Valerie Martínez

Valerie Martínez

Born	1961
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Native American, Hispanic
Alma mater	Vassar College; University of Arizona
Genre	Poetry

Valerie Martínez (born 1961) is an award-winning American poet, educator, arts administrator, activist and collaborative artist.

Life

Martinez was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico and descends from Tewa and Dine (Navajo) ancestors as well as the 16th century Spanish colonizers of the Southwest U.S. She left New Mexico in 1979 to attend Vassar College and received her B.A. in English/American Literature in 1983. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry in 1989 from the University of Arizona.

Martinez is the author of five books of poetry and one book of translations. Each and Her (winner of the 2011 Arizona Book Award) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, the William Carlos William Award, the National Book Critics Circle award, the PEN Open Book Award, the Ron Ridenhour Prize (among other honors) and was an honorable mention in the 2011 International Latino Book Awards. Martinez's first book of poetry, Absence, Luminescent (Four Way Books 1999 & 2010), won the Larry Levis Prize and a Greenwall Grant from the Academy of American Poets after being a finalist in the Walt Whitman, National Poetry Series, and Intro Award competitions. Her second book, World to World, was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2004. Martinez’s translations of the poetry of Uruguay’s Delmira Agustini (1886-1914), A Flock of Scarlet Doves, was published in special edition by Sutton Hoo Press in 2005 and a collection of Santa Fe poems (written during her tenure as Poet Laureate of Santa Fe), And They Called it Horizon, was published by Sunstone Press in 2010. A book-length hybrid work, "A Hundred Little Mouths" premiered in November 2015 with Susan Silton's "Whistling Project" at SITE Santa Fe.

Martinez’s poetry, translations, and essays have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review; Parnassus; The Colorado Review; Puerto del Sol; The Notre Dame Review; Mandorla, Tiferet, The Bloomsbury Review, and AGNI. Her work appears in many anthologies of contemporary poetry, including The Best American Poetry; New American Poets--A Breadloaf Anthology; American Poetry--Next Generation, Touching the Fire--Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance and Renaming Ecstasy--Latino Writings on the Sacred. Martínez also served as assistant editor of the anthology Reinventing the Enemy’s Language--Contemporary Writing by Native Women of North America (Norton 1997) and an essay about Joy Harjo (along with poems by Harjo and Martínez) appears in the anthology Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (University of Iowa Press, 2008). Valerie’s poem “September, 2001” was featured in the Washington Post’s “Poet’s Choice” Series (September 2009). An animated version of Valerie’s poem, “Bowl,” appears in the Poetry Everywhere Series (PBS/The Poetry Foundation) and has been put to music by composer Glen Rover and sung by soprano Talise Trevigne on her acclaimed CD, At the Statue of Venus (GPR Records).

Martinez also has extensive experience as a project director for several large-scale arts and community engagement projects including Stories of Route 66: The International District; El Puente (in the Barelas and South Valley neighborhoods of Albuquerque); Margin to Margin, End to End: The Santa Fe Bus Opera; Rivers Run Through Us; Lines and Circles: A Celebration of Santa Fe Families, EKCO Poets, and Women & Creativity. She was Executive Director and Core Artist with Littleglobe from 2007-2015 and is currently the Founding Director of Artful Life, an organization dedicated to transforming communities through the beauty and power of collaborative art.

Martinez is also a collaborative artist working with other writers, visual artists, dancers, singers, composers and actors in a wide range of creative projects, including Susan Silton's Whistling Project, Polyphony, Salve: Women on War and Warriorship, and through the EKCO Poetry Project.

Martinez taught for over 20 years at the college/university level with emphases in Poetry, American Literature, Women's Literature, Native American Literature and Latino/a Literature. At the College of Santa Fe (where she finished her academic career as a tenured faculty member in 2009) she was the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies, creating cross-disciplinary curricular programs in Southwest Studies and Humanities. While in academia, Martinez also directed a wide range of community outreach programs engaging communities with art.

Before returning to New Mexico to settle permanently in 2003, Martinez lived and traveled widely in the U.S. and Europe, Mexico, Israel, Japan, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa—including three years in Swaziland where she taught English in elementary and middle school. Her travels have had a significant impact on her creative work.

In 2014 Martinez received a Creative Bravos Award for her extraordinary contributions to Albuquerque's creative economy. In 2009 Martinez was awarded the Albuquerque Journal/SAGE Magazine award, honoring “Twenty Women Who Have Made a Difference.” Martinez and Shelle Van Etten de Sanchez delivered a 2014 TEDx ABQ talk entitled: "Collaboration Driven by Imagination" on September 6, 2014 in Albuquerque.

Published Works

Full-Length Poetry Collections

And They Called It Horizon. Sunstone Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0-86534-790-8.
Each and Her. University of Arizona Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0-8165-2859-2.
World to World. University of Arizona Press. 2004. ISBN 978-0-8165-2375-7.
Absence, Luminescent, Four Way Books, 1999, ISBN 9781884800238

Translations

A Flock of Scarlet Doves (Sutton Hoo Press, 2005)^[1]

Anthologies Edited

Lines and Circles: A Celebration of Santa Fe Families (Sunstone Press, 2010)^[2]
Ask Me Who I Am: Writing and Art by CYFD Youth (Littleglobe Productions, 2010)
Reinventing the Enemy’s Language--Contemporary Writing by Native Women of North America (Norton, 1997)

Honors & Awards

2014 Creative Bravos Award^[3]
2009 Twenty Women Who Have Made a Difference, Albuquerque Journal Sage Magazine
2008–2010 Poet Laureate of Sante Fe, New Mexico^[4]
1999 Levis Poetry Prize^[5]
1998 The Greenwall Fund Grant^[6]

References

Sources

Library of Congress Online Catalog > Valerie Martínez

External links

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 1804218

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