Nothing to do tomorrow night? The Lensic Performing Arts Center and Littleglobe, in association with SITE Santa Fe and the Center for Contemporary Arts, present the return of the Del Sol String Quartet, one of the most adventurous and accomplished musical ensembles in the country, in concert on Thursday, September 17 at 7:30 p.m. at The Lensic.
In addition to performing key compositions from their central repertoire, the San Francisco-based quartet will showcase works by composer and collaborator Chris Jonas, recipient of this year's United States Artists Fellowship. Chris and I are colleagues at Littleglobe, Inc.
Video and live music from Chris's work in progress, GARDEN, will also be shown as a highlight of the evening. A collaboration between the Del Sol String Quartet and Chris Jonas, GARDEN is a music-driven intermedia performance/installation that uses live music and projected video in performance to explore metaphoric and psychological realms of night.
Tickets are $12-$30 / students ½ price with ID
This will be a wonderful show if you can make it.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
VIVA Event, Lines & Circles Families
Join the city of Santa Fe, this weekend (September 5-6), for the opening of the 400 year commemoration of city history. A huge event at Fort Marcy Field, there will be a food pavilion (with chef's demonstrating and serving indigenous and traditional foods of Santa Fe), a kid's pavilion (with all sorts of activities for children), a cultural traditions pavilion, commemorating the history and traditions of the city, concerts and performances, and more.
Eight of eleven Lines and Circles families (see description of the project below) will be there to talk about the generations of their family in Santa Fe and demonstrate their family work of art in progress. Participants are the Akers Hunt Covelli, Carmona, Goler Baca, Martinez Ridgley, Ortiz Dinkel Hasted, Quintana Gallegos, Salazar and Shapiro Bachman families.
The ceremony opening the 400 year commemoration is Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
I'll be there; look for me near the Lines and Circles booths. Hope to see you there, too.
Eight of eleven Lines and Circles families (see description of the project below) will be there to talk about the generations of their family in Santa Fe and demonstrate their family work of art in progress. Participants are the Akers Hunt Covelli, Carmona, Goler Baca, Martinez Ridgley, Ortiz Dinkel Hasted, Quintana Gallegos, Salazar and Shapiro Bachman families.
The ceremony opening the 400 year commemoration is Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
I'll be there; look for me near the Lines and Circles booths. Hope to see you there, too.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Mark Your Calendars--January 15, 2010
The opening reception for the Lines and Circles: A Celebration of Santa Fe Families project will be Friday, January 15, 2010 at the Santa Fe Arts Commission Community Gallery at the Convention Center in downtown Santa Fe. Mark your calendars for this exhibition--eleven works of art created by three generations of Santa Fe Families. The exhibition is the culmination of a year and a half of artistic collaboration. A book/catalogue will appear with the opening of the show. The exhibition (Friday) and day of presentations and traditional family foods (Saturday) are free and open to the public.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Reading at the National Book Festival, September 26, 2009
I am lucky enough to be reading at the National Book Festival on the Washington DC mall on September 26, 2009 in the wonderful company of U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, Jane Hirshfield, Tim O'Brien, Azar Nafisi, Ralph Eubanks, and others who will read as part of the NEA Poetry and Prose Pavilion. If you happen to be in DC on that weekend, please join us. For more information, go to http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/
A new Santa Fe poem, for you. This one was written to accompany a mixed-media work, created by three generations of the Martinez Salazar Ridgley family (my own), consisting of mailboxes which hold letters from living family members to our ancestors who've passed. This and 10 other works will premiere at the Lines & Circles Family exhibition on January 15, 2010 at the Community Gallery at the Santa Fe Convention Center.
Letters to Wherever You Are
We write: Dear Diego, Dear Kate,
Dear Matiana, Dear Orrin,
as if paper and ink travel the air
between now and then, here
and wherever you are.
What we did not say, couldn’t,
wished we’d said, now have to—
I want you to know, remember,
it’s clear now, everything you said
flutters across the page.
We imagine a place, a moment,
when these appear in your hands
like strange birds, delicate,
weathered from the trip.
They open their small mouths.
Devotion lasts, and it is sung
in the voices of those of us
who are left behind,
making peace with the incomplete,
inarticulate, half-said.
The past is past and still
we write, fold, send, believe
they arrive in the place
between now and the day
their zig-zag flight mimics
the one we’ll take
when we too disappear.
Once, a nestling fell
from the rafters of the porch
and lay like a missive
on our front step. Its feathers
spread to reveal the thinnest
layer of bird-skin, pulsing
with tiny veins. Too small
to fly, we put it back in the nest,
up high, with five siblings
who knocked it out again.
Once, it opened its mouth as if
to feed, and what came out
was half breath, half sound,
from some world that wished
to take it back and did, later
that day, when its shivering
stilled. We felt culpable.
We had touched it, sullied
the world it fell out of.
These letters feel safe, reach
out to you who we’ve loved
from this tenuous distance—
draw the flight line between us—
honor the fact that we are still
here with our earthly language
written, folded, sent to you
in ink, on paper, on the wind,
wing-like, into the nest of your palms.
Valerie Martinez, copyright 2009
A new Santa Fe poem, for you. This one was written to accompany a mixed-media work, created by three generations of the Martinez Salazar Ridgley family (my own), consisting of mailboxes which hold letters from living family members to our ancestors who've passed. This and 10 other works will premiere at the Lines & Circles Family exhibition on January 15, 2010 at the Community Gallery at the Santa Fe Convention Center.
Letters to Wherever You Are
We write: Dear Diego, Dear Kate,
Dear Matiana, Dear Orrin,
as if paper and ink travel the air
between now and then, here
and wherever you are.
What we did not say, couldn’t,
wished we’d said, now have to—
I want you to know, remember,
it’s clear now, everything you said
flutters across the page.
We imagine a place, a moment,
when these appear in your hands
like strange birds, delicate,
weathered from the trip.
They open their small mouths.
Devotion lasts, and it is sung
in the voices of those of us
who are left behind,
making peace with the incomplete,
inarticulate, half-said.
The past is past and still
we write, fold, send, believe
they arrive in the place
between now and the day
their zig-zag flight mimics
the one we’ll take
when we too disappear.
Once, a nestling fell
from the rafters of the porch
and lay like a missive
on our front step. Its feathers
spread to reveal the thinnest
layer of bird-skin, pulsing
with tiny veins. Too small
to fly, we put it back in the nest,
up high, with five siblings
who knocked it out again.
Once, it opened its mouth as if
to feed, and what came out
was half breath, half sound,
from some world that wished
to take it back and did, later
that day, when its shivering
stilled. We felt culpable.
We had touched it, sullied
the world it fell out of.
These letters feel safe, reach
out to you who we’ve loved
from this tenuous distance—
draw the flight line between us—
honor the fact that we are still
here with our earthly language
written, folded, sent to you
in ink, on paper, on the wind,
wing-like, into the nest of your palms.
Valerie Martinez, copyright 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Ignatius Mabasa, Zimbabwean Poet, in Santa Fe on July 30th
Please join us for a reading by Zimbabwean poet, Ignatius Mabasa, on July 30th at 6 p.m. at the Shelby Street Gallery, downtown Santa Fe. I'll be introducing Ignatius and you will spend a lovely hour hearing his poetry. There should also be a lively discussion afterward; I have many questions for Ignatius myself, about poetry in southern Africa, about life in Zimbabwe, etc.
The gallery will be open at 5 p.m. if you'd like to arrive early and have some refreshments, grab a good seat. Hope to see you there.
Shelby Street Gallery
222 Shelby St.
Santa Fe, NM
505-982-8889
The gallery will be open at 5 p.m. if you'd like to arrive early and have some refreshments, grab a good seat. Hope to see you there.
Shelby Street Gallery
222 Shelby St.
Santa Fe, NM
505-982-8889
Hiatus
Sorry for the hiatus, here. I spent a week in Taos teaching at the Taos Summer Writers Conference (7/12-7/18) and the past week has been a flurry of activity in anticipation of the Wednesday 7/29 vote by the city of Santa Fe councilors on whether the city will acquire the land where the College of Santa Fe now resides. More on that below.
First, I want to say that it was my extreme pleasure to work with three wonderful poets in Taos--Raquel Flowers Rivera, Tina Carlson, and Dorothy Brooks--who brought their poetry manuscripts and worked very hard, all week, getting them ready to submit for publication. I am hoping to see all three mss. in print soon.
And, I do want to stand in favor of the city deal to acquire the land where the College of Santa Fe now stands. The deal will NOT COST RESIDENTS OF SANTA FE ANYTHING, no increase in taxes, no money out of residents' pockets. The deal with Laureate, Inc. (which will take over the administration of College of Santa Fe, thereby saving the college) means that Laureate will pay for the college's outstanding bond debt through its lease of the land from the city of SF. And, best of all, the city acquires the land and can lease it out (to Laureate and others) to generate revenue. It's a win-win deal for the city.
This said, I also spent many hours with Laureate last week, assuring myself (so I can assure you) that they are committed to the Santa Fe community, connecting the "new" College of Santa Fe with local residents, and providing access to education for local and regional post-secondary students. The college will still be pricey (no more than it was before, about 24K a year), still on par with high-quality liberal arts colleges, but scholarships will be available and Laureate is looking at offering in-state students a special fee for tuition. No, it won't be as inexpensive as our state institutions, but the new CSF will be a premiere, international institution for the arts and won't be like any NM state college/university.
I want Santa Feans to know that I asked Laureate many straightforward and hard questions in order to be assured that it's the right thing for the College of Santa Fe, its students, staff, alumnae, and for the community. I believe it is. Please urge your city councilors to vote FOR this deal.
First, I want to say that it was my extreme pleasure to work with three wonderful poets in Taos--Raquel Flowers Rivera, Tina Carlson, and Dorothy Brooks--who brought their poetry manuscripts and worked very hard, all week, getting them ready to submit for publication. I am hoping to see all three mss. in print soon.
And, I do want to stand in favor of the city deal to acquire the land where the College of Santa Fe now stands. The deal will NOT COST RESIDENTS OF SANTA FE ANYTHING, no increase in taxes, no money out of residents' pockets. The deal with Laureate, Inc. (which will take over the administration of College of Santa Fe, thereby saving the college) means that Laureate will pay for the college's outstanding bond debt through its lease of the land from the city of SF. And, best of all, the city acquires the land and can lease it out (to Laureate and others) to generate revenue. It's a win-win deal for the city.
This said, I also spent many hours with Laureate last week, assuring myself (so I can assure you) that they are committed to the Santa Fe community, connecting the "new" College of Santa Fe with local residents, and providing access to education for local and regional post-secondary students. The college will still be pricey (no more than it was before, about 24K a year), still on par with high-quality liberal arts colleges, but scholarships will be available and Laureate is looking at offering in-state students a special fee for tuition. No, it won't be as inexpensive as our state institutions, but the new CSF will be a premiere, international institution for the arts and won't be like any NM state college/university.
I want Santa Feans to know that I asked Laureate many straightforward and hard questions in order to be assured that it's the right thing for the College of Santa Fe, its students, staff, alumnae, and for the community. I believe it is. Please urge your city councilors to vote FOR this deal.
Monday, June 29, 2009
One More Poem
CLOUDS
How we know them without seeing:
I am looking down, fingers tight at the weed root,
pulling. The sting of the June sun migrates,
shoulder to shoulder and then, as if laying down
their white palms, a chill starts, each bead of sweat
refrigerates, and I tilt nearly to earth. And I dream
of that summer, of blonde best friend Elizabeth
from Massachusetts who stood at the window
of our little Santa Fe rental spouting ohs, crooning
their multitudinous shapes: battleship, behemoth,
woman giving birth, chess pieces marching across
the western sky. Or the shadow that crawls across
the book I read for hours then sleep to, then wake
in fear, knowing a spider is crawling over my hand
but no, just the shadow of a cloud I don’t have to
turn to, relieved. Or I am standing in the kitchen
and evening descends in the middle of the day
like a whale-bird, an unexpected lunar eclipse
till it moves on and the sun cocks its head
toward the world again. And I don’t have to see,
and it is enough to watch them in the mind--fat,
white, mansion-like, cut-out against the wide
New Mexico blue, tumbling over the Sangres
in the summer afternoons, in droves, like they have
for millions of years and will, sometimes with rain,
sometimes swift, sometimes just floating pure
pleasure into the sightless hearts of children.
Valerie Martinez
copyright 2009
How we know them without seeing:
I am looking down, fingers tight at the weed root,
pulling. The sting of the June sun migrates,
shoulder to shoulder and then, as if laying down
their white palms, a chill starts, each bead of sweat
refrigerates, and I tilt nearly to earth. And I dream
of that summer, of blonde best friend Elizabeth
from Massachusetts who stood at the window
of our little Santa Fe rental spouting ohs, crooning
their multitudinous shapes: battleship, behemoth,
woman giving birth, chess pieces marching across
the western sky. Or the shadow that crawls across
the book I read for hours then sleep to, then wake
in fear, knowing a spider is crawling over my hand
but no, just the shadow of a cloud I don’t have to
turn to, relieved. Or I am standing in the kitchen
and evening descends in the middle of the day
like a whale-bird, an unexpected lunar eclipse
till it moves on and the sun cocks its head
toward the world again. And I don’t have to see,
and it is enough to watch them in the mind--fat,
white, mansion-like, cut-out against the wide
New Mexico blue, tumbling over the Sangres
in the summer afternoons, in droves, like they have
for millions of years and will, sometimes with rain,
sometimes swift, sometimes just floating pure
pleasure into the sightless hearts of children.
Valerie Martinez
copyright 2009
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