Join Valerie on Instagram with posts dedicated to her book-length poem, COUNT
Sunday, April 30, 2023: 1 pm MST, Albuquerque Museum, Join us for a reading from Count, by Valerie, as well as excerpts from the world premiere of “As the Waters Began to Rise,” a work for voices by composer Peter Gilbert, featuring sections from Martinez’s book-length poem and performed by Ekmeles on April 7, 2022. Learn more.
Take a generative craft intensive with Valerie at the Taos Writers Conference, on Friday, July 7, 2023. Valerie's last two books of poetry have been book-length projects – one about femicide (Each and Her) and the other about climate change/disruption (Count). During this intensive, poets will consider and explore a book-length poetry project by engaging in brainstorming for potential topics, a mapping exercise (writing, drawing), reading from book-length works, and bursts of free writing. The intensive will also address the particular challenges of writing a book-length poem and its particular pleasures, including research, sustaining a large project, composition/ arrangement, and revision. Poets will leave the intensive with the beginnings of their own book-length poem. Learn more.
Valerie's essay, "Peopleness: Ethnicity and the Latinx Poem," appears in the new anthology, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (University of New Mexico Press, 2022). Learn more here.
Valerie's ekphrastic poem, "Granite Weaving" (based on Jesus Moroles's granite sculpture by the same name), appears in the new How to Read (and Write About) Poetry by Susan Holbrook (Broadview Press 2022, second edition, page 44). The poem original appeared in Poetry magazine, March 2016.
Watch a reading from Count, Valerie's new book, and conversation with Rigoberto Gonzalez, Puerto del Sol Series editor at the University of Arizona Press.
VALERIE MARTÍNEZ