Mexico is a country rich in indigenous languages and cultures. More than seventy indigenous languages are spoken and written, and offer us profound commentaries on indigenous lives and cultures through award-winning volumes of poetry and stories. Voices of the People/The Power of Word and Image brings together poets, writers, translators, language specialists, and a film-maker for two days of workshops, public presentations, and poetry readings.
Monday April 15, 2:00-4:00 in the Mathers Museum classroom M2 110.
Poetry and Film: The Power of Word and Image
∗Irma Pineda, a Zapotec poet from Juchitán, Oaxaca, with six prize-winning anthologies of poetry in Zapotec and Spanish, the most recent in 2018 Naxiña Rului’Ladxe/Rojo Deseo. She has served as President of Escritores en Lenguas Indígenas and teaches at the university level. She is the Mexican President’s nominee to the United Nations for Indigenous peoples and has been recognized for her writing and work mentoring youth by the Cámera de Diputados de Mexico.
∗Victor Terán, a Zapotec poet from Juchitán, Oaxaca. A three-time recipient of the national fellowship for writers of indigenous languages, his books of poetry include Diixda; Xieeña (Barefoot Words), Sica ti Gubidxa Cubi (Like a New Sun; Editorial Diana: 1994) and Ca Guichi Xtí' Guendaranaxhii (The Spines of Love); Editorial Praxis. His most recent book is a anthology of poems by forty poets from around the globe translated by Terán into Zapotec.
∗Pedro Serrano, poet, translator, and editor of UNAM’s Periódico de Poesía, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 2007, author of five collections of poetry and translator of a collection of 30 contemporary British poets. He is also Director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre.
∗Roberto Olivares, film -maker, director, producer of documentaries about the afro-mestizo peoples of the Costa Chica and a documentary in Nahua about an elderly Nahua man, Silvestre Pantaleone, from Guerrero, Mexico.
∗Wendy Call, a writer, editor, translator, and educator. She is sought after as a Writer in Residence, and is on the faculty at Pacific Lutheran University. Her nonfiction book, No Word for Welcome won the 2012 International Latino Book Award for Best History / Political Book. She is translating a second book of poems by Zapotec poet Irma Pineda.
∗Donald Frischmann, Professor, Texas Christian University. Specializing in Indigenous literatures of Mexico, an expert in Yucatec Mayan poetry and drama, and a translator. Published with Carlos Montemayor the 3 volume Words of the True Peoples/Palabras de los Seres Verdaderos, indigenous prose, poetry, and drama in trilingual formats
The College of Arts