Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors (CALMA), MSU Denver Journey Through Our Heritage, and the Denver Woman’s Press Club will celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with a tribute honoring Chicano Poet Abelardo “Lalo” Barrientos Delgado, Sat. Oct. 5th from 9 am to 4 pm at the MSU Denver School of Music building at 800 Kalamath Street, Denver, CO.
The day’s events include: Keynote speaker, Poet Laureate of Lafayette, Colorado, ZBassSpeaks (also known as Z), Unknown Poets Contest Winners, PoeJazz: featuring Dr. Ramón Del Castillo, Donnie Lucero and Freddy Rodríguez, Jr., Special tributes: Dr. Renee Fajardo, Dr. Christina Sigala, & the Delgado Family. Also featuring poetry workshops with Dr. Ricardo Bogaert-Alvarez: “Teaching Tanka: You Can Write Poetry Too!) and Evolution of Chicano Poetry with Ricardo LaFore and poets Margie Domingo, Elena Guerrero-Townsend, ZBassSpeaks and Kenny Perez.
Delgado taught at MSU Denver’s Chicano/a Studies Department for 17 years. From 2006 up until 2019 they held an annual poetry festival to honor the poet. Covid created a vacancy that CALMA wanted to fill again, thanks to a grant from the Colorado Humanities their vision is coming to fruition.
In 2004, Delgado was posthumously named Denver’s first Poet Laureate by Mayor John Hickenlooper. He was a 2023 inductee into the Colorado Authors Hall of Fame. Considered the grandfather of Chicano Poetry and a major contributor to the Chicano Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Delgado was known as a poet of the people. Demonstrating the power of the pen and how anyone can advocate for social justice, he was as determined as he was prolific.
The fact that at one time, publishers did not accept Chicano literature as a legitimate literary art form, never dissuaded Delgado from publishing. He made poetry available to his community by xeroxing his poems and selling them for 10 cents. Writing in Spanish, English, and a combination of both, he legitimized “Spanglish”. During his lifetime he published 14 volumes of poetry. His frustrations over the inequities facing Chicanos, illegal immigrants, and others who were socially disenfranchised prompted his most famous poem “stupid america,” published in 1969.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information, email Ricardo LaFore, 720-351-8119 info@calmaco.org. RSVP: https://events.humanitix.com/lalo-delgado-poetry-festival/tickets.
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