Herrera said his nomadic childhood, moving from crop to crop in California's San Joaquin Valley, has a big influence on his poetry.
This Sunday in Farmington, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival will feature Latino poetry and music, including a performance by U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.
Herrera was born in 1948, the son of Mexican migrant farm workers. Speaking on NPR's Morning Edition, Herrera said his nomadic childhood, moving from crop to crop in California's San Joaquin Valley, has a big influence on his poetry.
"Those landscapes, you know those are some deep landscapes of mountains, and grape fields and barns and tractors; families gathering at night to have little celebrations, aquamarine lakes," said Herrera. "So, see all of that is like living in literature every day."
After graduating from UCLA and Stamford, Herrera became involved in the Chicano movement, and his early writing was influenced by the beat poetry of 1960's San Francisco. Herrera is a performance artist and activist, and often writes about social issues. He says inspiration for his poetry happens suddenly, usually with a word or phrase:
"Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase," Herrera said. "It's that velvet lightning bolt, and I have to run for a table, run after something, get a twig to scratch the lines down with. Then it's just one set of brushstrokes, and the poem comes alive."
Herrera is the author of thirty books, including collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children.
In 2015 Juan Felipe Herrera became the first ever Latino Poet Laureate of the United States. He performs this Sunday at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington.
