When I first joined Letras Latinas as a Poetry Coalition Fellow in September 2022, I had several projects on the horizon; some that I brought to the table, but most were pre-conceived by director Francisco Aragón. I started with administrative work for the Afro-Latinx Poetry Now gathering—an initiative that was organized long before I joined the team—and worked my way toward bringing my own ideas to fruition, like the Los Angeles Review Latinx Digital Poetics Electronic Literature Folio.
Before I started my fellowship, I learned a little about all the work Letras Latinas had done over the past 18 years. One initiative—a treasure trove of Latinx literary conversations—was the Oral History Project. At the time, there were about 60 hour-long interviews with Latinx poets and writers. Today, as we celebrate Letras Latinas’ 20th anniversary, the archive houses over 70 videos. I was excited to see some of my favorite poets captured in candid conversations. I was also surprised that I hadn’t known about this archive previously. I felt (and still do) that this archive should be a staple in Latinx literary studies.
Francisco presented the task of developing a way to amplify the archive as one of the projects to complete during my fellowship. I suggested that we compose short, digestible “trailers” to entice viewers, with the ultimate goal of having folks explore the archive further. My brother, Kent Ameneyro, is a filmmaker, so it was an opportunity to collaborate with him. I refined the idea and included it in a proposal I wrote for the Poetry Foundation’s Equity in Verse grant. We were awarded the grant, and so the project was born: Ten Takes from the Letras Latinas Archive. Production of the trailers, sourcing funding to complete the project, and building a partnership with Poets House took another year and a half. After a long wait, the first profile was published on July 25th, 2024, featuring Urayoán Noel. The profile features a reading from Noel, the trailer highlighting his original Oral History Project interview, and a link to the full interview in the archive. On August 29th, Poets House will publish a profile for Brenda Cárdenas. Every month a new profile will be featured. Below is the full calendar: Urayoán Noel – available to view now Brenda Cárdenas – August 29th, 2024 Roberto Tejada – September 26th, 2024 Elizabeth Acevedo – October 21st, 2024 Carmen Giménez – November 28th, 2024 Juan Felipe Herrera – December 26th, 2024 Ada Limón – January 30th, 2025 Rigoberto González – February 27th, 2025 Francisco X. Alarcón – March 27th, 2025 Rhina P. Espaillat – April 24th, 2025
Brent Ameneyro is the author of the chapbook Puebla (Ghost City Press, 2023) and the collection A Face Out of Clay (The Center for Literary Publishing, 2024). He is the 2022–2023 Letras Latinas Poetry Coalition Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor at The Los Angeles Review.