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U.S. Poet Laureate Visits Rockford

The art of writing and the rhythm of prose are close to the heart of Juan Filipe Herrera. He’s the newly named U.S. Poet Laureate and the first Chicano to be named to the post in the nation’s history. WNIJ’s Steve Shadley got a chance to meet Herrera during his visit to Rockford this week… 

 

Juan Filipe Herrera is a visual artist, educator and Latino activist. His parents were migrant farm workers and he spent most of his life in California’s central valley. He once lived at Carbondale in southern Illinois. He’s written children’s books and dozens of short stories, but his first love is poetry. 

 

(Excerpts from the full interview:)

“My poems are like stepping stones and in between the stepping stones is a leap and it’s in between those leaps that I want the reader to enjoy and discover, and meditate and reflect…”

 

Herrera said while growing up in the 1960’s he was inspired by beat poets like Allen Ginsburg. He learned the blank space in between words is as important as the writing itself. I met Herrera at his Rockford Hotel where he shuffled through a collection of his poems searching for one that fits his mood at the moment… 

 

 

“You throw a stone, I throw a stone. I throw a stone. I throw a stone. You throw a stone. Then a rocket, a rocket comes down. Here. I lay. Next to You. We are brothers in a way without a sky. My father’s house is empty. Your mother’s house has no amber light as it once had. Even the sun cannot penetrate the open field where you and I once played. In our separate dreams burns and burns those stones. What were they? Where did they come from?” 

 

Herrera said he prefers to write his poems the old fashioned way, with pencil and pen, on big sheets of paper, putting the computer aside. He said creating poems is therapeutic and messy. 

 

“When you are writing you are attempting to break through a particular window. You are wanting to break through a wall. I do like to let myself get thrown around on the page. To get smeared by the ink, get tackled by the poem and to get kicked out of the page. I enjoy all that. (laughs)” 

 

As part of his duties, Herrera is setting up a website called “Casa De Colores” or “House of Color” where anyone can send their poems to be archived at the Library of Congress.