State poet laureate in town
Juan Felipe Herrera, who found his artistic voice growing up in San Diego and is now the state’s poet laureate, will give a free public talk Tuesday night at Cal State San Marcos.
The event, “From Vista to Laureateville: A Reading and Conversation,” begins at 6 p.m. in the Arts Building, room 111. A book signing will follow.
Herrera, 64, a professor at UC Riverside, was appointed poet laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown in March 2012. He’s the first Latino to hold the post. The two-year position involves public readings, workshops and other projects designed to spark interest in poetry, especially among students.
“I want it to be a fountain of words where all our stories are told,” he said in an interview with U-T San Diego shortly after he was nominated. “Let’s have poetry be at the heart of what a democracy is.”
At many of his visits around the state, he encourages contributions to what he’s calling “The Most Incredible and Biggest Poem on Unity in the World.”
The only son of migrant farmworkers, Herrera moved around a lot as a child. He’s credited teachers at Logan Heights Elementary School and San Diego High — and afternoons spent with his mother absorbing images and impressions at the downtown bus depot — with helping him to find his creative voice.
“San Diego is a really deep part of me,” he said. “Good soil there for what I do.”
Herrera has degrees from UCLA, Stanford and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The author of 29 books, he’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for “Half the World in Light.”
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