POETIC ARTE! A poetry circle for Shifra Goldman

 

 

May 1, 2010, 7 – 9pm

Eric Garcia, Shifra's son, will open the night with a musical selection for the evening

Jesus Trevino, filmmaker, will read from his memoir

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Gloria Alvarez
Ramon Garcia
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
George Kalmar

 
Avenue 50 Studio, 131 North Ave 50, Highland Park, 90042
323/258-1435

avenue50studio.com

 
COST:  Free

 
More than three decades ago, art scholar Shifra Goldman began writing critical analysis of Chicano and Latin American art that broke new ground. She was among the first in the early 1970s to call for the conservation of the Siqueiros mural “America Tropical” in downtown L.A.’s Olvera Street. Her books include Dimensions of the Americas, Contemporary Mexican Painting in a Time of Change.  Goldman is currently ailing with advanced Alzheimer’s. We gather for a poetry reading to help push Shifra Goldman’s ideas and writings into the 21st century and to reaffirm the connection between poetry and visual art.

 
The poets:

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a native Angelino poet with an MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles. In the past she has volunteered to teach creative writing to women in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center, and she continues to research and write on U.S. immigration and detention at her blog: xochitljulisa.blogspot.com. She performs and organizes readings around the L.A. area as a member of Hollywood Institute of Poetics, and just recently as a curator for Beyond Baroque. She has been nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Award. Her poetry has been published in Los Angeles Review, PALABRA, Calaveras Fronterizas (Mouthfeel Press), Glass: Journal of Poetry, and The Umbrella Journal. She is head poetry editor of the online journal, The Splinter Generation.

 
Gloria Alvarez is a Chicana poet/intermedia artist, literary translator and curator, presently teaches creative writing and works as a consultant in public schools, universities, libraries, museums, and art centers. Her literary/artistic efforts have been recognized by the CAC, National Endowment for the Arts, Cultural Affairs Department, City of L.A.,COLA Award  and Poets & Writers, Inc., among others. She has published and read widely in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Her books of poetry in English and Spanish include La Excusa/The Excuse and Emerging en un Mar De Olanes. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and numerous periodicals.

 
Ramon Garcia joined the CSU Northridge Chicana/o Studies Department in 1999. In 2006-2007 he was Associate Chair of the department. He has published in the areas of literary studies, visual culture and cultural studies; he has also published poetry and fiction in journals and anthologies, including Story, Margie:  The American Journal of Poetry, Ambit (UK) and the Los Angeles Review.  His scholarly work and his poetry have been included in anthologies such as The Chicana/o Studies Cultural Reader and The Floating Borderlands:  25 Years of Hispanic Literature in the United States In 2001 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowship.  His current research involves identity, photography and poetry.

 
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez co-founded the performance group The Taco Shop Poets in 1994. The group toured nationwide and appeared in Edward James Olmos’s Americanos documentary. Adolfo’s poetry appears in Geography of Rage, an anthology about the L.A. Riots and Chorizo Tonguefire. Since 2000 he’s been a reporter at Southern California Public Radio. His reporting has been recognized with the regional Edward R. Murrow, L.A. Press Club Radio Journalist of the Year, and the Ruben Salazar awards.

 
George Kalmar was born in Slovakia and immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1965. His early interests have always been in art and poetry and he continued to work as a sculptor and poet throughout the past 40 years. He completed his undergraduate work in English at Temple University in Philadelphia and his graduate work in Creative Writing at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has exhibited his work in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Bangkok, New Mexico and Los Angeles. His poems have been published in a number of journals; and he has held poetry readings in Los Angeles, most recently at Artcore and at the Valley Contemporary Poets.