Cantadora: Letters from California (Eyewear Publishing)
Celebrated poet Linda Ravenswood presents 44 hybrid texts which read as maps, diary entries, manifestos, dream fragments, and lists. Her branching perspective of the 500+ years span of the (so-called) Conquest of Mexico by Cort's and the Spanish army (1521-present) explores reverberations across landscapes & cultures of the American West that are still being navigated. The voices explore past, present, & future histories of those who dwell in the West. Some histories explored include WWII Holocaust survivors of Los Angeles, relocated NDN children of the 19th century, Chontales people of the Yucat n encountering ships of Cort's, border blurring, intersectional feminism, and 21st-century balancing acts of Latinidad. This extraordinary collection is a tour de force of poetic craft, colonial sensitivity, intellect, and conscience.
Oxford Prize in Poetry winner, Linda Ravenswood is a poet and performance artist living in Los Angeles. The current Edwin Markham Prize in Poetry recipient, (selected by US Poet Laureate emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera), Linda was educated at CalArts (BFA 2007) and Mount St. Mary’s College (MA 2009) with a PHD abd from the Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her arts praxes include collaboration, teaching, & curating arts events & publications. She is founding editor in chief of The Los Angeles Press.
Celebrated in the US and the UK for her branching perspectives on women’s stories of migration and immigration in The West, her collection Cantadora — Letters from California is due in January 2023. , Linda is the founder of the new poet laureate progrramme in Glendale, California.
Working closely with arts organizations including The Poetry Society of New York, and Red Light Lit San Francisco, Linda fuses visual and performance art in formal poetry reading and burlesque venues, as well as deconstructed live literature events. Called a ‘magpie’, ‘mime’, and ‘genius’, by colleagues and critics, Linda is emerging as a force in literature & performance in California.
Publications include The Stan Poems (Pedestrian Press, 2022), the forthcoming — a poem is a house — (FlowerSong Press, 2023), and — If we never meet again: A Pandemic diary — (X Artists’ Books, 2023).
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