San Antonio’s Urban 15 is closing out National Poetry Month on April 30 with a six-hour online poetry reading called Mega Corazon.
The way it came about was through last month’s poetry event called "Mi Pueblo" by the city’s former Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla. George Cisneros, Urban-15's Media Director, explains:
"In that production she incorporated readings by eight local poets," Cisneros said. "There was a lo of energy and a lot of collaboration going on. We got together and decided this was too good to stop, so we wanted to do another event. And Mega Corazon just kind of materialized on April 8th.”
But they decided citywide wasn’t ambitious enough. They wanted to put San Antonio on the worldwide poetry stage.
"And then with Urban 15's capacity to do streaming video, it turned into a worldwide event very rapidly," said Cisneros.
Using video cameras, they are slated to put 24 San Antonians in front of the eyes of the world, one every fifteen minutes, for six hours.
"The world can see just what a creative place San Antonio has been for generations,” he said.
I asked Cisneros if there seemed to have been rebirth of interest in poetry from the younger generation.
“Yeah, I think the performance art movement was a catalyst. There’s a resurgence…right now we’re seeing a lot of people between the ages of eighteen and thirty that are moving into this area of performance poetry.”
As to who’s performing, here’s a partial list from Cisneros.
"Barbara Stanush, one of our landmark poets will be involved. Carmen Tafolla, Anthony Flores, Amanda Flores, John Philip Santos, Frances Santos, Laurie Ann Guererro, Eduarto Garza. These are just some of the many many poets that will be reading that day."
How you can tune in for Mega Corazon: http://www.urban15.org/index.php?/Story/announcing_mega_corazon1
