Juan Felipe Herrera calls North Park students to be “visible and visibilizers”

CHICAGO (November 16, 2015) — The story of our nation’s first Mexican-American poet laureate is one of humble beginnings. Juan Felipe Herrera was born into a family of migrant farm laborers, but often heard his mother recite poetry. He was captivated by it, though too nervous to try his hand. The words that catalyzed him came from his third grade teacher: “You have a beautiful voice.”

Recalling this story to North Park University students last week, Herrera said, “That’s why I’m here, actually. I’m here to tell you that. You have a beautiful voice.”

Wearing his signature fedora (this time a royal blue) and turquoise rings, Herrera read poems and shared the stories behind them. It was a blustery Thursday evening in Chicago when students, faculty, and community members gathered in North Park’s Isaacson Chapel. Herrera was there for a series of on-campus events connected to this year’s Campus Theme program, which asks the question, “What Is Truth?”

Earlier in the day, Herrera lead a private writing workshop with creative writing students. Participant Ashley McDonald (a double major in philosophy and English, with a creative writing emphasis) was surprised by Herrera’s approachability. “Here’s the poet laureate of the United States—the officialness of it made us think it was going to be a serious, academic, deep, demanding workshop, I think,” McDonald said. “After he told us a bit of his story about how he became a poet—he decided he wanted to start telling the truth about who he was, which prompted him to join the school choir and eventually begin writing—he had us brainstorm words related to submarines. The poem that came out of that was hilarious.”

McDonald also walked away with a sense of the power of community in writing. “Working in a group on a poem added levity to the endeavor that isn’t always there when you write alone,” she said. This was a central theme for Herrera, who, throughout the events, explained that his development as a writer happened within a community of writers, and for the sake of the Latino community: “I was a poet for the community, in the community, by the community.” Herrera opened his comments Thursday with a bilingual poem, “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way,” which demonstrates his passion to tell the truth about a community while also calling it to action.

Herrera turned the conversation to global citizenship, sharing poems from his most recent collection, Notes on the Assemblage. “Ayotzinapa,” told from the perspective of the 43 victims of the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping in Mexico, closes, “we are/not disposable.” “i am Kenji Goto” honors Japanese journalists Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, murdered by ISIS. Multiple students in attendance described these works as “really inspiring.”

Justice also shaped Herrera’s remarks to the student body gathered at Anderson Chapel on Friday morning for a lecture titled “Truth-Telling and the Role of the Artist in Society.” Herrera urged the students to “have a fire for truth,” to look beyond the messages of consumerism and ask, “What is my truth?”

“It takes a long time to find your truth,” Herrera said, remembering a college experience that shaped him. As an Anthropology student, Herrera learned about a people group in Mexico that had dwindled to a population of 250, and he was charged for their cause. “It all came together when I learned [that]. I wasn’t just going to accept that and let it go.” Frustrated by the apathy of other students, Herrera recalled saying, “I don’t want to talk about it. I want to do something about it. I want to go face-to-face, not face-to-book.”

Looking at North Park’s students, Herrera asked, “How can truth be truth if it’s just for you or me?” He called the students to work that makes them both “visible and visibilizers.” This is at the heart of Herrera’s project as poet laureate, La Casa de Colores, which he invited students to participate in by submitting 200 characters or less of poetic lines. Herrera said that the project is intended to “feed the hearth and the heart of our communities with creativity and imagination.”

Herrera closed his time on campus by sharing “30 Steps I Took Towards Truth-Telling,” written for the event, prefacing his list with this remark: “Before I recite these to you, let me just say that it has become all about kindness. I think kindness is the direct path to truth . . . kindness is the way.”

Read more about the Campus Theme events.