California’s new Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, hopes to serve as an inspiration and literary link to all those living in California.
He was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown in March and is awaiting confirmation by the state senate in June.
“I was driving to work on the 22nd of March when the phone rang and I said, ‘I better pick this up,’ because it was a Sacramento call,” Herrera said. “I did the best I could, because I was driving, and they said ‘congratulations you’ve been appointed as the California Poet Laureate.’”
“I still have to be confirmed by the senate, so I’m over here lighting my little candles so everything goes smoothly.” He added.
For 97 years, California unofficially honored its most exemplary poetic voices with the title of Poet Laureate, an appointment for life. The term was limited to two years when the title was made official in 2001 by then Governor Gray Davis.
Herrera said that being nominated was “a very wavy feeling.”
“I feel fabulous,” he said. “It’s a great honor, but now I have a whole new set of responsibilities.”
There are several projects he is working on as part of his appointment.
“I want to keep it simple,” he said. “At first I had like 20 things I wanted to invite people to do.”
Herrera hopes to launch a website by August 2012, which would host “the most incredible and biggest poem in the world on unity.”
He hopes to set it up so anyone can go in and add a stanza during his two-year term; everyone from any culture and in any language will be invited to share their ideas of unity.
Another project, “I promise Joanna/te prometo Joanna to stop bullying,” would be dedicated to Joanna Ramos, a ten-year-old Long Beach girl who died this past February from injuries sustained in a fight after school.
Personal life
Born in Fowler, California, Herrera was the only son of a migrant farmworker family and grew up mostly alone with his parents, moving from town to town around the state.
As a child with a lot of free time, he recalls his vivid imagination and how it lead to his interest in outlets of self expression.
“I grew up being very intense and very excitable. My mother and I would always talk and she would tell me stories about her life,” he said. “She was always telling me, ‘this is what I went through,’ so I became kind of an expert listener, a very intense listener.”
He was always attracted to public speakers and performers and wanted to speak out himself, but was afraid. So against his own misgivings, he forced himself to join a choir to ease himself into talking—without realizing he would have to get up on stage to perform.
Herrera formed part of a Chicano renaissance in poetry and art, which he was involved in as a high school and college student.
In the late ‘70s, while still a student at Stanford University, Herrera and some of his colleagues moved to San Francisco to “conquer the city” as Chicano poets.
Among his many other achievements, Herrera was directly involved in the creation of literary supplements for newspapers, most notably, El Tecolote’s own “El Tecolote Literario.”