Juan Felipe Herrera, a poet who transcends barriers

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera, the son of migrant parents who worked in the fields, was born in the Fresno area of California, where a bilingual elementary school was recently named after him.

As part of Línea Abierta’s 30th Anniversary celebration with a segment called 30 Years 30 Voices, one of them justly is to of Juan Felipe Herrera, author of numerous collections of poems, was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2015, when he launched his project “The World’s Most Incredible and Greatest Unity Poem.”

In the first year of Línea Abierta in 1995, Samuel Orozco, our news director, spoke with Juan Felipe Herrera who recalled that he learned his love for the countryside and poetry from his day laborer parents. Let’s listen to part of those statements from our archives from 30 years ago.

In those years Juan Felipe Herrera participated in an exercise he called voz canela (cinnamon voice), which were meetings with listeners of poetry because he thought that we all had something of a poet in us.

Juan Felipe Herrera, speaks of a literature or poetry that is not in the elite but is in our daily life, let’s listen to Juan Felipe in that conversation in 1995.

In fact, he remembers his mother who is his inspiration.

Of course also in the conversation Juan Felipe Herrera talked about the influence his father had on his artistic and activist life.

Juan Felipe Herrera has used his lyrics to transcend and to make known points of view on issues that impact us as a community.

Finally, the poet reminds us that, in our lives, our own stories, there is always poetry and art, let’s listen to the poet Juan Felipe Herrera.