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THE 5TH ANNUAL TRINIDAD SANCHEZ
MEMORIAL POETRY FESTIVAL
at the
MATRIX THEATRE COMPANY
2730 Bagley, Detroit
Wednesday, April 27, 2010 - 7pm
* * *
shepherds, kings, you and I
to carry on the traditions
of being wordsmiths
brother/sisters
of our word
celebrating the Word
with our poems
with our lives
from “Many Years Ago”
by Trinidad Sánchez, Jr.
(A Christmas poem)
Sponsors - Matrix Theatre Company
CLAVE
Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies,
Wayne State University
EL CENTRAL Hispanic News
Afterglow at Mexicantown Fiesta Center
4114 W. Vernor – Detroit
313.941.0400 * 313.598.0275
Music by Aaron Barndollar, Gerald Butler, Mariana and Nino Chávez, Bandolero Durán, José Riojas & Ozzie Rivera - with Marty Quiroz (in spirit) on the guido.
Greg Brown “March!” “Check, Please!"
Bio: Greg Brown is a multidimensional visual artist. He was a passing star in outer space when someone told him they needed a new baby down an earth, and he volunteered. Poetry saved his life and gave him another voice when a thousand pictures could not replace a single word.
Gerald Butler “A Change Gon' Come” (song)
Bio: Peer Specialist/Advocate and Founder/Director of CHARGE, the Center of Healing Arts, Recovery, Growth, & Empowerment. CHARGE utilizes the healing powers of the arts and a recovery-centered environment to help people recovering from substance abuse and/or mental illness.
Mariana and Nino Chávez "You Are" "Caught Up"
Bio: Mariana & Nino Chávez are a Mexican American talented brother and sister team that have several original musical compositions. Mariana is in her first year of college and Nino is a junior in high school. They both have performed since the age of 12 at weddings, cafes, churches, quinceañeras, camps, malls, the RCA Power Play Music Festival and fairs. Their abilities and diverse talents have granted them the opportunity to perform with mariachis, school bands, contemporary bands and choirs. Nino competed and won the "2010 Best Guitarist" of the Monroe Fair in his age Category. Mariana has sung the national anthem and also has auditioned for The Voice. You may catch a glimpse of their original compositions on You Tube under "Mariana and Nino Chavez.”
Regina Chávez y Sánchez
Poems from Trino to Me: "My Chicana in Aztlan" "Love Deep Inside" "How Will I Say.."
“ from Me to Trino: "ADM: Aye Dios Mio!" "Bigoton"
Bio: Born & raised in Denver during the early years of the Chicano Movement. Attended the Poor People's Campaign March on Washington D.C. in 1967. Parents, Santiago & Myrna Chavez were some of the original founders of the Crusade for Justice. I was born Chicana, I didn't become one! A poet and writer, first published†at 16 in The Anthology of Mexican American Literature, "El Quetzal Emplumece", published by the Mexican American Cultural Center, San Antonio, TX., 1976, which is where I met & fell in love with Trino. Published in numerous Chicano/Latino publications. Currently working on†the biographies of my father, mother, grandmother & husband, of course. I currently live in Denver caring for my mother in hospice at home and raising my granddaughter, Anissa.
José Colon "For the Love of Poetry" "Untitled"
Bio: José Colon, a young writer who loves exploring poetry as much as possible. Inspiration has no limits as he writes the day away only to share what he has written with the world. His only goal is to make those writers who had high expectations for the generations to come proud.
Mark Crowley ”Three Limericks for Trino” "La Leche Limerick" (Anon.) “Free the Limerick!!” (Daniel J. Crowley)
Bio: Mark Crowley is a native Yooper of Finnish, Irish and French descent, who somehow ended up speaking and settling in Southwest Detroit. He has taught Spanish, special education and science for the past 30 years, mostly in the Detroit Public Schools. He came to know Trino in the early 80s, when Trino lived with fellow Jesuits in a house that used to be on 20th Street less than a block from this theatre. It was there that Mark learned to heat a tortilla directly on top of a gas burner without using a comal.
José Cuello, Program Facilitator “A Poem for Marty”
Bio: José believes in the unity of the human race. Our first identity is human. Everything after that we should celebrate as creative diversity.
Marie Cuello "Untitled Poem"
Bio: ...& I keep going & going & going….
El Bandolero (Ismael) Durán Galfano “5 almas violentadas” (“Freedom to the Cuban 5”)
“Frutos de Justicia” and/or “Corazon Espinado”
Bio: Latin American singer and songwriter from Chile. "An open window from and to Latin American Music" Bandolero Durán galopa con la fuerza del indominable mestizo. He plays the guitar with his 13- year-old grandson, Gabriel Herrera-Durán ....
Jason Luna Gavilan “the number 3: a series of revisitations”
Bio: Jason Gavilan is a Filipino-based historian and also aspiring poet. Born in Cali and currently living here in the MI, he is just as thankful for being able to share his works today as he is into building with more folks before during after this year’s memorial event.!
Christian A. Guevara "Lie to Me" "You & I" "Simple Temptations"
Bio: Christian Guevara is a junior at Wayne State University. He is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent and has been writing since high school. Writing has always been a way to reflect, and he jumps at anything that inspires him.
Rogelio "Chico" Hernandez " . . . WITH UNCLENCHED FISTS" "Down on the Corner"
Bio: LIFE JOURNALIST - Born in San Antonio in the last century. Raised in Southwest Detroit. Holy Redeemer Grad. Late wife, Maria Martha & two great sons ~ Much of what I write, prose and poetry, is about southwest Detroit and my family. The effects of world events of the 60s (Viet Nam, Woodstock, the riots, etc.) on my contemporaries and, in turn, our effect on them is what I try to capture in writing.
My pleasure now comes from promoting other writers and artists in the pursuit of cultural advancement, for those of us, who may not normally have the opportunity.
Annie C. Higgins, Ph.D. “And every land a Palestine” “Waves at Ladhiqiyya”
“When you gather the chaff”
Bio: Annie C. Higgins is Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Literature in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, for which she studied Qur’anic recitation in Egypt. Her book project, From Kharijites to Shurat: Exchange and Identity in Early Islam explores identity, exchange, gender, and performance of piety in the poetry of the Shurat/Kharijites, an under-studied branch of Islam. Her research follows her desire to let small voices from history and from our present era speak. Hence, a Fulbright grant in 2003-04 enabled her to research contemporary poetry and poster art in Palestinian refugee camps. The year before that, she volunteered in Jenin refugee camp. Back home, she values the energy and effectiveness of Wayne State students, especially the Arab American Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine, in bringing Arab culture to campus.
Mary Puente Luevanos "Lady in the Window"
Mary is not given to self praise. So this is what José thinks of her. Mary Puente Luevanos' contributions to her fellow human beings, both young and old children, speak for themselves. She prefers signing the praise of others, while providing an example of common sense leadership and multimedia creative art that is priceless because it is made and cast upon the waters with love.
Matrix Teen Company “Stop the Madness” (Trinidad Sánchez, Jr.)
Bio: The members of the Matrix Teen Company stay busy throughout the school year, writing and performing. This year’s Teen Company presented The Cry at Halloween and Collage 2011 in February, both of which were written and/or conceived by the group. In March, they performed in the Matrix original show, The Ambassador of DetrOZ, an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz set in Southwest Detroit. Currently they are in rehearsals for Water in Our World, which will be presented at Matrix’s WaterFest on May 14th. Members of the Matrix Teen Company have the opportunity to take their shows on tour around the metro Detroit area, as well as to perform with other local arts groups. Auditions for the Teen Company are held every September.
Mary Minock “DETROIT: WHY LIVE IN THE CITY?” “LOST LAKE” “DOWN BY THE BOULEVARD DOCK”
Mary Minock grew up on Clark Street in Southwest Detroit, and in the 1990s she returned--in time to meet and know Trino Sanchez. She's the author of one book of poems entitled Love in the Upstairs Flat, and she has recent poems in The MacGuffin, Mid-America, MARGIE, Patterson Literary Review, Driftwood Review, and in the Detroit anthology Abandon Automobile. She has just completed a memoir of her childhood in the neighborhood entitled The Way-Back Room. She hopes to find a publisher in the next few months.
James W. Perkinson “in between: la raza”
James W. Perkinson is a long-time activist and educator from inner city Detroit, currently teaching as Professor of Social Ethics at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and lecturing in Intercultural Communication Studies at the University of Oakland (Michigan). He holds a Ph.D. in theology/history of religions from the University of Chicago, is the author of White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity and Shamanism, Racism, and Hip-Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion, and has written extensively in both academic and popular journals on questions of race, class and colonialism in connection with religion and urban culture. He is in demand as a speaker on a wide variety of topics related to his interests and a recognized artist on the spoken-word poetry scene in the inner city.
José Riojas “El camino de la lágrimas” “Homeless Family”
Bio: José Riojas is a musical artist who composes
and plays sweet and soulful music that reveals the talent he got from his mom and dad and his love for a party with all humankind.
Ozzie Rivera Surprise Poems
Bio: Ozzie Rivera has walked the worlds of community activism, academia and culture. His creative soul was born on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico and those roots continue to be replenished by family, friends and compatriots. He hopes he is able to continue and pass on the traditions of the ancestors: Spanish, African and Taino.
Gil Saenz "WORLD TRAVELER" “LOVE OPENS EVERY DOOR “
Bio: Gil began writing and performing poetry with the Latino Poets Association in the mid-1980's. He has served as Director of Latino Poets Association. He is a member, and past Treasurer, of the Poetry Society of Michigan. A member of the Downriver Poets and Playwrights of Wyandotte, MI. The Springfield Arts/Detroit Metro Writers group. The Academy of American Poets.
Gil has published several chapbooks and other publications including: Where Love Is (88), Colorful Impressions (93), Moments In Time (95), Lavender and Lace (98). He co-authored with Jacqueline Sanchez, Dreaming of Love (99), Poems of Life/Poemas de la vida (2001), and most recently Spaces In Between (2003).
Served as Editor for the anthology - The Other Side of Darkness - DBSA Anthology.
Helped in publishing Downriver Reflections: Downriver Poets and Playwrights: Member Anthology I 2007. On the editorial review of our Poetry Society of Michigan recent anthology: I HEAR THE SONG AND IT DWELLS IN ME (2006)
Ber-Henda ‘B’ Williams ”Me llamo mama” “She-Rose”
Ber-Henda or simply “B” is an ambassador to the arts. She is femolutionary, television and film producer, ambassador for the arts, youth advocate, public speaker and lover of humanity. “The pen is her sword,” are the words she lives by. Ber-Henda, Germanic and Greek in origin, her name means “Bear Hearted Protector.” Ber-Henda Williams is the founder of Poetry, Pages, and Scribes, a monthly poetry series at the Southfield Public Library.
Trinidad Sánchez, Jr.
June 15, 1943 - July 30, 2006
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