Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Edward Vidaurre: About Me

Go to this link to read an interview I had with the great Rosebud Ben-Oni of Kenyon Review

VERVE {IN} VERSE: IN CONVERSATION WITH EDWARD VIDAURRE

Go this link to check out my Author page on Amazon.com

Books By Edward Vidaurre

Writer's of the Rio Grande for poems

Writer's of the Rio Grande

My Facebook page

My FaceBook Page

My TWITTER page

McAllen Poet Laureate Twitter

Interview on La Bloga

Interview on La Bloga

Valley Morning Star: Slice of Life

Newspaper The Valley Morning Star

Listen to me on Soundcloud

SOUNDCLOUD

STOP THE WALL: RALLY TO SAVE SANTA ANA NWR - Poet Edward Vidaurre


STOP THE WALL: RALLY TO SAVE SANTA ANA NWR - Poet Edward Vidaurre

With Called To Rise Youth Author

Mission Freshman's Poem Selected for Anthology

2018 Poet's Corner BISD

2018 Poet's Corner

DEAD END FOLLIES BOOK REVIEW

DEAN END FOLLIES

Trevor Boffone, Ph.D.

Artist Profile





















Saturday, June 23, 2018

Ramona and rumi: Love in the Time of Oligarchy: & unedited Necessary Poems


Edward Vidaurre has done it again! This chap-book collection cuts with the erotic edge of night, and explores inspirations that range from lipstick smears to screaming guitars. Edward is a true "peoples' poet" and remains a central figure in the Indie Lit scene he has helped nurture for years, along the banks of the Rio Grande River in deep South Texas. This chap book turns mostly inward...introducing readers to his love, his passion, his lust, his muses and inspirations. This is a poetic masterpiece that we can all relate to, with an honesty we can all aspire to bring into our own lives and loves.


Prologue

Ramona came to rumi, bare naked
Green in spirit and inexperienced
With knees folded inward
Wearing autumn leaves to cover her virginity,
Wearing the skin of her ancestors,
In her lungs: a yell of resistance

rumi was on his second hat, tilted
A jazz aficionado, blowing
smoke across the night sky
Wailing unstressed syllables in the dark
A master with words,
blood type: ink

Both
running scared
crashing into each other

A clash of short poems
Emerge

Early Morning

rumi wakes to the scent of gunpowder

Ramona wakes and lights a candle for her tongue
it’s early enough to lay dead on a hyphen
a litter of cats die eight deaths

They welcome the fog, slow moving
feeling love for one another
she, his notorious kisses & poetry
he, her love for rolling around in fire

Without blinking, Ramona listens to his words
& how his moustache dances between syllables
rumi in awe, watches her stretch her stare from fall to winter

Both drink in the gossiping mist

He plants squash for his foes
she picks up a rock to stare at her reflection

rumi raises owls, feeds them plantains
they bring him cantos in exchange

Ramona, plants the songs next to a rosemary garden
in a month, teething children will sing the harvest

She chants for rain to go away
by stomping on the earth

He bottles up petrichor
so she won’t forget

Ramona,
porcelain doll with broken fingertips.
rumi, the gluemaster.

They look up at the stars.
Ramona says she sees a shooting opportunity
rumi stares into her eyes and points at stars.

Music plays on the turntable
rumi hums the tune of grackles and a speeding car.

In Search For The Saddest Song

rumi leaves early in the morning
Searching for the saddest song
He walks over to the river
He hears birds sing
Perched above
A tree

A tree
Sad, looming
He hears birds sing
He walks over to the river
Searching for the saddest song
Rumi returns late in the afternoon

Ramona puts out her hand for rumi
To hand over the melancholic lyric
He brought it from the river
Where birds sing, sadly
The saddest song
A long cry

A long cry
The saddest song
Sad songs the birds sang
From over by the rio grande river
A lyric so sad and melancholic both cried
Ramona and rumi cried into each other hands

Ramona and rumi cried along the river of El Rio Grande
After listening to the saddest song the birds sang
Perched above, sad on the anacua tree
Then they slowly came to a hush
The saddest song
A body

A body
A song on replay
Slowly rising from the waters
A small child, a belt, no shoes, one sock
All the birds flee, carrying with them the saddest song

Ramona’s instructions on how to handle the death of a pet chicken

On how to handle the death of a pet chicken:

get down to her level, look into her eyes,
promise her she won't be eaten, tell her she's
the prettiest chicken that ever lived,
read a poem about clouds to her,
code-switch when praying at her feet,
show her where her altar will be when she passes,
bring the other pets in the family to show respect,
promise you won’t eat eggs for nine days as a novena,
kiss her beak, and wait.

Ramona sings her a lullaby,
rumi at a distance, shovel in hand,
prays to the earth for permission to dig.



Saturday, June 9, 2018

Free Workshop Fail! Turns into a blessing in disguise

So, I was really pumped up about Saturday mornings workshop, "Catching Quetzalcoatl: Overcoming Writer's Block" a FREE workshop as part of the Poet Laureate series. I got home from work at 3:45AM and set my alarm for 8AM. I woke up, read a little out in my backyard while Lorca and Winston (Schnauzer and Terrier mutt mix respectively) did their business on the nopales and pile of crab grass i'm yet to pick up. Anyways, I showered and put on my new t-shirt (see photo). Drove to Starbucks to get a box coffee for the workshop, they give you cups and sugar and the fixings. Then I headed to De Alba bakery for a delicious mix of pan dulce. Then got to the McAllen Creative Incubator, went up to the classroom and set up. Waited, Waited, here comes Anaia Irish with her cool white framed glasses and sat down to chat with me. 











Workshop was from 10am to 12:30pm, we had coffee and chatted til 12:30pm. 

Thank you Anaia for lifting my spirits today. We talked about life, spirituality, poetry, photography, and then we headed out to Harlingen where she has an exhibit up at Platform 204 called: Soror Dolorosa: Our Sister of Sorrows 
(a few pics only, go out and see this wonderful exhibit)







Then we headed out to have lunch at Rio Grande Grill, where Danyul Wright hooked it up with the Brisket, Anaia got her cajeta fix, Tam visited from San Anto, and Cayetano played the harmonica like a beast.







If you enjoyed this post, please like and share with friends. I will be doing artist interviews, book reviews, prompt posts, and more. 

Look for my new book coming later this month from Hercules Press.

Oh yeah! Here's the Shirt!


Thursday, May 24, 2018

Catching Quetzalcoatl: Overcoming Writer's Block: a Poet Laureate Workshop Series

Catching Quetzalcoatl: Overcoming Writer's Block
a Poet Laureate Workshop Series
by Edward Vidaurre the 2018 City of McAllen Poet Laureate


Why Quetzalcoatl? The Aztec god of wind and wisdom supports learning, priestly study, writing, and books. His form and imagery embody what it is to be a poet, from his feathers to his wind breastplate.

Using his image and story as a focus, we will show examples of how to turn anything that grabs your attention into an opportunity to write! 

This workshop will be generative. You’ll walk out of here with several drafts of poems that you can then refine.




Info:

What: Catching Quetzalcoatl: Overcoming Writer's Block (a Poet Laureate Workshop Series)
Who: Edward Vidaurre, City of McAllen Poet Laureate 2018
When: Saturday, June 9, 2018 10am to 12:30pm
Where: McAllen, TX TBD
Cost: $20.00


One workshopista will take home David Bowles' new collection:
Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico Lindo


The stories in Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky trace the history of the world from its beginnings in the dreams of the dual god, Ometeotl, to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and the fall of the great city Tenochtitlan. In the course of that history we learn about the Creator Twins―Feathered Serpent and Dark Heart of Sky―and how they built the world on a leviathan's back; of the shape-shifting nahualli; and the aluxes, elfish beings known to help out the occasional wanderer. And finally, we read Aztec tales about the arrival of the blonde strangers from across the sea, the strangers who seek to upend the rule of Motecuhzoma and destroy the very stories we are reading.
David Bowles stitches together the fragmented mythology of pre-Colombian Mexico into an exciting, unified narrative in the tradition of William Buck's Ramayana, Robert Fagles's Iliad, and Neil Gaiman's Norse Myths. Readers of Norse and Greek mythologies will delight in this rich retelling of stories less explored.


Monday, May 14, 2018

Meet The Author and Book Release CenzontleMockingbird

The public is invited to meet the author of Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Songs of Empowerment, by 
Author Daniel García Ordaz, on Saturday, May 19 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Dustin Michael Sekula Memorial Library (1906 S Closner Blvd,) in Edinburg . This event will serve as the official book release by publisher FlowerSong Books

The event will include a reading by the author as well as book sales, book signing, and Q&A. Books are available on Amazon.com or at any retailer.





More about the book:

A code-switching collection of diverse poetic forms, styles, and personas celebrating the dynamics of the human voice & spirit. Daniel García Ordaz, the Poet Mariachi, the author of You Know What I'm Sayin'?, encourages readers to perform the text aloud, such as his adaptation of Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet." A polyglottic exhibition of empowerment through performance. Influenced by and dedicated to the memories of Maya Angelou and Gloria E. Anzaldúa.

Find more about the author at https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-García-Ordaz/e/B00JGE4PMK.

Look what other authors have to say about Cenzontle/Mockingbird:

Daniel Garcia Ordaz's collection is a multitude of gritos, a pyre of songs, a melody that raps around your bones, covering you in blessings. The work in these pages is not for silent reverence, no, no. Garcia Ordaz spits fire out in the open and as you watch him paint the skies with words and song, you are snapping your fingers, catching all the embers as they settle in your heart. To read Cenzontle/ Mockingbird: Songs of Empowerment is to celebrate all that makes up a bilingual voice laced up in lusciously lyrical truth. --Lupe Mendez, Author of Why I am Like Tequila

Daniel García Ordaz's collection feels like walking into a circle of old friends. His book is a delightful trilingual party where the chained words carry a young, straight up rhymed beat with twisted double-entendre words. Saxopholaying the music in a fresh, raw manner, allowing the mischievous metaphor to emerge like vegetables picked by his young hands in "La Labor: Migrantes del Valle" -- "in a clumsy squatted waltz in the fog through endless rows of green and dirt and sun." His verses are deeply rooted in the unapologetic Tejano way of life where los vatos locos, los rucos fufurufus, y las jainas tiran chancla all at the same time. He creates a world where Romeo and Juliet become more human. --Raúl Sánchez, author of All Our Brown-Skinned Angels

The poems in Cenzontle/Mockingbird sing with wordplay, rhythm, and honesty. Daniel García Ordaz writes edgy, fun, and moving poems that explore the contradictions of life in the borderlands and beyond. Tackling the tough issues such as racial discrimination, poverty, and gender inequality with sharp wit, endearing humor, and grace, these poems ring with empowerment for all. García Ordaz is a vital voice in contemporary poetry at once delightful and always resounding with truth. --Katie Hoerth, Editor, Lamar University Literary Press

Where To Catch Me In This Pandemic

  TLA Latino Caucus Presents: Velada Poética Virtual: Latinx Voices to Know Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, TLA’s Latino Caucus Round T...