Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Hispanic Heritage Month Series 2011 Presents:

Tendencies in Recent Mexican Poetry. Discussion and reading presented by Mexican poet Juan Manuel Portillo.

When: September 22, 2011
Time: 8:30 p.m.- 9:45 p.m. EST
Where: Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum Distance Learning Center- West Sim
Program Note: Discussion will focus on the position of the contemporary reader as a critic/historian/theoretician in regards to poetry. Bilingual (Spanish/English)presentation.


Participants will need an avatar and headset/microphone for this presentation. To create your avatar and download Second Life software, please follow click here.




Juan Manuel Portillo is a Mexican poet, educator, scholar and translator born in Ciudad Juárez in 1967. He was a full time professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (1999-2004), where he taught a variety of courses related to poetry and poetics, including Mexican Modern Poetry, and seminars on Octavio Paz and Latin American Contemporary Poetry. Portillo is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). He has taught courses in Hispanic Culture and Literature, Spanish for Heritage Speakers, and Chicano Culture at UC Davis. His poems and translations have been published in a variety of literary and cultural journals in México and the U.S., including Anuario de poesía mexicana 2004, edited by Luis Felipe Fabre and Tedy López Mills, and published by Fondo de Cultura Económica. His translations include poetry by John Taggart, Paul Celan and Goeffrey Hill. His scholarly papers in modern and contemporary Mexican poets, such as Coral Bracho, Octavio Paz, Xavier Villaurrutia, Jorge Cuesta, Jorge Esquina, Dolores Dorantes and Felipe Fabre, and Uruguayan poet and critic Eduardo Milán, and poet and translator Jen Hofer, have been presented in over twenty conferences throughout the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Portillo is co-editor of the broadside series Hoja Frugal. In collaboration with musicologist Ana Alonso Minutti, Portillo edited volume 6 of Brujula, Interdisciplinary Review on Latin American Studies, published by the Hemispheric Institute of the Americas of UC Davis. Also with Alonso Minutti, he has an ongoing interdisciplinary project that focuses on the intersection between music and poetry. His awards and fellowships include a 1994 David Alfaro Siqueiros Fellowship in poetry, and the 2009-2010 UC Davis Research Fellowship for the Humanities. His poetry collection, passwords_ , is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press in 2011.

Portillo’s poetry can be found in the following journals:

Tierra Adentro
Oráculo
El Poeta y su a Aufgabe,
Paso del Río Grande del Norte
Solar


For more information, email: lvmfestival@ymail.com

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Latino Virtual Museum Launches Second Annual Dia de lo Muertos Festival in Second Life


Experience Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, festivities in Second Life as the Latino Virtual Museum celebrates its second annual Dia de los Muertos Festival. The festival begins Friday, October 29 through Tuesday, November 2. To partake of this celebration, you will need an avatar. Click on the sidebar link GET YOUR AVATAR HERE.

Dia de los Muertos is a cultural celebration stemming from the blending of pre-Hispanic and Spanish customs, and it is celebrated throughout Latin America. This celebration is a day to honor and remember those who have passed on. It is both a time of mourning and happiness, and a time to celebrate life and death. If you want to learn more about this celebration, click the Dia de los Muertos sidebar banner and it will take you directly to the event page, or visit latino.si.edu and follow the links.




One of the highlights of the festival will include a "The Day of the Dead Ballgame Tournament", sponsored by the Walt Disney Company. The ballgame is based on the first organized Mesoamerican sport played almost 3,000 years ago! The game is played almost like soccer but instead of using the feet to kick the ball, players use their hips. Now, imagine playing this game in Second Life. Well, you can. Drop us a line at lvmsecondlife@gmail.com, and we will be happy to sign you up and your team!

Here is a list of the Dia de los Muertos event line-up:

Featured performance of poetry and music by Rincon Bohemio, from El Paso, Texas

Children's storytelling time and workshops for schools, with artist and musician Nancy Lorenza Green

Dia de los Muertos community ofrenda in LVM's virtual cemetery

Featured artist interview with Cesar Ivan


University of Notre Dame takes on the Smithsonian Latino Center in a meso-ball game tournament of life and death at the Ballcourt of the Sun

Opening procession featuring live Aztec ritual-blessing

Virtual Poetry Reading with poets from across the U.S.

Interview and featured concert with Lila Downs

Community ofrenda in Virtual Native Lands in Second Life

Skull Dance Party with live DJ



And more...


FORTHCOMING IN THIS BLOG: WE WILL POST POETRY, STORIES, AND ESSAYS FROM POETS AND WRITERS FROM ACROSS THE U.S. STAY TUNED!