Press, Commune Editions and Krupskaya Books. “Brazilian no es una raza,” a bilingual edition of the chapbook she published with Commune Editions, was published by the feminist Mexican press Enjambre Literario in July 2018. Her first book-length collection of poems “Cruel Fiction” was published by Commune Editions in September 2018.
Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, “When My Brother Was an Aztec,” was published by Copper Canyon Press, and her second book, “Postcolonial Love Poem,” was published by Graywolf Press in March 2020. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow, a United States Artists Ford Fellow, and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. Diaz is Director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Phoenix.
About WTAMU’S Distinguished Lecture Series
The Distinguished Lecture Series was created to enhance education in the classroom by inviting people of national prominence to speak to WTAMU students and the community about important issues.
