Graciela Vigil, Sonia Sanchez, Anne Waldman, Kira Roessler, Mike Watt, Tupac Amaru Shakur, The Notorius B.I.G., Steven Jesse Bernstein, Chino XL, Amiri Baraka, Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Charles Bukowski, Alice Notley, Anne Sexton, Harryette Muillen, Akilah Oliver, Reymundo Sanchez, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Common, Pharoah Monch, Lisa Birman, Laura Mullen, Orlando White, Clutch, Minor Threat, Teen Idles, S.O.A., Circle Jerks, David Hernandez, Mort Castle, Saul Williams, Ahmad Jamal, Reed Bye, Andrew Schelling, Bad Religion, Indira Ganesan, Seaweed, Nirvana, Louis Jordan, William Bell, Bobby Caldwell, Prince, Elizabeth Robinson, Jeffrey Robinson, Jean Toomer, Dorothy Ellison, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Tim Z. Hernandez, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekoff, Renee Gladman, Jen Trynin Chicago Heights, so many more, Graciela Vigil
Sounds Like
What Other Writers Have to Say About Luis h. Valadez
Valadez's work is not simply fierce language poetics here is a writer the genuine article whose style is that of a truth speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazon. To read his work is to discover the future of American poetica!
-Tim Z. Hernandez,
Author of Skin Tax,
2006 American Book Award
Strong--real light flashes.
-Amiri Baraka
Brave, raw, and exposing of a young mans consciousness. Luis's work is not confessional in the limited, put-it-in-a-box way that big publishers like to market their material to liberal guilt.
-Andrew Schelling
Author of Tea Shack Interior: New & Selected Poetry,
Winner Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
Valadez's impressions abruptly transport the reader from swaggering elucidation to raw pain. In a sometimes-resigned glance around for divinity, [he] triggers equally sudden heart-rippings, laughter, and cinematic naturescapes.
-Claire Nixon
Journalist
Creator, Transients Comics Series
My name is Luis Humberto Valadez. I am from a place called Chicago Heights, IL. It's a suburb of Chicago (on the south side) but not a suburb in the way one would typically view the term. While some distance from Chicago proper the landscape of Chicago Heights is rather urban and, in the experience of many, treacherous. For all the bleakness of this place, it is also remarkably diverse and sentient. It has factored into so much of my perspective that it looms as a backdrop in my first book of poetry "what i'm on" (University of Arizona Press, 2009).
I went to undergrad. at Columbia College Chicago and received my MFA in Writing & Poetics with a concentration in Poetry from Naropa University in Boulder, CO. I am a winner of the Lily Endowment and a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar. I received the Academic Excellence Award from Columbia College Chicago as well as the Honors, Hiro Yamagata, and Ted Berrigan Scholarships from Naropa University. Previous to "what i'm on," I released two chapbooks of original work (Heid I-IV and Eye Part One: Eyes Likes it When Ya Die/Lord, Hear Our Prayer) on my own Cerda Press as well as a chapbook of translations from Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's Poet in New York. My work has been published in Bombay Gin 31, 26 Magazine, Columbia Poetry Review, Sliding Uteri, and Wet: A Journal of Proper Bathing from the University of Miami, as well as the online journals Watching the Wheels: A Blackbird, dogmatika.com, and Retort Magazine amongst others I was an editorial assistant for Arielle Greenberg's Youth Subcultures: Exploring Underground America (Longman, 2007), and Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics' journal Bombay Gin 32, which included Anne Waldman, Thurston Moore, Jello Biafra, Rachel Blau Du Plessis, and Juan Felipe Herrera.
As a performer, I've shared the stage with folks like Thurston Moore, Against Me, Saul Williams, Jello Biafra, Juan Felipe Herrera, Ten-Speed, Tim Z. Hernandez, Megan A. Volpert, and others. I've played bass and screamed in a few bands as well. Before I approached writing seriously I was playing music, electric bass specifically, and I like to bring a live musical energy to my poetry readings/performances. I have also released an EP of poetry and music with multi-genre producer/musician endofnight, called wat ahm on (ep) in conjunction with Last Minute Records.
In my ventures as a writer and student it has become quite apparent to me that exploiting my disadvantaged socio-economic background to academic success story is bad. I find it better to break down, deform, and deconstruct the mores of hood stories and life. One on end I see myself as peeling away at layers of identity and neuroses and at the other I see myself as throwing hooks in water. As many have done for me in the past, I am hoping to provide others with something to grab onto to get them through the next phase of their life. I sincerely believe that had certain artists and other presences not come along in my life when I was a child and given me something to grab onto and float along with, I most certainly would either be in jail or dead and perhaps have caused some vile destruction on the way to those plateaus. In light of all of this, I still believe it most important to search for the intention behind the initial sentiment.
These days I write, perform, play bass, make music, and work as an Americorps VISTA Leader for the Chicago Public Schools Students in Temporary Living Situations Program (formerly the Homeless Education Program). CPS STLS's mission is to uphold the rights of homeless students within the Chicago Public School system as federally mandated by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the consent decree of Salazar v. Edwards. CPS STLS aims to ensure every CPS homeless student shall have equal access to the same free and appropriate educational opportunities as students who are not homeless. We also provide a tutoring program for students K-12 living in homeless shelters called Chicago HOPES. We are always looking for more volunteers and support, so please check us out www.chicagohopes.org.
The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.
Oh, to awake from dreaming! Look, there is the chest of drawers. Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.
yeah man,it was great meeting you too sorry i didnt get back to you sooner... tryin to get my place clean so i get my security deposit back.. let us know if ur gonna be in cali at all...
Hmmm...what can I say...I LOVE your words, and with music - even better. You performed at my graduation, and I was totally totally psyched. I could go on and on but I won't! Anyway, would be honored to do a show together some day.
Bruno is doing great - though he was a little non-plussed last week because I was fostering a couple puppies! It's great to hear from you - I have eagerly read and applauded your reviews and am so proud of you, Luis. My heart aches with joy!
Almsot done. Your words ring so true. Beautiful, yet hard as stone. I'm a slow reader, and sometimes I like to read something over and over, especially if I like it.
What does one send to the Lighthouse indeed! At any other time Lily could have suggested reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this morning everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that a question like Nancy’s—What does one send to the Lighthouse?—opened doors in one’s mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep asking, in a stupefied gape, What does one send? What does one do? Why is one sitting here, after all? (Woolf)
Thanks, love. I feel pretty good about all of it, just don't feel so good about the fact that I seem incapable of doing anything but writing and flossing. And the writing part, apparently, doesn't include getting it together to send stuff to an agent that expressed interest AGES ago!
I'm so proud of so many of my SpaceBabies who've put out books since I've known them here, some of whom by now I've had the opportunity to meet in person and hear them read....
Other way around. Most Borderlines don't know they are, and this one (my first, and the one that led me to learn about the illness which, in turn, helped me recognize how and why they are the only women ever attracted to me), is determined to think, all these years later, that I'm mad at her because she wouldn't fuck me, whereas in reality, the minute she started doing me dirt -- almost 4 years ago -- any amount of sexual interest in her entirely disappeared, and my only interest in her at all was psychological, so that I could study up and protect my susceptible ass in the future!
The only reason I've stayed at all connected to her sick sorry ass is that she owes me lots of money, but she just threw one of her many typically Borderline tantrums, this time cutting me off for good (so she says, but has said so before), and of course her deciding I'm mad at her because she won't fuck me (! Help! Scary! Yikes!) helps her justify never paying me back.
Oh, yeah, as though her never having coughed up a red cent in 4 years wasn't indication enough that I wouldn't be seeing that money again!
I realize the only way you were confused was because Tom's status update leads us to talk of ourselves in the 3rd person, which can make for some pronoun mix-up!
There. I reckon you got more than your money's worth, huh.
As for purchasing your book, well, of course, my pleasure! I hope I can give you a chance to return the favor some day!
