Tomas Rivera @ UCR: October 2009

A new school year means a whole new slate of events! This year, the Tomas Rivera Endowment and The Department of Creative Writing, along with the Inlandia Institute, Chicano Student Programs, and CHASS F1RST present THE SEARCHERS Poetry Reading Series.

Confused about "the searchers?" If you are, don't fret. It refers to an epic poem that Tomas Rivera wrote, dealing with the many meanings of searching, like searching for home, for work, for a purpose, for a life better than the one migrant workers had.

For our first inaugural speaker, we have RENATO ROSALDO.

Here's a little info on Renato Rosaldo:

An internationally known cultural anthropologist, Renato Rosaldo started writing poetry in English and Spanish while recovering from a stroke in 1996. His first book of poetry, Prayer to Spider Woman/Rezo a la mujer araña received an American Book Award (2004). Individual poems have won the El Bandar poetry contest (2000) and the Many Mountains Moving poetry contest (2005). Currently a Professor of Anthropology at New York University and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences Emeritus at Stanford University, and also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He will be at the University of California, Riverside on the following dates:

WEDNESDAY -October 28, 2009 POETRY READING

Time and Place -12:00 PM –1:30 pm @ CHASS INTS 1111

THURSDAY -October 29, 2009 “HOW POETRY CHOSE ME”

Time and place -12:00 Pm –2:00 PM @ CHASS INTS 1109

We'll be hosting many speakers in the following months, so make sure to stay tuned to this blog for the latest updates.

One of the things I love about working in the creative writing department, as an administrative assistant, is the amount of creative control I have. For instance, I'm lucky enough to do this blog for Professor Juan Felipe Herrera. This thing is pretty much a hands-off thing - I write pretty much anything related to work the way I want to do it, with very little interference (other than the occasional tweak here and there, such as remembering to credit pictures to photographers).

One unfortunate thing about this is the fact that I was not officially employed during the summer (and it got really scary with all the school budget cuts), so there is a huge gap of time between this update and the last. I should probably finish off talking about the last event that we had in the Spring, which was the movie showing and reception. Pictures are below!