Tchao 2021!

I’ve been trying to write an end of year letter.  

It’s the professional thing to do. 

I write the letter.  

(I erase the letter.) 

I write it.  

(I erase it.) 

Just keep it simple.  

The truth is, the last two years feel velcro-ed together. My dad hated it when I began sentences with “the truth is…”  

He’d shake his head. “Why do you say 'the truth is?' Does that mean that when you don’t say ‘the truth is’ you’re lying?” 

Of course not.  

I admire truth telling. So, tell the damn truth.  

Early on in the pandemic, one of my mentor’s said, “If anyone says ‘they know,’ they’re lying.” 

And this from someone I trust implicitly. The question for me became who do I want to not know with?

2020 and 2021 feel velcro-ed together. In order to write an end of year letter, I have to tear them apart. Rrrrrrrrrrrrip! Alright. 2020 in my left hand. 2021 in my right. Let’s see. 

I ask a friend, "Are you going to write an end of year letter? She’s a phenomenal woman who runs her own business.

“I would have to feel better to do that,” she says.  

Right.  

“I am going to take a shower. Showers feel good.”  

Maybe I could write a "what happened" and "what didn’t happen" end of year 2021 letter. 

The truth is — amazingly— I do have plenty to write about in an end of year letter to 2021. Mostly, I want to thank everyone who was kind and patient with me. Thank everyone who gave me a chance, included me in their dreams, played along, made me laugh, showed patience. Thanks also to everyone who thanked me for the things I may have done that helped them. Big thanks to everyone who cared, communicated, and stayed connected with me during an outlandish time.  

“Life” is still in play, and that’s good.

Writing From 2021 That’s Coming in 2022 

• My next poetry collection, Catastrophic Molting, will be published by FlowerSong Press in 2022. Yay!

• Our new digital humanities community book Et Al.: New Voices in Arts Management will be published by the University of Iowa’s Publishing Without Walls imprint. I co-edited the collection with Dr. Genevieve Kaplan and it includes the work of numerous wonderful people.

• I co-wrote an essay with with the freshly minted Dr. Patricia Gonzalez called “Good Trouble Makers” that will be in a special edition on the national impact of Freedom Schools.  

• My poem “random experiments in bioluminescence” will be in the anthology of non-conformism edited by Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare and Rapti Siriwardane. Rebel Women Words, Ways & Wonders will be published by DIO Press. (Reva and Itzel also have their work in it too!)  

Writing & Teaching in 2021 

• January 2021 was the federal transition of power in the U.S., and the fascists were letting loose on the capitol. Romeo Guzman’s Boom California published two poems I wrote in reposnse to the insurrection: “white supremacy’s identity crisis as a slow-motion-crash” and “shades of white.”  

• A mourning poem I wrote called “the future of music” came out in the winter edition of Prairie Schooner edited by Kwame Graves and Mahtem Shiferraw. Order a print copy here. 

• Since everyone was e-communicating, my relationships with writers thousands of miles away grew. Gloria Carrera, Teio Xaggat and I wrote and translated poems between English, Spanish, Mazateco, and Chinanteco. Delia Xochitl Chavez and Cynthia Martinez Benavidez hosted a plurilingual poetry reading for Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco (UAM) that created space for us to read and listen. In truth, this experience opened doors inside my imagination and made me immensely happy. You can listen here: "Plurilingual Dialogue on Poetry: Translation and Time,” UAM Xochimilco with Teio Xagaat and Gloria Carrera. 

• The LA Public Library (LAPL) now carries my poemary Even the Milky Way is Undocumented.  You can also listen to it find it on LAPL’s Hoopla audiobooks.

• While public reading shut down, the small press that published Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press) encouraged its authors to host digital readings. Gayle Brandeis hosted me at the SMOL Faire.

• I served as Consulting Producer for a KCET special episode on Arts Education. One of my tasks was to co-curate and co-interview amazing people like Betty Avila, Hector Tobar, Alison de la Cruz, Amir Whitaker, Tyrone Howard, Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, and Faith Childs Davis. By April 2021, the documentarians —Angela Boisvert, Jac Reyno, Amanda Pinedo and Juan Devis—were able to complete the film despite many COVID 19 obstacles, and it debuted with readings by Get Lit. Watch the KCET Arts Education episode.

• Amir “Dr. Knucklehead” Whitaker and I wrote essays that accompanied the episode. In mine, I walk readers through the schools that we’d selected for the documentary that were unable to be filmed due to the pandemic. You can read it here: “A Look at Arts Education for he Next Generation of Culture Makers.”

• New Verse News published my poem “Stop a War” in response to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. We must find ways to end the occupation.

• In May, I performed poetry with Las Colibri presented by Metro Arts with the Autry Museum. Watch the show here.

• During the summer, I co-taught with the mensch Dr. Eddie Partida who directs the Teacher Education Program at CGU. We supported 40 critical social justice educators who wrote ethnographies about their first year teaching during the pandemic. This was an act of love, pure and simple. I honor each of their lives, stories, and dedication to our children and youth.  

• A friend recommended I keep a video journal, and I started making choreopoems. I am grateful to the wonderful Tanya White, Director of the Santa Monica Repertory Theater, who invited me to present my feminist quantum physics choreopoem in their “A Woman’s Place” event.  

• I got a week off with my kids! We drove up the coast, saw sea elephants resting in catastrophic molting, and visited Asimolar and California’s public parks.

• Denise Dickens, a public art curator in the the Town of Cary, North Carolina was inspired by my poem “And Still, We Are Trying — to Dream” published by Art Place America. As her community  prepared to reopen museums and public art programs, she presented an exhibition titled “We Must Look and Reflect to Make Change Happen”that featured the poem, designs and provocations by Reva and Itzel of Honey and Smoke, and new artworks by teenagers responding to the poem’s content.  

• The amazing writer Mamle Wolo and novelist/physicist Martin Egblewogbe invited me to read with poet Nana Assase for the Writer’s Project Ghana (WPG). I served on the WPG coaching team for their summer Mo Issa Writing workshops, and co-facilitated panels on poetry & mother tongue, and reimagining spaces for writers with Sabata Mokae, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Ana Rita Santiago, Michaela Shirley, Gloria Carrera, Margarita Leon, and Nana Assase at the WPG Pa Gya! Literary Festival. WPG works miracles.  

• I accepted the generous invitation of ceramist Ife Williams who directs the Hambidge Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We threw pots, write poems, and hiked in the forest with her dog Bullet. Some of the poems will appear in a manuscript that will be published in 2023, but I can’t share the details about that quite yet.  When I returned to LA, ShoutOut posted an interview.

• My essay “How to Become Erasure Proof” was published in Geo Humanities. The essay features leaders from Self Help Graphics, Kaos Network, and Visual Communications including: Betty Avila, Ben Caldwell, Francis Cullado, Jilly Canizares, Alma Catalan, Alexa Kim, Miranda Ynez with documentary support by Avila and Reva Santo. The article centers BIPOC community arts spaces as sites for community cherishing that cultivate ecologies of culture and place.  

• Storm Ascher of Superposition Gallery commissioned a poem for a multimedia publication she curated about art and labor. Listen to my polylingual poem in Tilt West’s Art + Labor edition.

• A poem called “bounty” that I wrote about the day after my father’s death was published in the Community of Writers book Written Here and There.  

• I launched a new course in Cultural Studies called Transnational Participatory Research. Big thanks to Eve Oishi for the opportunity, and to Darrell Moore for his collegiality co-facilitating our Praxis of Truth gathering. Students summarized their projects on this Scalar page.

• An essay I co-wrote with Xela Batchelder (Waynesburg University); Thomas Karr, MFA (Wayne State University); Brett Ashley Crawford (Carnegie Mellon University); and Brenda Lee Johnston, MAM (Butler University) about  “Using Podcasts to Enhance Student Learning” came out in ENCATC

• Artist Miyo Gandara-Stevens curated an exhibition for Self Help Graphics & Art called Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos. Her vision was to pair 9 visual artists with 9 performative artists and I got to make sound art! The exhibition is now archived on Google Arts & Culture.