JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

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.

Migrants all over the world are pushed and pulled across borders by hunger, terror and climate change. It happened to my own family.

Sometimes it's like that. I go, 'You know what? I'm going to just change scales. I'm going to even change instruments. And I'm going to go into the chromatics of the Spanish language,' and I do. You know, the poem is totally different. It's like a lunar voice versus a day voice, a solar voice.

Do not wait for a poem; a poem is too fast for you. Do not wait for the poem; run with the poem and then write the poem.

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.

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.

My parents moved from ranch to ranch, valley to valley, town to town, but our roots in Fowler never really faded. For me, it's a place of history, stories and songs, not just facts and figures.

First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'

My grandmother and my mom and my aunt Aurelia, my grandmother Juanita, my mom Lucia - we lived on the outskirts of a barrio in Mexico City called Tepito, and Tepito for many, many decades was the largest barrio in Mexico and perhaps even Latin America.

San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High - it's all a big part of the poetry fountain that I continue to drink from.

Just like my parents immigrated from ranch to ranch picking crops, I have migrated from city to city.

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.

If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.

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.

Sometimes you can do things with Spanish - like verbs and genders - easier than you can in English.

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.

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.

I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.

In my writing, I want to address all communities, you know. I've spent many years talking about Chicano culture, Chicano history, and at the same time, I've also been in many communities and presented my work in many communities, in many classrooms, and that's where my vision is and my delight is and my heart is.

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

Let's detox our cluttered academic brain. That's what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It's being able to let in call letters from the poetry universe.

By middle school, I said to myself that it's time I begin to speak. I joined the choir, not because I wanted to. I forced myself.

Perhaps, like the way these leaves spread out and the way they curl in many directions and how they have many features, I think that's how my road has been.

I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines were underlined in yellow or blue or red. A lot of color, intense writing.