1999-2000 Premio Poesía Tejana Winners
Poesía Tejana Contest Rules | Poesía Tejana Winners 1999-2000
- Nicole Pollentier: Smolt
- Celeste Guzmán: Cande, te estoy llamando
- Mary Grace Rodriguez: Long Story Short
- Victoria Garcia-Zapata: Peace in the Corazón
- Poesia Tejana Contest Rules
Nicole Pollentier: Smolt
ISBN: 0-930324-43-9 | $12 Buy this book
To hear Nicole Pollentier read her work is to be prodded by the voice of a
diminutive fury. Now, reading these poems, one is astounded by their
uncompromising ferocity and their drive to deconstruct the syntaxes of a world
hellbent on its own destruction.-- Cecile Pineda
author of Face and Love Queen of the Amazon
Celeste Guzmán: Cande, te estoy llamando
ISBN: 0-930324-44-7 | $12 Buy this book
Deft imagery, keen observation and stunning turns of phrase call out to you from this first collection of poetry where "esa fortuna" is breathed into the threading of nylons, waking birds become a name, and aging becomes lopped-off pigtails that "waggle in the dust like the cut tail of a lizard." This is a fine "calling-out" from una chingona in the making.-- Lorna Dee Cervantes, author of Emplumada and From the Cables of Genocide.
Cande, te estoy llamando by Celeste Guzmán is a book whose spirited heart beats to the rhythm of the ancestors' empowering legacy. This passionate collection of family poems moves us to remember and celebrate the lives that shaped us, and shape us still. It is a wonder-filled testimonio to the power of reaching beyond imagined limitations. It leaves us with the grounding weight of the grandfather, the merciful empathy of the daughter who steps into her mother's housedress, the child/parent who stands in the healing rain of shared story. Celeste Guzmán understands well that there is no better, more profound way to understand the unique, undaunted self than to write about familia. ¡Ay, familia!-- Denise Chávez, author of The Last of the Menu Girls and Face of an Angel
Mary Grace Rodriguez: Long Story Short
ISBN: 0-930324-45-5 | $12 Buy this book
These poems, dandelion seeds, take me by surprise because they arrive at once spanking new and ancient. An old soul in a new voice. Youthful and wise all at once. Irreverent and sacred. I am anxious to see where these travel. I am certain they will voyage far.-- Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, My Wicked Wicked Ways, and Woman Hollering Creek
Rodríguez leans into the wind -- and takes you with her.-- Carla Trujillo, editor of Living Chicana Theory and Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About
Here is a fresh new voice filled with wisdom and humor. "What would my mother say to me now," muses the woman who has just asked her lover to spend the summer. In the apologetic final line, she offers, "He may marry me." Another poem measures relationships in wonderful images, one that lasts "as long as a family-sized bar of Ivory soap," and another that "made it through a bottle and a half of Flex conditioner." In "Beans," the writer laments that not only do her beans taste nothing like her mother's, they also have explosive gastronomic aftereffects. To use one of the poet's own metaphors, her poems are as immediate and familiar as "water boiling on the stove for tea."-- Mary Clare Wickins, in REFORMA Newsletter (Summer 2000)
Victoria Garcia-Zapata: Peace in the Corazón
ISBN: 0-930324-46-3 | $12 Buy this book
After reading these poems I felt a heartfelt joy, wanted to let out a little grito. The victory here is the act of writing. Poems electric and alive, lyrical, and brutally honest. Having travelled my own difficult route in my twenties with only my poetry as roadmap, I am deeply moved by this poet’s triumphant deliverance from pain to peace. ¡Brava!-- Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, My Wicked Wicked Ways, and Woman Hollering Creek
Mixing Spanish and English words and phrases in a slim first volume of poetry, the author opens a door to her heart. At first it bleeds with empty religion and abusive love, then swiftly comes to a healing realization of its own womanly strength. In church, the poet loses her spirit to chisme, as she watches other women assembled at Mass. At home, she struggles to be free of a jealous and violent lover who would keep her from her friends and her writing.-- Mary Clare Wickins, in REFORMA Newsletter (Summer 2000)
Smolt by Nicole Pollentier (ISBN 0-930324-43-9) Cánde, te estoy llamando by Celeste Guzmán (ISBN 0-930324-44-7) Long story short by Mary Grace Rodríguez (ISBN 0-930324-45-5) Peace in the Corazón by Victoria García-Zapata (ISBN 0-930324-46-3)
Poesía Tejana Contest Rules | Poesía Tejana Winners 1999-2000