<div dir="ltr"><div>Has anyone mentioned the latest award (perhaps, but who's counting), our beloved Emeritus Rivera Chair, 2022-2023 UCR Dickson Professor, CA Poet Laureate, US Poet Laureate, from farmworker family poet/musician/performer Juan Felipe Herrera, a 2023 Writers Week author, has been honored with? <br></div><div><a href="https://poetrysociety.org/about/news/2023-frost-medalist"><br></a></div><div><a href="https://poetrysociety.org/about/news/2023-frost-medalist">Frost Medalist, Poetry Society</a></div><div><br></div><div>Offering (belated) congratulations on this sweetest day!<br></div><div><p dir="ltr">The Poetry Society of America is pleased to announce that <strong>Juan Felipe Herrera </strong>is
the 2023 recipient of the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime
achievement in poetry. Named for Robert Frost, and first given in 1930,
the Frost Medal is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in
American poetry and is awarded annually at the discretion of the PSA's
Board of Governors. Previous winners of the award include Wallace
Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne
Rich, John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, N. Scott Momaday, and most recently
Sharon Olds.</p>
<p><strong>The Frost Medal citation from the Poetry Society of America’s Board of Governors reads:</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Juan Felipe Herrera does not write poems so much as inhabit
them. “Poetry is where I live,” he writes, and he lives with a
remarkable vibrancy, generosity, and compassion. His poems move as he
moves—through nature, through working-class communities of color,
through political protests—though it would be more accurate to say he
moves <em>with</em> them, for while Herrera is a keen observer he is
never just looking on. His poems are acts of solidarity, a kind of
extended family gathering, especially for Latinx, Indigenous, and other
communities of color. “With the poem, I can design a little corner for
my families that have passed to live on, and for those brutalized by
society to continue and be honored—to generate kindness.” Drawing on
disparate sources, from European Modernism to Mesoamerican traditions to
popular culture, Herrera creates a poetic voice that is both deeply
embedded and wholly original. “Poetry,” he writes, “has gills and
spears, spells and corn offerings, saxophones, tambourines and dinner
tables—the sky liquid of a Jimi Hendrix guitar.” The Poetry Society of
America is delighted and proud to award the Frost Medal, our highest
honor, to Juan Felipe Herrera, a poet of enormous heart and infinite
invention.</p>
<hr class="gmail-small-tan-hr"><p>Son of farmworkers, <strong>Juan Felipe Herrera </strong>lives
in Fresno with his wife, poet Margarita Robles. During the last fifty
years, he has dedicated his life to poetry, community, art, and
teaching. Herrera’s many collections of poetry include <em>Every Day We Get More Illegal</em>; <em>Notes on the Assemblage</em>; <em>Senegal Taxi</em>; <em>Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems</em>, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and <em>187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007</em>. He is also the author of <em>Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse</em>, which received the Americas Award. His books of prose for children include<em> SkateFate;</em> <em>Calling The Doves</em>, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; <em>Upside Down Boy</em>, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City; and <em>Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box</em>. His various awards include the National Book Critics Circle Award, NEA Poetry Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowship, <em>LA Times</em>
Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award, Latino Hall of Fame Award,
Pushcart Prize, UCR/LARB Lifetime Achievement Award, Fred Cody Lifetime
Achievement Award, UCLA Chancellor’s Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Lifetime
Achievement Poetry Prize. In 2015, Herrera was appointed the 21st United
States Poet Laureate, the first Mexican American to hold the position.<br><br>A selection of Juan Felipe Herrera’s books can be purchased through the <a href="https://bookshop.org/lists/2023-frost-medalist-juan-felipe-herrera">Poetry Society of America’s store on Bookshop</a>, an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Allison Adelle Hedge Coke</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>2022-2023 Mellon Dean’s Professor</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Center for Ideas & Society</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Distinguished Professor</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Creative Writing, School of Medicine,</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>& the proposed Dept. of Society, Environment, & Health Equity (SEHE) <br></i></font></div><div><a href="https://ideasandsociety.ucr.edu/fellowships/" target="_blank"><font face="georgia, serif"><i>2022-2023 Mellon Dean's Professor</i></font></a></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i><a href="https://ideasandsociety.ucr.edu/fellowships/" target="_blank">Center for Ideas and Society</a><br></i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i></i></font></div><span><div><table style="width:100%;border-radius:10px;background-color:rgb(247,247,252)"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" style="padding-left:16px;vertical-align:top;padding-top:18px"><br></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Weird Times, Be Kind</i></font></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:garamond,serif"><a href="https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/allisonh" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Allison Adelle Hedge Coke</a></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:garamond,serif">Director, <a href="http://writersweek.ucr.edu" target="_blank">Writers Week 2021, 2022</a>, Co-Director in 2023<br></div></span><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:garamond,serif">Along the Chaparral, Sandhill Crane Fest</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:garamond,serif">author/editor of 18 books<br></div><span><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:garamond,serif">Most recent release, National Book Award Finalist, </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:garamond,serif"> </span><i><a href="https://coffeehousepress.org/collections/shop/products/look-at-this-blue" style="font-family:garamond,serif;color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Look at This Blue </a></i></div><div><br></div></span><div><font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">She/her</font></div><div><font face="garamond, times new roman, serif">Surname is Hedge Coke, no hyphen</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>