M. Miriam Herrera, Cherokee poet

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1 M. Miriam Herrera, Cherokee Poet & Educator
2 Poetry
3 Books
4 Anthologies
5 Writing Available Online
6 See Also

[edit] M. Miriam Herrera, Cherokee Poet & Educator

M. Miriam Herrera is a poet and educator of Native American (Cherokee) and Chicano heritage. She received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Herrera has taught creative writing, Latino/Chicano literature, women's studies, and other writing and literature courses with an emphasis on writers-of-color at various colleges and universities, including: the University of Illinois; University of New Mexico, Los Alamos; Santa Fe Community College; and Russell Sage College (NY). At Russell Sage College, Herrera founded the Writing Studio, Medusa Community of Poets and Writers, and the Audre Lorde Poetry Prize.

Herrera was born to natives of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in Sutherland Nebraska while her parents were working in the sugar-beet fields. She was raised in Aurora, Illinois, where her family moved to escape a migratory life of farm work. Herrera's poetry often explores Chicano and Native American culture and myth as well as the enigmatic culture of "conversos," or the Iberians who escaped the Inquisition and settled in the New World--mainly along the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and New Mexico. Herrera writes about the paradoxical nature of identity and the many-layered process one must face to reconcile the splintered parts of one's self, and how a descendant of both Columbus and Native Americans transmutes the pain of ambiguity to become a world citizen. Herrera's poems are rooted in a hybrid of Chicano and indigenous cultures, especially in Native American earth-mysticism as the natural world abounds: earth, sky, stars, and totem figures, such as whales, hummingbirds, and wolves.

[edit] Poetry

Earth's Daughters (Volume 72): "Once I Heard My Father Cry"

Albatross Poetry Journal (Spring 2008): "Elegy for an Angelito"

New Millennium Writings (2006-2007): "In the Calyx"

Artlife: The Original Limited Edition Monthly (Vol. 25, No. 8, Issue No. 273) "Witch Wife"

New Zoo Poetry Review (Vol. 4): "Father's Love Letter"

Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry (Vol. 41, No. 2): "Kaddish for Columbus"

Blue Mesa Review (No. 3): "Kiva at Chaco Canyon"

Ecos: A Latino Journal of People's Culture and Literature (Vol. 2, No. 2): "To Jenny," "First Snow," "Waterfall"; (Vol. 2, No. 1): "Visit Home," "Love Poem for Charles"

Black Maria (Vol. 4, No. 2): "Driving in Fog," "Dream of Three Girls at Play"