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.

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

Ekphrasis on Fresh: a Poet Laureate Workshop Series

2018 McAllen Poet Laureate Workshop Series Presents:

EKPHRASIS on FRESH 

Walk through entire gallery and take in the Tortilla Goddess and blazing FRESH colors of Gabriel Treviños art. Let the art inspire you and make the artwork come to life through writing.

All participants will be entered into a raffle for an original art piece by the artist Gabriel Treviño after the workshop. A priceless gift.

Date: Saturday, May 19, 2018
Time: 9:30-11:30am We will begin promptly
Where: Platform 204 Art Gallery & Studios, 119 W. Van Buren, Harlingen,TX
Workshop Cost: $20.00 
Supplies: Included
Contact: Edward Vidaurre, 956.739.2206 (text) or vidaurre.poet@gmail.com

Edward Vidaurre is the author of Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Books), Insomnia (El Zarape Press), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press), and I Took My Barrio on a Road Trip (Slough Press). His work appears in Bordersenses, RiverSedge, Brooklyn & Boyle, La Bloga, Voices de la Luna, and Poets Responding to SB1070, among many other venues. He is the founder of Pasta, Poetry, and Vino and the 2018 City of McAllen Poet Laureate.

"Fresh"

ARTIST STATEMENT

As an artist I am still searching for the words that define my art, I am in no rush, I am enjoying the journey. I think in time, as I continue to produce work, certain ideas become ever changing and redefined, as new or to a more clear meaning. As a painter, if you look at the work I have been producing you can see influences inspired many things and ideas including: life, death, nature, people, and my upbringing growing up living on the border in a strong bi-cultural surrounding.

In order to keep things fresh I push for a playful creative process in a sort of spontaneous approach. There is no certain style or color pallet that I like to follow it is mostly experimental, as I also like to experiment in painting on non-traditional surfaces. As I move forward as an artist I feel it's ok to play and experiment in order to find new directions and continue to learn.

"The skateboarding culture has always been an influence in my art. For me both have always come hand in hand, I think at the same time i got into skateboarding , I started doodling and sketching and were talking about 25 years ago if not longer. I think this show "Fresh" takes me back to that moment where artistic ideas first started flowing and that expressive nature in me took over. "

-Gabriel Treviño