New series in the works.

Mistaking Planes For Stars: The Poetry of Place in Southeast LA
February Event for the LUNADA Series

Galeria de la Raza
Monday, February 9, 2009
7:00pm - 10:00pm
2857 24th street
San Francisco, CA
415.826.8009
info@galeriadelaraza.org

featuring Aida Salazar, Raquel Gutierrez, Vickie Vertiz, Tomas Riley and Leticia Hernandez-Linares

Come to Galeria de La Raza’s popular LUNADA series this February 2009 as three poets with origins in Maywood, Huntington Park and Bell Gardens, Califas poetically render the emotional and political architectures of Southeast Los Angeles. Veteran poets, Tomas Riley and Leticia Hernandez-Linares round out the spatial flow with harmonious and discordant narratives of north and south, San Francisco and San Diego.

The moon shines bright this night over the city and its Bay. See you there!
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The POETRY OF PLACE is a series idea I got from organizing this event at Galeria de la Raza. Now that I see what potential it has it makes me want to keep doing this series in different sites where poets and writers would focus on a particular set of places. I don't know where the next will occur after this in SF but it's got the wheels turning.

I'm looking forward to seeing Aida read at this event. I first came across her work about ten years ago, I believe at a mujer de maiz event at Self-Help Graphics. It was my first foray into witnessing smart feminist performance art. She called herself a performance artist and I thought that was so cool. Red paint was involved and she dipped her upper body in the liquid. Visually it was really jarring. Reminded me of a more hopeful Nicole Blackman (whom I first saw at the first Ladyfest in Olympia, WA around the same time).

Aida was also an arts professional and I remember her leading workshops for the county and Getty interns on how to produce a large-scale event. Man, that is some serious work but also a really exciting time for LA arts, back before all this economic standstill.

It will be fun to share the stage with her at Galeria.