Oct. 10, 2010

Francisco Alarcon among poets at CSUMB on Oct. 28

Francisco Alarcon, Odilia Galvan Rodriguez and Abel Salas will be featured at Voces de Justicia-Voices of Justice, a poetry reading to be held at 7 p.m. Oct. 28 in the University Center ballroom at CSU Monterey Bay. The event is free and open to the public.

Alarcon, award-winning Chicano poet and educator born in Los Angeles, has written 11 volumes of poetry. He teaches at the University of California at Davis, where he directs the Spanish for Native Speakers program.

Moved by student protests against Arizona's immigration law, he created a Facebook page called Poets Responding to SB 1070. Many of the poems from the page have been republished on La Bloga at labloga.blogspot.com.

He told the Tucson Weekly that he started the Facebook page on April 20, when he saw the demonstration in front of the Arizona State Capitol, and learned that nine students had been arrested.

"Those Latino students were sitting in front of the Capitol, very Gandhi-like in nonviolence, protesting the xenophobia of SB 1070," he told the paper. "In response, I wrote a poem, 'For the Capitol Nine.' . . . I posted it on my Facebook page, and I kept getting a lot of responses. Now, we have more than 3,500 members."

He added that his Facebook page gets responses about the posted poems from all kinds of writers, all over the world. "That means there are a number of poets who

have taken the time and are motivated to respond to this discriminatory law."

Galvan Rodriguez and Salas, who work with Alarcon to moderate the Facebook page, will also read their work at CSUMB.

Galvan Rodriguez is a poet, writer and teacher. She teaches writing workshops, "Empowering People Through Creative Writing."

Salas has written for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine and is editor and publisher of Brooklyn & Boyle, an L.A. arts, culture and community paper. He occasionally teaches creative writing in Los Angeles County juvenile halls. His poetry has appeared in a variety of publications.

All three poets will answer questions and copies of Alarcon's books will be available for purchase. He'll sign copies before and after the reading.

The reading is sponsored by the Department of Human Communication, Student Activities and Leadership Development, and the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Driving directions and a campus map are available at csumb.edu/map.