ABOUT THE POET:

Born in Manatí, Puerto Rico and raised in the North End of Springfield, Massachusetts, María Luisa Arroyo is a poet, translator, and an educator. Educated at Colby, Tufts, and Harvard, María has taught students German as a graduate student at Tufts and Harvard and German, Spanish, Creative Writing, and English Composition at community colleges. A 2004 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist grant winner in poetry, María facilitates Spanish-language and English-language workshops with poets of all ages and at all stages and performs her poetry at local and regional venues. Many of María's poems have been published in literary journals such as The Bilingual Review, CALYX, The Women's Review of Books, and Facets: A Literary Magazine.

María Luisa Arroyo's poetic statement:

"Writing poetry is not isolated from the acts of reading, teaching, and performing it. Whenever I teach workshops - whether to fifth graders or to community college students whose ages range from 18 to 75 -, participants immediately understand this as we work together to build a temporary community of poets from a random group of strangers.

"Regardless of the age or stage, as established poets or poets-in-progress, we must open ourselves up to listen with intent to each other's works, to respond truthfully and respectfully, to learn how to discern between true sentiment and sentimentality in our own work and in the works of others, and to never apologize for the sound of one's own voice nor for the subject matter that one chooses.

"Becoming a poet means to learn how to claim one's authentic voice;  to access and navigate through one's poetic landscape - be it through memory, experience, moments of witness, one's pure imagination or a combination of them all; to develop one's craft by reading widely and writing regularly; and  to be open to the idea that sources of inspiration for poems exist everywhere. "