FREE TO ATTEND. No registration required.
Join us Thursday, November 12th at 7pm at Pegasus Downtown when we welcome Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo and fellow East Bay poetas in celebration of the release of Bermejo's new collection, Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites. Bermejo will read from, discuss, and sign her book. She will be joined for readings by Sara Borjas, Maya Chinchilla, and Yaccaira Salvatierra, along with host Guadalupe Orozco-Gutierrez. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
About the book:
Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites is a Chicana's witness to the American ethos in a time marked by controversy, division, and transformation. Bermejo delves into the heart of the matter, contemplating the significance of US monuments as both symbols of history and battlegrounds for ideological strife, and imparts a compassionate ear to the marginalized, memorializing the lives of Black and brown individuals whose lives were cut short by state-sanctioned violence. But Bermejo's poetry also brims with love, passion, and determination to resist the prevailing chaos. Amidst the chaos, she crafts love poems celebrating the bonds of family, the strength of friendships, and the allure of defiance. This collection dances like flames in rituals of resistance and resilience, illuminating paths toward a future unburdened by the shackles of misogyny and white supremacy.
The collection is inspired by writers like bell hooks, Audrey Lorde, and Adrienne Maree Brown. The influence of hooks' All About Love lends a profound sense of introspection to Bermejo's poetry as she examines the complex interplay of love within the context of societal upheaval. Lorde's exploration of the "Uses of the Erotic" adds layers of empowerment to the collection, breathing life into the transformative potential of embracing the self. And from Brown's Pleasure Activism, Bermejo draws that pleasure can be a vehicle for activism, a means of reshaping a world fractured by discord. She summons love, pleasure, and the human body to reimagine a collective vision of liberation from prejudice and discrimination. Bermejo crafts a literary sanctuary, a space where readers can confront the harsh realities of today's America while kindling the flames of hope
About the author:
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications) and Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Yefe Nof, and National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. She teaches poetry and creative writing with Antioch University, MFA and UCLA Extension. Bermejo is the director of Women Who Submit.
About the guest poets:
Sara Borjas is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award and she was featured as one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Ragdale, CantoMundo, The Poetry foundation, Sewanee Writers Conference, Postgraduate Writers Conference, and Community of Writers. She believes that all Black lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized. She teaches at California State University, East Bay and stays rooted in Fresno.
Maya Chinchilla is a Guatemalan, Bay Area-based writer, video artist, educator and author of The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética. Maya received her MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College and her undergraduate degree from University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also founded and co-edited the annual publication, La Revista. Maya writes and performs poetry that explores themes of historical memory, heartbreak, tenderness, sexuality, and alternative futures. Her work—sassy, witty, performative, and self-aware—draws on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the wounds we carry.
Yaccaira Salvatierra’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The Nation, Huizache, and Rattle among others. Her collection, Sons of Salt, is forthcoming with BOA Editions in 2024. Currently, she is translating Estancias de Emilia Tangoa, a collection of poetry about the Amazon in Perú, by Peruvian poet Ana Varela Tafur. She is an organizer for the San Francisco International Flor y Canto Literary Festival and a contributing editor for Huizache. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is a dedicated educator building literacy and teaching poetry to youth.
About the host:
Guadalupe Orozco-Gutierrez, also known as Lupita, is a fourth-year Art Practice and Creative Writing minor student at UC Berkeley. As a Mexican-American Queer Artist, Lupita's practice explores themes of nostalgia, food, and exploration of their internal psyche. From making giant ceramic tortas and abstract papayas to writing about the indulgence of unusual food combinations, their work aims to consciously find subdued emotions, memories, and ideas from within the realm of their unconscious; making them be seen through a playful childlike lens.
Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites is a Chicana's witness to the American ethos in a time marked by controversy, division, and transformation. Bermejo delves into the heart of the matter, contemplating the significance of US monuments as both symbols of history and battlegrounds for ideological strife, and imparts a compassionate ear to the marginalized, memorializing the lives of Black and brown individuals whose lives were cut short by state-sanctioned violence. But Bermejo's poetry also brims with love, passion, and determination to resist the prevailing chaos. Amidst the chaos, she crafts love poems celebrating the bonds of family, the strength of friendships, and the allure of defiance. This collection dances like flames in rituals of resistance and resilience, illuminating paths toward a future unburdened by the shackles of misogyny and white supremacy.
