A Conversation with Juan Felipe Herrera, 21st Poet Laureate of the United States

Experience the Episode

Presented by Institute for Latino Studies

Thursday, October 31, 2024 12:00 pm

Listen in to 2024 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, interviewed by then Notre Dame MFA candidate in poetry and graduate student Luis Lopez-Maldonado. As a poet, educator, and writer, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recognizes Herrera for “uplifting Chicanx culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment.” In this oral history conversation Herrera and Lopez-Maldonado uncover the insight to be gained from playing with language, the value of nurturing one’s art accompanied by close friends, and why both individuals and communities should answer the call to write.

The Letras Latinas Oral History Project produces video interviews of Latinx writers visiting the Notre Dame campus with the aim of making them available as an online resource for faculty, students, scholars, and the community at large. For more information, please visit the Letras Latinas website.

Meet the Poet: Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera received a BA from University of California, Los Angeles (1972), an MA from Stanford University (1980), and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1990). Herrera is the author of over 30 books, including Senegal Taxi (2013); Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008); and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1998). Herrera is professor emeritus at the University of California, Riverside, and at California State University, Fresno, where he coordinates the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio. He served as California Poet Laureate (2012–2015) and Poet Laureate of the United States (2015–2017). Herrera’s poem “Sunriders” was engraved on a plaque sent on NASA’s unmanned Lucy mission in 2021, and the Juan Felipe Herrera Elementary School, a bilingual school in Fresno, CA, opened in 2022.

Bio and photo shared courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Meet the Poet: Luis Lopez-Maldonado

Luis Lopez-Maldonado is a Xicanx activist, poeta, playwright, dancer, choreographer, & educator born & raised in multiple barrios across el Orange County, CA. He/Him/They/Them are winners of the 2024 International Latino Book Award for his first book, Mexican Bird, from Querencia Press; his second book is Gay Poetics of the Passion (FlowerSong Press). His/Their poesía has been published  in over 150 different journals and magazines and anthologies. He/They are currently adding glitter to the Land of Enchantment, working for the public educational system as a high school Bilingual & Special Education educator. He/They currently hold two bachelor’s degrees, two master’s degrees, and graduate in December 2024 from the University of New Mexico with an Ed.S.

Bio shared courtesy of Poets & Writers. Photo shared courtesy of Luis Lopez-Maldonado.

About Juan's Work

Juan Felipe Herrera is a poet, educator, and writer uplifting Chicanx culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment through poetry and prose for adults and children. Herrera’s literary output, in both English and Spanish, crosses genres and spans five decades; his work is united by deep empathy and joy for all groups in the act of artistic creation.

Herrera has chronicled the changing social and cultural dynamics of the Mexican-American community, from the activism of the Chicano Movement to the fraught politics of immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border today. In his 1974 publication Rebozos of Love / We have Woven / Sudor de Pueblos / On our Back, which was republished in 2021 as Rebozos of Love: Floricanto 1970–1974, Herrera exalts ideas embedded in the Chicanx nationalist movement while experimenting with linguistic syntax and structure. For example, the poems flow effortlessly between Spanish and English, and Herrera incorporates pre-Columbian history, Indigenous deities, language, and artistic motifs. Herrera addresses present-day concerns in Every Day We Get More Illegal (2020). He pays homage to unseen working-class laborers and the lives of immigrants precariously situated on the edges of society. Herrera also implores readers to resist dehumanizing labels and to show empathy for the vulnerable among us. In Notes on the Assemblage (2015), Herrera laments state violence inflicted upon citizens in the United States and elsewhere. The opening poem, “Ayotzinapa,” is a stream of consciousness, bilingual account of the killings of 43 Indigenous students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, likely at the hands of the police in Guerrero, Mexico, in 2014. Herrera puts the reader in the position of both witness and victim in “Almost Livin’ Almost Dyin.” The poem, about police killing Black men in the United States, subtly shifts to include the reader in the collective first person “we.” In this way, Herrera imagines a future in which people are in solidarity with one another, no matter their differences.

In addition to poetry, Herrera has written several books for children. He recounts fond memories of his childhood among migrant farmworkers in California’s Central Valley in the picture book Calling the Doves / El canto de las palomas (2014). Jabberwalking (2018), an introduction to writing poetry for young readers, showcases Herrera’s delight in linguistic experimentation and lifelong devotion to teaching. A distinctive voice and inspiration for generations of writers, Herrera centers the unprotected while imbuing his work with hope and a sense of possibility.

Above shared courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.