Forthcoming, October 2010:

And They Called It Horizon: Santa Fe Poems, Sunstone Press, 2010.

During her two-year tenure as Santa Fe’s Poet Laureate, award-winning poet Valerie Martínez appeared at over 45 public events—in schools, museums, cafés, galleries; in public parks and local banks and libraries; for children, youth, adults, and families. While traversing the city, she was writing about it—occasional poems, meditations, narratives, lyric poems—that capture the present and past of the capital city and its people. Drawings by Linda Swanson (whose work is in the permanent collections of The Brooklyn Museum and The Newark Museum) accompany the poems and capture the tenderness and beauty of family life.

“With the publication of this book, Valerie Martínez has established herself as the Poet of Santa Fe. In poems of limpid clarity, compelling force and distinctive artistry she sings her love for this land and its people; but there is more. The days and years of Santa Fe, portrayed in knowing detail, form the center; but the perimeter is boundless.”  --Roberts French

                                                                                                                                                                                                          Drawing by Linda Swanson ©2008         

In Print:

This is How It Began, Palace of the Governor's Press (limited edition),

March 2010

The Press at the Palace of the Governors has completed its newest book, a limited edition of This is How It Began, by Santa Fe Poet Laureate Valerie Martínez. The hand-bound book, printed in two colors on a variety of warm-toned papers, represents the working-press side of the Palace Press, which also exhibits materials from New Mexico’s publishing past.

Tom Leech, who directs the activities of the Press, said “the rich literary legacy of New Mexico was nurtured in its early years by artisan printers. Our commitment to the Santa Fe Poet Laureate program acknowledges and celebrates that tradition. Valerie’s beautiful poem about Santa Fe, from the creation to the present, really feels at home in the pages of this book. I’m very pleased to have had the opportunity to show off the craftsmanship and talents of our staff and volunteers who worked on the book.”

Lines & Circles: A Celebration of Santa Fe Families, Sunstone Press, January 2010.

As Poet Laureate for the City of Santa Fe, Valerie brought together three generations of 11 Santa Fe families to compose/create unique family “works” (story, short film, photograph, woodwork, quilt, sculpture, pottery, recording, etc.) as well as original poems.  The families worked inter-generationally, with the Poet Laureate and (periodically), in company with each other.  The finished pieces constitute an exhibit entitled “Lines & Circles:  A Celebration of Santa Fe Families” that premiers on January 15, 2010 in an exhibition that runs through March 19, 2010 at the Santa Fe Arts Commission Gallery at the Santa Fe Convention Center. This book describes the project, profiles the families, and features a wealth of old and new family photos, genealogical charts,  the family artwork and poems, and more.  Sabrina Pratt, Executive Director of the Santa Fe Arts Commission says, of the project: "Poet Laureate Valerie Martínez’s community project is outstanding in its deep engagement with Santa Fe families. Readers of this book will find that her work is a model for community-based projects. It has resulted in the gathering of community members to prepare work that reflects the lives of the dozen families and thereby Santa Fe at-large. The Arts Commission is extremely proud of this project, which helps us to meet our goal of creating access to the arts for Santa Feans."

World to World (poems), University of Arizona Press, 2004

"A brave and beautiful voice."--Demetria Martínez

"Lush and lovely poems which speak the secret languages of desire."--Lisa D. Chávez

From the back cover: "In her second collection of poems, Valerie Martinez builds on the artistic command of language that characterized her award-winning first volume, Absence, Luminescent.  Taking on not only such familiar themes as love and loss, family and culture, but also the creative act of poetry itself.  World to World crosses new boundaries to chart a mature poet's awareness of her own voice and style...Here are the strange and provocative landscapes of the body and its disappearance...of matter and absence of matter...of what is formed and what is falling from form.  Throughout this compelling cycle, her deft manipulations of poetic structure disclose the boundaries where flesh, matter, and language become spirit, space, and 'cataratical brilliance.' "

A Flock of Scarlet Doves: Selected Translations of Delmira Agustini

(Uruguay 1886-1914), Sutton Hoo Press 2005

From the introduction:  "Delmira Agustini, along with Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, and Juana de Ibarbourou, is one of the most important poets of early twentieth century Latin American literature.  Although Agustini's career was short [she died before her 28th birthday], her influence on Latin American letters is significant...[Agustini's] vision, which grew more fervent as her short career developed, ultimately explores the terrain between the magnetic poles of human passion--innocence and desire, attraction and escape, soul and flesh, feminine and masculine--in an effort to depict the tension between them, their complex and charged (dis)harmony.  In this way, she stands distinctly apart from Latin American poetry that came before her and serves to redefine, in a radical way, female poetic consciousness at the turn of the twentieth century."

Absence, Luminescent (poems), Four Way Books 1999

"Larry Levis's poems are full of passion, mystery, and conscience, so it is a deep joy that this prize, given in his name, should go to a poet like him in those ways.  Valerie Martínez has written an extraordinary book:  these poems are expansive, surprising, intelligent; her subjects are as alive as her language.  Her willingness to take risks is uncommon, and so is her compassion; she doesn't shy away from pain, and she lives in the poet's task of praise.  I once asked a poet what she wanted of poetry, and she said, 'Experience.' Absence, Luminescent embodies experience, and the authority of experience:  these poems are moving, mysterious, passionate, and written for the sake of something larger than ourselves."--Jean Valentine, judge, Larry Levis Prize, 1999.

Reinventing the Enemy's Language:  Contemporary Writing by Native Women of North America, Norton & Norton, 1997 

Edited by Joy Harjo & Gloria Bird.  Assistant Editors Valerie Martínez and Patricia Blanco.

"Clearly one of the most significant anthologies ever to be published in English...A book I have been yearning for all my life."--Alice Walker

"A collection of important, eloquent, and often mesmerizing writings...A profoundly moving statement of resilience and renewal."--San Francisco Chronicle

Winner of a Myers Outstanding Book Award, presented through the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America.

Efforts and Affections: Women Poets on Mentorship, University of Iowa Press, 2008 

Edited by Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg, with an essay by Valerie Martínez about Joy Harjo, and poems by Harjo and Martínez.

"I know of no other book like this one. It sheds light not on one woman poet or one facet of 'women's poetry,' but on the many ways the poetic tradition is handed down from one writer to another. The multiplicity of voices in this book along with the wide variety of aesthetics and backgrounds of the contributors make it unique in the field. It is a significant and needed contribution."—Kevin Prufer, editor, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing

"Much has been written by and about women poets and women's poetry, but this is the first that addresses the topic of mentorship in a way that expands what we mean by 'tradition.' No other book looks at the question of how tradition moves from one generation to the next, from the younger generation's point of view. My own poetry students have talked about the need for exactly such a book. Women Poets on Mentorship will be important to today's (and tomorrow's) poetry community, as well as to women's studies."—Alicia Ostriker, author, Writing Like a Woman and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America

Contributors include Jenny Factor on Marilyn Hacker, Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel, Miranda Field on Fanny Howe, Katie Ford on Jorie Graham, Joy Katz on Sharon Olds, Valerie Martínez on Joy Harjo, Erika Meitner on Rita Dove, Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye, Eleni Sikelianos on Alice Notley, Tracy K. Smith on Lucie Brock-Broido, Crystal Williams on Lucille Clifton, and Rebecca Wolff on Molly Peacock.

Arielle Greenberg is an assistant professor in the poetry programs at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches in the Department of English and is assistant director of poetry programs. She is the author of two poetry collections, My Kafka Century and Given, and the editor of Youth Subcultures: Exploring Underground America. She lives with her family in Evanston, Illinois. Rachel Zucker is the author of Eating in the Underworld, The Last Clear Narrative, and The Bad Wife Handbook. She was recently the poet-in-residence at Fordham University. She lives with her family in New York City.

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