My Farewell Reading

Dedicated to all Santa Feans! Please join me for a farewell reading as poet laureate, dedicated to everyone who loves Santa Fe. See below for the official press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 2010

On March 17, 2010 during the lunch hour, Santa Fe Poet Laureate Valerie Martínez will read poems about Santa Fe--a reading dedicated to city residents. The reading will take place in the Santa Fe Arts Commission Gallery at the Community Convention Center. Downtown residents, City of Santa Fe employees, downtown merchants and staff, and all others are invited to an hour of poetry about the capital city.

This event, Martínez’s last as Poet Laureate, also celebrates the release of the her book, This is How it Began, printed and bound in a limited, letterpress edition by the Press at the Palace of the Governors. Copies of the book will be available for viewing and purchase at the reading.

Over the past two years, Martínez has appeared at over 45 public events—giving readings, workshops, short courses; writing with children, youth, families and elders; performing with musicians, dancers, actors, poets and others. In the introduction to This is How it Began, Valerie states: “This book is my gift to the many residents who have educated me, enlightened me, and deepened my love for Santa Fe.”

Martínez’s community outreach project--Lines & Circles: A Celebration of Santa Fe Families--involved working with three and four generations of eleven Santa Fe families whose mixed-media works of art and poems appear at the Arts Commission Gallery through Friday, March 19, 2010. Those attending the reading will have a chance to tour the exhibition. And a collection of Martínez’s Santa Fe poems will be published by Sunstone Press later this year.

From And They Called It Horizon by Valerie Martínez:

Today we say Santa Fe, our Santa Fé
in the sierra madre, in the cradle between
the Pecos Mountains, Cerro Piñon,
Tano Point, Caja del Rio, Tetilla Peak.

But there was a time, long ago,
before names, dream before dream.
Aho niishnee, principio, the beginning.

It was a seed, imagine it, smaller
than the eye’s dark pupil, smaller
than the tiniest yellow idea of seed,
and tinier. Inside, the dream
of something blue and unbelievably wide,
something rising to blue, algún encuentro
magnífico de marrón y azul.

And the seed there, buried.

Perhaps it was the eye behind the eye
of some great Being, or the eye
of a fantastic explosion, or the spot
on the tail-flick of a lizard
with red and black ridges on his back.

The seed nestled inside what became an orb,
an orb hurtling through indigo space,
then a spinning, whirling mass of blue
become this planet we call Mother Earth.

And it hung there, at the center,
weaving a garment of brightness.”

Valerie Martinez ©2009