MA
I am a queer Afro-Caribbean mother, poet, writer, performer, cultural worker, and educator, born in Puerto Rico, who currently resides in Cambridge, MA. My projects revolve around origin, gender, race, class, longing, loss, affective labor, and the visibility of marginalized subjects. In 2019 I became a Brother Thomas Fellow.
I'm the co-founder, curator, and coordinator of the multi-disciplinary artist performance series Poetry Is Busy, a project that has been supported by the Cambridge Arts Council, Kindle Project LLC and Municipio de San Juan and has been presented in the United States at the Democracy Center, in Cambridge, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts Gallery and the Boston Book Festival's Lit Crawl, in Boston, and Middlebury College in Vermont as well as multiple venues in Puerto Rico including the Museum of Contemporary Art. Poetry Is Busy gathers artists across disciplines (such as musicians, writers, performers, visual and audiovisual artists) and centers cis, trans, and gender-nonconforming women and femmes, and/or People of Color of various origins and indigenous folks, who are not usually given the space to perform our art.
I'm the author of five poetry books: Hacernos el adiós (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 2019), Acentos espesos/Thick Accents (Taller Mujer Orquesta, 2018, recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts' Creative City 2018 grant); Cielo Riel (Ediciones Alayubia, 2017); Época Opaca (Atarraya Cartonera, 2015); and El Mundo No Es Otra Cosa/The World Is None Other (La Secta de los Perros Editores, 2014). Most recently, my work has been published in the anthologies Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2018) and Isla Escrita: Antología de la Poesía de Cuba, Puerto Rico y República Dominicana (Amargord Ediciones, 2018).
As an educator, I offer a variety of workshops in Spanish and English and have facilitated several for artists and writers with The Boston Foundation, Assets4Artists, and GrubStreet.
Additional Content:
Poem March 2020 Coronavirus' Social Distancing
With This Evening Of Rituals, Members Of The Puerto Rican Diaspora Grapple With The Trauma Of Hurricane Maria
Twelve Greater Boston artists named Brother Thomas Fellows for 2019
Boston Center for the Arts Online
Run of the Mills Upcoming El despojo: ¿Alguien ha | Has Anyone? | October 2019
About Poetry Is Busy event at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts Gallery in Boston
Everything Leaves Broadside. Letterpress printed from hand-set lead type and linoleum on Rives BFK by Erica Mena for Puerto Rico en mi corazón.
(Spanish) Poet resident for 80 Grados website
(Spanish) Columnist for Buscapié at El Nuevo Día Newspaper
"the world is none other" at Mind The Gap
Participatory Bilingual recitation poem performed by Yara Liceaga-Rojas at Mind The Gap, February 2019 at Green Street Studios
"Voy a tu encuentro sal" poem at Souncloud
From the unpublished book "Amaratada", poem "Voy a tu encuentro sal"
Institution/Business Type:
Artist / Creative (Individual)
Legal Status:
Commercial / For profit - Sole proprietorship
Institution/Business Type:
Artist / Creative (Individual)
Legal Status:
Commercial / For profit - Sole proprietorship
Primary Discipline:
Multi-DisciplinaryAdditional Disciplines:
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$150 - $500Teaching Settings:
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$150 - $500NEST Eligible Artist
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$500 - $3,000State of Residence:
MassachusettsMinimum Number of Performers:
1Maximum Number of Performers:
8