Juan Felipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrerais a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera has been the United States Poet Laureate since 2015...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 December 1948
CountryUnited States of America
concerns name people poetry questions seems voices
All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people - a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immigration and security issues, you name it - big questions.
change hankering musical
I'm usually writing in English, and then I'll get the hankering to change channels. And usually I'll do that when I want to try a whole new set of keys, like musical keys.
street
I like marketplaces. I like train stations; I like being in trains. I like airports. I like walking down the street with a pen in my hand, writing, writing, writing.
banner good invite people perhaps poetry
The banner of the project is 'Casa de Colores.' Under that banner, I'm going to invite people to do a lot of good things. Perhaps working in groups, working on poetry.
beauty dreams guidance launch merge staff weave
I want to take everything I have in me, weave it, merge it with the beauty that is in the Library of Congress, all the resources, the guidance of the staff and departments, and launch it with the heart-shaped dreams of the people.
people
I'm very grateful to all the people of Fresno, to Philip Levine and all the poets before me, and all the farmworkers. I didn't get here by myself.
latinas latinos
I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.
across fingers page pen sketch white work
A pen is different from the pad, the key, moving your fingers across a screen. I like both. I like to work on sketchbooks, big old white sketch paper. I like how that feels, and I like to put different media on it. Then there's the phone, smartphone, iPad: It's the new page, and it's not the same page anymore.
crop field fort
We went from crop to crop, field to field. And my father had that army truck, a 1940s army truck from Fort Bliss, El Paso.
assist gap hearing knowing latino terms understanding
We speak about understanding each other, having those conversations nationwide - culturally, historically - and yet there's a lot of gaps. So I want to assist with closing the gap of knowing about and hearing about our Latino communities in terms of literature, in terms of writing.
becoming beings complete diversity human learn means missing
Diversity really means becoming complete as human beings - all of us. We learn from each other. If you're missing on that stage, we learn less. We all need to be on that stage.
education gifted high juvenile throughout worked worker
I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.
felt
As a boy, I felt ashamed of being Mexican. I'd say I was Hawaiian.
Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase, like 'half-Mexican.'