NM poet laureate will be book club's guest via Zoom

Mesilla Valley Readers of Southern New Mexico (MVRSNM) presents a Zoom presentation with New Mexico Poet Laureate Levi Romero of Albuquerque at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 21. Romero’s 30-minute presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Romero is a bilingual poet whose language is immersed in the regional (Spanish) Manito dialect of northern New Mexico, MVRSNM said in a news release. His work has been published throughout the United States, Mexico, Spain and Cuba. He was named New Mexico’s poet laureate Jan. 30, 2020, by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for a three-year term. In 2012, Romero was named New Mexico Centennial Poet.

Romero will read a selection of his essays and poetry during the presentation, the book club said. He will speak about his work and how he overcame feelings of being out of place in an educational system that did not value creativity. Romero writes about family and community and querencia (homeland), MVRSNM said.

His most recent book is the co-edited anthology “Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland.” His two collections of poetry are “A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works” and “In the Gathering of Silence.” Romero is co-author of “Sagrado: A Photopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland.”

Romero is an associate professor in the Chicana and Chicano Studies department at the University of New Mexico, where he directs the New Mexico Cultural Landscapes Certificate program and the Digital Cuentos project. He also is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and has co-directed two films on acequia culture.

Romero’s poem-writing exercise, “Where I’m From, De donde yo soy,” based on the original poem “Where I’m From,” by George Ella Lyon, was published by Scholastic as part of a nationwide educational project and has been used extensively nationally and internationally.

Visit https://poetry.nmculture.org/levi-romero-poet-laureate/.

Contact mesillavalleybookclub@gmail.com for the Zoom invitation.