Countdown to Writers Showcase poet, Martín Espada reading and workshop! (both events are online)
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Joshua Concha
Poet Laureate
2022-2024 Taos Poet Laureate
Joshua Concha is an Indigenous multi-media artist and writer who has been a tribal resident of the Taos Pueblo for twenty-five years. Concha has worked in a wide range of media (including film and digital storytelling, music, stone, and metal sculpture, silversmithing, and watercolor). His poem, “Rust” was chosen by the previous Poet Laureate, Catherine Strisik, as one of the fifteen poems installed in outdoor venues in Taos. His poems were also selected for “Poetry in Public Places” (2018 & 2019) and have been published in The Notebook: A Progressive Journal About Women and Girls with Rural and Small Town Roots and 200 New Mexico Poems: Celebrating the Centennial and Beyond. His 2022-23 Poet Laureate project is tentatively titled “Taos Poetry in Motion”: a film project, with 9-12 poets reading their work accompanied by visual images.
Miguel Santistevan
Poet Laureate
Beginning 1/1/24 through 12/31/25
Miguel Santistevan has a Bachelors of Science in biology from the University of New Mexico and a Masters of Science in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. His research interests are food systems of the upper Rio Grande and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Santistevan is certified in permaculture and xeriscape design and has directed youth in agriculture programs. He has dozens of publications in local papers like Green Fire Times and has delivered professional presentations to meetings of the Bioneers, the Green Festival, and the International Ethno-Biology Congress. He produced a public radio program called "Que vivan las acequias!" with the NM Acequia Association and KCEI-FM Radio, Taos County. He is a parciante and has served both as a mayordomo and president. Santistevan is a teacher, storyteller, musician and an amazing poet. For the 2024-25 theme of "Poetry with Youth," he will use his position as a guest lecturer in the public schools and other venues to recruit young people to submit poetry, artwork, and photographs for a project called "Home: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly." This project will result in a DIY publication of a zine that will be something that can be shared in print or digitally. When the zine is completed, there will be a reception with reading and projection of the featured poems, art, and photos of the young people who are willing to perform their pieces.
Martín Espada
Writers Showcase
A reading on 4/12/24 at 5:30pm and a workshop “The Craft of Poetry” on 4/13/24 from 9-noon. Both events are virtual. Zoom credentials will be shared upon registration.
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His new book of poems from Norton is called Floaters, winner of the 2021 National Book Award. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006) and Alabanza (2003). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump(2019). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona, and reissued by Northwestern. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Taos Writer’s Conference Keynote Speaker & Instructor
Upcoming Events
Open Tues-Sat 12pm-4pm 575.758.0081 108 Civic Plaza Drive
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 3225, Taos, NM 87571
THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS
SOMOS programs are made possible in part by these organizations: New Mexico Arts, a Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts • Taos Community Foundation • The McCune Foundation • The National Endowment For The Arts • The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation • Taos County Lodgers Tax • TaosNetLLC for high speed internet service • LANL (Los Alamos National Labs) • New Mexico Humanities Council • Nusenda Foundation • Witter Bynner Foundation • Amazon Literary Partnership • Literary Emergency Fund