CMR: How is the rhythm of the desert different than living in a big city? The quality of light? In what ways has living in different parts of the country and world influenced your writing and activism?
Ana Castillo:
Wow, best question.
A live virtual reading from MY BOOK OF THE DEAD poems this Thursday! This coming Saturday a free jumpstart writing prompt virtual workshop.
Continue readingWriting prompts:
Even if you respond to these questions in your head or, perhaps, go to your journal, it’s important to consciously reflect so as to move forward:
Continue readingWe are not the women who’ll be hailed by White institutions for our poems. We are among the mothers whose hearts, laid heavy with history and tradition left to dark skinned women for 500 years did our best.
Continue readingContact signed for the poetry collection MY BOOK OF THE DEAD: Poems (2012-2020). Cloth edition will be released in Fall, 2021. It will include a few of my line drawings. During the last years, line drawings were in a way, my version of ‘knitting,’ to maintain calmness. My first creative impulse was drawing, so, please don’t take me literally when I compare it to ‘knitting.’ It’s very exciting and no humblebrag here when I also…
Continue readingI share here a poem written for the ceremony welcoming an African-American woman president at my B.A. alma-mater, NEIU, Chicago, 2018. It was also published in Fifth Wednesday Journal. These Times In these times, you and I share, amidst the air you and I breathe, inspiration we take from day to day thriving, opposition we meet, the sacred conch shell calls us, drums beat, prayers sent up, aromatic smoke…
Continue readingLA Tolteca 2.0. #2 July 24, 2020 …
Continue readingTwo Men and Me I left Bukowski again, went back to Bolaño, both men bad to their women. Me, like the rest, couldn’t get enough. Both smoked and drank themselves to death. They liked it rough, said that was how they got their best writing done. One winter we all ended up in hell, ran into each other at a café. [REVISION: bar, public bath…FILL IN THE BLANK.] Chuck wanted to fuck. Roberto punched him…
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