Walking past a row of books in a library, 21-year-old aspiring poet Juan Felipe Herrera was stopped short by a title: “Snaps.” The book was the debut collection by Victor Hernandez Cruz.
“I opened it up, started reading those poems,” Herrera recalls 45 years later. “Puerto Rican bilingual English style and language and voices. The wordplay, improvisation, it was amazing. That catapulted me. I never forgot it.” In 2012 he found himself sitting with Cruz as chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in New York City.
Now he’s joining an even more prestigious club, as the Library of Congress is naming him U.S. poet laureate. When he begins his tenure in September, he’ll be the first-ever Chicano poet laureate, writing and speaking in both English and Spanish.
Herrera’s parents, both migrant farmworkers, came to California from Mexico in the early part of the 20th century. He traveled up and down the state as a child and attended UCLA with the help of the Educational Opportunity Program for disadvantaged students. Although he got a master’s degree at Stanford in the 1970s in social anthropology, what he really wanted to do was write. In 1988 he went to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop for his poetry MFA.
Now 66, Herrera is a master of many forms: long lines, litanies, protest poems, sonnets, plays, books for children and young adults, works that combine verse and other forms. Lately he has turned his gaze outward, with 2013’s collection, “Senegal Taxi,” focusing on Darfur.
Herrera, who lives with his wife in Fresno, Calif., retired from UC Riverside in March, where he taught creative writing for a decade. He recently concluded his two-year term as California’s poet laureate, traveling to hidden corners of the state and showcasing young poets’ work in various media. Along the way he created a massive, multi-contributor unity poem and a number of popular live readings, catching the attention of key players in Washington, D.C.
“I think people heard about what he was doing as California poet laureate in ways that you don’t always hear about what state poets laureate do,” says Robert Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. “That was really exciting to see.
“He speaks poetry in a way that I think is super-inspiring,” Casper continues. “He’s the kind of poet who gives you permission to love poetry, to be excited about it, to be energized by it. To think that it’s something freeing and fun, but also relevant to the issues we face, the challenges we have. To understanding the world we’re in.”
About the Author
