Today’s Dear Poet video features Academy of American Poets Chancellor Juan Felipe Herrera, author of many collections of poetry, including Senegal Taxi (University of Arizona Press, 2013) and Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2008), a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
In a profile of Herrera in The New York Times, Stephen Burt wrote: “Many poets since the 1960s have dreamed of a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too. Many poets have tried to create such an art: Herrera is one of the first to succeed.”
Watch Juan Felipe Herrera reading his poem “Jackrabbits, Green Onions & Witches Stew.” And teachers, send us your students’ letters in response for a chance to have them featured during National Poetry Month in April.