Contact: Sheila Lanham, Director
Email: USPIM @ earthlink.net
Website:
http://www.uspoetsinmexico.org
Postal Address: U.S. Poets in Mexico, P.O. Box 4150, Grand Central Station, New York, NY, USA 10163
In January 2013, U.S. Poets in Mexico returns to the lovely colonial city of Mérida on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with their 4th Annual Poetry Conference. USPiM organizes a gathering of contemporary American and Mexican poets in Mexico every year for a week of poetry workshops, readings and lectures. Poetry workshops are held at Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatan (ESAY) and readings are held at the Merida English Language Library. Faculty members are notable and award-winning poets, and always include a bilingual professor and a translator of Latin American poetry. The event also highlights indigenous writers in Mexico.
The January 2013 Merida faculty are Anselm Berrigan, Nicole Cooley, Tom Sleigh and Lynn Emanuel, as well as Special Guest lecturer, Ron Silliman, and renowned Borjes translator, Suzanne Jill Levine. Featured readings by Mexican poets include: Mario Bojórquez, Rubén Márquez, and Álvaro Solís--all from Puebla and editors at one of Mexico’s notable ezines, Circulo de Poesia. Poet, Mark Weiss will join us with translations of work by all three Puebla poets. Ámbar Past has lived in the mountains of Chiapas among the Maya for over 30 years. She will read her own poetry and also read in Tzotzil Mayan language and her English translations of Tzotzil ritual poetry which appear in her anthology, Conjuros y ebriedades,, (Incantations By Mayan Women). They also feature an end of week reading by all participants and faculty. Nightly readings are FREE to the public and include faculty poets and guests.
Along with numerous books of poetry, 2013 faculty poets have won many awards, including The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Discovery/The Nation Award, several National Endowment for the Arts awards, a Creative Artists fellowship from The American Antiquarian Society, the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, a National Book Circle Award for Criticism, a Houghton Mifflin New Poetry Prize, an Honor Book Award from the Massachusetts Society for the Book, a Kingsley Tufts Award and the Levinson Prize, from the Poetry Foundation and more. Please visit our website for full biographies of all poets!
A full schedule of conference activities can be found online at: http://uspoetsinmexico.org/2.html and workshop descriptions can be found at: http://uspoetsinmexico.org/38.html The conference fee is $600. Affordable hotels abound. Please contact USPiM with any questions: uspoetsinmexico@verizon.net Workshop participants can apply and pay online through PayPal.
You need not be American to participate in USPiM events, however, most workshops are conducted in English, with the exception of the translation workshop; nightly readings are bilingual. “U.S. Poets” describes the American poets our organization brings to Mexico and introduces to Mexican poets with the hopeful result of collaborations and translation projects. Optional Spanish lessons and day trips to Mayan archaeological sites and a biosphere reserve are available.
U.S. Poets in Mexico was formed in 2008 by New York artist/poet Sheila Lanham. The program was born out of a love of poetry, a love of Mexico, a desire to know more about contemporary Mexican poetry and to share that knowledge with others.
