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Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Something About-Javier Zamora

I'm not a poetry nerd. I want to be. Poetry distills emotion and feelings into words that give meaning to experiences. This is how I felt when I first read the poems of Javier Zamora.
On A Dirt Road Outside Oaxaca, spotlighted in The New Republic, tells of the time of waiting as you prepare to run over the border. A lizard licks horchata off of a boy's hand, vans are packed with people and time ticks by. An experience I have never had, that Javier shares in a way I can recognize.

The voice Javier uses is very much his own. Part resistor, citizenship seeker, proud Salvadoran and eyes wide open contributor to the immigrant experience in the US. The New York Times featured his poem Citizenship in a piece titled Poems: A Resistance Primer.

His experiential, autobiographical poems and voice are a part of the anthology Misrepresented People-Poetic Responses to Trump's America. The responses the writers shared must be heard.

Several years ago he attended the Napa Valley Writer's Conference where the seeds of his poetry were first worked out. "The workshop Zamora joined that year with Brenda Hillman was his first ever; in 2011, he returned to Napa to work with Major Jackson. Poems he first wrote at the conference appear in Unaccompanied,"

This April 20-22, 2018, in historic Round Top, Texas, Javier will be a speaker at the Poetry At Round Top festival.  I urge you to seek him out and listen.

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador and migrated to this country at the age of nine. He is the winner of numerous awards and fellowships; his first poetry collection, Unaccompanied, was published in September by Copper Canyon Press.

We talked about his experiences, his grandmother's cooking, Hawaiian restaurants and karaoke love in “Poetry and Pupusas”, Episode 19 of Something About Food?.

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