Sin Filtro: Natalie Graham and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

The Garcia Center for the Arts
May 19th, 2018
Workshop (with Vanessa Angélica Villarreal) 5:00 – 6:00 PM
Reading and Conversation 6:00 – 8:00 PM
RSVP on Facebook

Folks, we’re going to have Natalie Graham and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal reading at the next Sin Filtro. I hadn’t heard of the poets before Isabel told me about them, but I checked out their websites and I’m very excited that they’re going to be performing at The Garcia Center for the Arts (Natalie Graham and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal).

Natalie, described as a “Ph.D, poet and hip-hop scholar,” has a ton of links on her site like  a radio interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books and there are a couple of poems you can check out online, “Leaping Fire in Princeville Park” and “Underneath There is a Wound.” I’d really recommend you consider purchasing Natalie Graham’s collection Begin With a Failed Body too. I’ve always liked being at least somewhat familiar with a poet’s work on the page before I hear them read—that might just be me though. Otherwise, Natalie’s book will be available for purchase on the night of the reading too.

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s Beast Meridian, which I can also strongly recommend you purchase, is a huge deal. Not only has it been featured on an NBC best reads list, but it also picked up huge praise from The Los Angeles Review of Books. And Vanessa is not just a poet, but also does design and video work. Here’s an example of her work “Estrellada”:

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Website and Logo Update

Can’t believe it’s almost May. Back in February, PayPal deposited $399.67 into our account at Provident and the money you generous folks raised has been sitting there ever since. But, I’m really excited to say, we’ve got our old domain back – so no more of that double name business. Poetrie.org, it’s nice. Feels good to be single-name again. And things are starting to move on the redesign, which includes website and logo.

Wanted to share some of that progress with you folks and of course feel free to give us your thoughts. The logo work is being done for us by Gabriela Íñiguez, a super talented graphic designer who has very generously volunteered her time.

So, yeah. We’re keen on banishing our existing logo to the depths of hell, and are feeling good about some of designs. We especially like the first one here – it feels clean and uncluttered and would hopefully make our ‘ie’ a bit less confusing! As for the website, we’re still planning on launching a Squarespace business account, which, thanks to donations, we’ll be able to host for two years right off the bat (it’s $216 per year).

Anyway, thanks again and watch this space!

Sin Filtro 1: Thank you!

Purchase Luivette Resto‘s work here.

Désirée Zamorano‘s novel, The Amado Women, is available here.

 

So, poet Luivette Resto and novelist Désirée Zamorano came over to The Garcia Center for the Arts last Saturday. Luivette led an hour long poetry workshop in the gallery room at the center and, through presenting the work of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, helped attendees come up with fresh and thoughtful work.

Désirée Zamborano reading at The Garcia Center for the Arts: photocred. Fabian Torres

After folks from the audience volunteered to share their work, Désirée and Luivette performed for us. Désirée read from The Amado Women and inspired everyone with her retelling of a classic fairytale, given a Chicana-twist. Then Luivette performed and it was both passionate and accessible, and demonstrated, as many readers have at The Garcia Center for the Arts, such as Chiwan Choi, that poetry doesn’t have to be filtered.

And that’s what the following discussion focused on, the theme of ‘filters.’ Whether this be race, motherhood, or merely the expectations readers bring, Isabel, our President, prompted a focused and invigorating discussion that brought filters down.

We hope you folks will be able to make it to “Sin Filtro 2,” which will take place on Saturday the 24th of February at The Garcia Center for the Arts.

 

PoetrIE Awarded California Humanities Quick Grant

We’re proud to announce that through the hard work of our President Isabel Quintero, who did the research, created programming, and applied, PoetrIE is the proud recipient of a California Humanities Quick Grant.

 

We’re extremely grateful to California Humanities and are very excited about the programming we’ve got lined up for the New Year. “Sin Filtro: Workshop, Readings, and Discussion Series” will bring local writers into San Bernardino to provide inspiring and thought provoking literary culture open to all.

We’re also proud to say that a great deal of the money will be going straight back into the community as we will be renting space at The Garcia Center for the Arts in San Bernardino and hiring local authors to read. (By-the-way, make sure you check out their Facebook page for events upcoming events.)

 

Nikki Harlin

George Hammons

Jason Magabo Perez

Isabel will be posting shortly with more details, so we hope you can keep your pants on till then. There are going to be dates, and names, and you’ll be able to RSVP, so don’t worry. Until then, keep up-to-date on our Facebook, Twitter (@Poetrie_tweets), and Instagram (@poetrieorg).

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As a non-profit PoetrIE relies on public donations to maintain and develop all its programming. We can’t do it without you folks! With that in mind, please consider donating to our current website redesign campaign. Our target is modest, but the impact is potentially huge.

Call for Volunteers

TL;DR: there’s a list of stuff we need help with at the bottom and a form to register as a volunteer

We need people! I felt a huge sense of relief when I filed our taxes this morning. I mean, even though it took about 20 minutes and the 990 e-postcard only requires 8 pieces of information from non-profits like us, it felt good to get it done. But then I looked at my checklist for PoetrIE stuff and felt less relieved. And that’s not even the half of it.

There’s the stuff we need to be doing that we’re not, like consolidating a mailing list, building contacts at local colleges, and maintaining our social media presence – there’s the stuff we do do, i.e. getting the Sin Filtro events organized and marketed, but then … then there’s the stuff we dream of …

• building our new website and getting it launched
• creating a line of products to sell on the site, broadsides, t-shirts, etc.
• designing new programming like the relaunch of our poetry critique group
• looking into publishing pamphlets
• hosting regular poetry readings aside from the Sin Filtro events

Isabel and me feel guilty we don’t do more. But Isabel teaches and is a full-time travelling writer, I have school and a relatively new baby. And we’ve known we need to get volunteers and new board members for a while – but, well … we need someone to volunteer to get people to volunteer 😀

We can’t pay, of course, but we’re good for letters of recommendation and sweet sweet resume candy. If there’s anyone out there who could help us organize our recruiting, please consider volunteering.

We need help with the following:

• drafting letter/email of interest to local colleges, to recruit students
• drafting comprehensive job descriptions for volunteers
• drafting job descriptions for board members
• creating job postings for board member positions
• building out a recruitment section of our website
• organizing our existing recruitment data

 

 

 

Sin Filtro: Part One

We couldn’t have asked for better timing for the launch of our Sin Filtro series. This is about getting unheard voices heard, about doing something by listening to the writers  we should be listening to. So, we hope you’ll join us for this evening’s reading at The Garcia Center for the Arts.

If you’ve missed the registration for the creative writing workshop – which will focus on poetry – don’t sweat it, I think we could squeeze you in. Follow the link, fill in the form and make good on those writing resolutions.

PoetrIE Presents: Sarah Rafael Garcia

 

When: Saturday April 22, 2017
Where: The San Bernardino Garcia Center for the Arts
526 W. 11th St. San Bernardino, Ca 92410
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Also reading: Alexa Vasquez

Fee: This event is free but we accept donations. In fact, we strongly encourage them, so that the lights can stay on in the Garcia Center, and so that these readings can continue to be free and open to the public.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Writers will have their books for sale at the event-cash is preferred.

This event is made possible with the generosity of The San Bernardino Garcia Center for the Arts and with the support of Poets & Writers, Inc.

Sarah Rafael García is a writer, community educator and traveler. Since publishing Las Niñas in 2008, she founded Barrio Writers and LibroMobile. Her writing has appeared in LATINO Magazine, Contrapuntos III, Outrage: A Protest Anthology For Injustice in a Post 9/11 World, La Tolteca Zine, The Acentos Review, among others. In 2010 Senator Lou Correa honored the artist with the “Women Making a Difference” award and in 2011 she was awarded for “Outstanding Contributions to Education” by the Orange County Department of Education in California. Sarah Rafael is also a Macondo Fellow and an editor for the Barrio Writers and pariahs writing from outside the margins anthologies. She obtained a M.F.A. in Creative Writing with a cognate in Media Studies in May 2015.

Come drum with PoetrIE @ San Bernardino Art Night! Open Mic.

PoetrIE invites you to join us during San Bernardino Art Night.

4:15 – 6:15 = Open drum circle with Chazz Ross.

Participate in an international Drum experiences featuring the djembe drum. African or International percussion drumming, this drum circles will magically channel each audience’s internal rhythms to enrich their words, music and dance. Audience members will have the opportunity to play djembe drums.

6:30 – 7:45 = Open Mic!

Signup for the open mic will start at 6:00.

Upcoming: March 18th, Angela Peñaredondo at the Garcia Center!

Please join us in Downtown San Bernardino to enjoy the poetic music of Angela Peñarendondo, Elisa Grajeda-Urmstron, and Daiana Rodriguez!

When: Saturday, March 18, 2017
Where: The San Bernardino Garcia Center for the Arts
526 W. 11th St. San Bernardino, Ca 92410
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Fee: This event is free but we accept donations. In fact, we strongly encourage them, so that the lights can stay on in the Garcia Center, and so that these readings can continue to be free and open to the public.

Light refreshments will be provided.  Writers will have their books for sale at the event-cash is preferred.

This event is made possible with the generosity of The San Bernardino Garcia Center for the Arts with the support of Poets & Writers, Inc.

Angela Peñaredondo was born in Iloilo City, Philippines, Angela Peñaredondo is a Pilipinx/Pin@y poet and artist. Peñaredondo is the author of the book, All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize, Inlandia Institute, 2016 and the chapbook, Maroon (Jamii Publications, 2016). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, AAWW’s The Margins, Four Way Review, Cream City Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. She is a VONA/Voices of our Nations Art fellow as well as a recipient of a University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Grant, Gluck Program of the Arts Fellowship, Naropa University’s Zora Neal Hurston Award, Squaw Valley Writers Fellowship and Fishtrap Fellowship. She has received scholarships from Tin House, Split This Rock, Dzanc Books International Literary Program and others. She resides in Southern California.

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Elisa Suzanne Grajeda-Urmston is a college professor, artist, and road-weary musician whose recent poetry and short stories have appeared in Whistling Fire, Tin Cannon, Xicano Poetry Daily, Badlands, Palabra, PoetrIe, and The Pacific Review.

A Mexican/British, first-generation American daughter of the Borderlands, Ms. Grajeda-Urmston was born in San Bernardino, grew up in San Diego, and now makes her home amidst the coyotes, cottonwoods, and ancient Joshua tree forests on the western edge of the Mojave Desert with her husband Chris, and her dogs. She earned her MFA in creative writing at California State University, San Bernardino. Her poetry inhabits a space between ethnicities and borders, genre and gender, love and loss, glamour and spectacle, drawing from her experiences of thirty years in the music business.

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Daiana Rodriguez is an alumna of CSUSB holding baccalaureates degrees in English, Creative Writing and in Psychology. She is currently working to spread the love of creative writing as a SCIPP tutor before she pursues her dream of obtaining an MFA in Poetry. Her work explores the life of the immigrant people that make up the helix of her ancestors and her existence as a woman of color in light skin. She has been published previously by The Pacific Review. 

February Garcia Center Reading: F. Douglas Brown

We hope you can join us at our reading this weekend.  PoetrIE is proud to present F. Douglas Brown!  Also reading: T.R.U.E.

About F. Douglas Brown:
F. Douglas Brown of Los Angeles is the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize recipient for Zero to Three (University of Georgia 2014). He also co-authored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (Upper Rubber Boot Books 2016), a chapbook as part of Upper Rubber Boot Books Floodgate Poetry series. Brown teaches English at Loyola High School of Los Angeles. He is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow, and his poems have appeared in several journals and magazines, including the Academy of American Poets, The Virginia Quarterly (VQR), The Chicago Review, Bat City Review, Cura Magazine, and Muzzle Magazine.

When: Saturday February 18, 2017
Where: The San Bernardino Garcia Center for the Arts
526 W. 11th St. San Bernardino, Ca 92410
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Fee: This event is free but we accept donations. In fact, we strongly encourage them, so that the lights can stay on in the Garcia Center, and so that these readings can continue to be free and open to the public.

Light refreshments will be provided.  Writers will have their books for sale at the event-cash is preferred.

This event is made possible with the generosity of The San Bernardino Garcia Center for the Arts and with the support of Poets & Writers, Inc.

Our next reading will feature: Angela Peñaredondo on Saturday March 18, 2017, 6pm.