Your daily dose of Chicano poetry
"I write poems on walls that crumble and fall
I talk to shadows that sleep and go away crying.”
Luis Omar Salinas (1937–2008)
Ron Arias: Notebooks a family obsession
As near as I can tell, my writing habit began more than a hundred years ago on a cattle ranch in northern Mexico. That was when my grandmother, at seven years of age, wrote three words in a little notebook her mother, Cristina Terrazas, had given her: hoy murio mama. No capital H, no accent marks, no other details–little Julia Terrazas simply wanted to record that her mother had just died.
Ron Arias (born November 20, 1941) is a highly regarded Chicano writer whose novel The Road to Tamazunchale has been called “one of the founding texts in Contemporary Chicano/a Literature.” He is also a retired senior writer and correspondent for People magazine.
Mármol Prize for Latina/o First Fiction
Deadline: December 31, 2008
Previous prize winners
Rigoberto González: On Being a Chicano Poet
Read González’s essay in its entirety HERE. IT was published in November 2006 at PoetryFoundation.org

Rigoberto González is the author of six books, most recently the poetry collection, Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (Tupelo Press), and the memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (U of Wisconsin Press). The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, he is contributing editor for Poets and Writers, a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and is on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/ Latino activist writers. Photo © Marion Ettlinger.
Call for Proposals
I Was Never A Militant Chicano by Reyes Cardenas
I Was Never A Militant Chicano (Reyes Cardenas’ 80’s poem), performed by David Garza (on guitar) and his brother Joel at the Hecho En Texas show in Dallas, Tx on May 3, 2008.