Hand-To-Tongue: Reed, Tanaya, Teresa

This Saturday at 1 pm in the Wells Fargo Theater at the National Hispanic Culture Center, Local Poets Guild presents Hand-to-Tongue: A Celebration of Threatened Languages with Reed Adair Bobroff, Tanaya Winder, and Teresa Blankmeyer Burke. This showcase is our collaboration with the amazing world music festival Globalquerque, takes place during the free daytime programming of the Global Fiesta, and is going to be powerful: a look at the loss of Native languages, the work of preservation of Navajo, the joy and intimacy of American Sign Language—with sign language and vocal interpreters on site to make everything accessible. Poet Sari Krosinsky has written a nice article for UNM today which gives a bit more background and information.

Reed, at 17, has already been featured on HBO as part of their look at Brave New Voices, the national Youth Slam. Tanaya, still in progress with her MFA at UNM, has been winning prestigious awards left and right for poems, including one from AROHO. Teresa might well be the first deaf woman in this country to earn her PhD in Philosophy. Me, I’ll be the proud host, eager to take in everything they have to say–or sign!

Please join us. And remember, the Global Fiesta runs from 10:30 to 4:oo with all kinds of amazing events and languages. See this link for the schedule.

And you won’t want to miss all the world music festivities of Friday and Saturday night either, so check out the schedule and affordable pricing here at this link.

Big weekend. More posts forthcoming.

–LG

17 Reasons to Attend P(EAR)

As you may or may not know, Local Poets Guild runs a series of talks about poetry, craft and aesthetics, that happens monthly at Acequia Booksellers. We’ve had some fabulous speakers already, the next one promises to be even more seductive.

At 3 pm on Sunday September 4th at Acequia 4019-4th ST. NW, we’ve got Barbara Rockman from Santa Fe who will be joined by Reed Adair Bobroff. They are going to surprise us! Both will address aspects of the work of poetry that matter to them: whether content, craft, aesthetics, vision, whatever their personal take on their talk I know this will be insightful and inspiring and get all of us in the audience thinking about what language and poetry means to us. I hope you’ll come join us in this free event and discussion.

Reed Adair Bobroff is Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water) Navajo which he is close to but is only a portion of  his Spanish speaking; French, German, Russian, and Polish, mutt heritage. Born in Menlo Park, California and happily forced to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico at his young age of 4. He began writing poetry two years later and continues through to this day; where he is a 17-year-old slam poet attending the Native American Community Academy. He has competed on youth slam teams since he was 13 (starting at NACA); one of those teams being the 2010 Abq Unidos Poetry Slam Team which took third in the Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam and was featured on HBO’s Brave New Voices. Now a leader of the Duke City Youth Poetry Collective (a collaborative of Youth Poets based in Albuquerque), Reed believes firmly in the power of writing. At it’s best it prompts thinking, challenges the current narrative of thought, and instigates positive change.

Barbara Rockman, raised in western Massachusetts, lives in Santa Fe where she leads poetry workshops and teaches at Santa Fe Community College. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies including Bellingham Review, Calyx, Cimarron Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She is editor of the anthology, Women Becoming Poems, and founder of “Community of Voices,” a reading and music series for emerging artists. She has received the Southwest Writers Prize, the New Mexico Discovery Award, The MacGuffin Poetry Award and Baskerville Publishers’ Prize. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is the author of the poetry collection, Sting and Nest, 2011.

Please join us. This promises to be a unique and fruitful conversation. And the 17 reasons to attend? there are well over 17 reasons to come out, but Reed is 17, and this is a chance to learn about his trajectory early and witness him grow into opportunities.

LPG presents P(EAR): POETICS AND POEMS

with Barbara Rockman and Reed Adair Bobroff

3 pm Sunday Sept 4

Acequia Bookseller 4019 4th St. NW