Just Poet John Roche will lead an online presentation/workshop. Here is how he describes the program:

New Mexico’s unique history has produced a distinctive culture with its own cuisine and artistic traditions. Does this hold true for poetry as well? This talk will introduce the Just Poets audience to some key New Mexico poets and to some useful ways to group them. We’ll look at indigenous poets, including Joy Harjo, Leslie Silko, and Simon Ortiz; Hispanic poets writing in both English and Spanglish, like Levi Romero and Jimmy Santiago Baca; “Burque” Slam poets writing in urban Chicana slang like Manuel Gonzalez and Jessica Helen Lopez; as well as contemporary Anglo poets like Lauren Camp, Donald Levering, and the late Stewart S. Warren.

We’ll also consider the effect of two great cultural “invasions,” the 1920s Bohemian influx associated with Mabel Dodge Luhan, D.H. Lawrence, and Georgia O’Keefe, and the 1960s  Hippie influx that brought Beat and Black Mountain poets like Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, and Peter Rabbit to the Southwest and informed locally raised poets like Margaret Randall, Larry Goodell, and Keith Wilson.

Some questions to consider: Is New Mexico, like other American regions, in danger of homogenization? Are there important differences, say, between Albuquerque poets and Santa Fe poets? What sustains Southwestern poetry in terms of publishing, bookselling, and literary organizations?

Zoom links and instructions will be provided in Lisa Nichols next Just Poets newsletter.

John Roche lives in Placitas, New Mexico, helping his wife Jules Nyquist run Jules’ Poetry Playhouse, edit Poetry Playhouse Publications, and host the monthly Kaktus Poetry open mic. He taught Literature and Creative Writing for decades at various colleges, retiring from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2019. Roche was formerly President of Just Poets in Rochester, NY, member of the board of BOA Editions, chief organizer of the Black Mountain North Symposium, and an instigator of the annual Cloudburst Council poets' retreat in the Finger Lakes. Along with editing the five-volume Poets Speak series and other anthologies (including Mo' Joe), his own poetry collections include On Conesus, Topicalities, Road Ghosts, and The Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet. His newest book is Joe Rides Again: Further Adventures of Joe the Poet (FootHills Publishing 2020).

John's Books at PoetryPlayhouse.com Poets Speak Series

John Roche