Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/01/2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Add event to your calendar
Location
Light Hall Theater
900 W. College Avenue
- Silver City, NM
Join WNMU on March 1st at 7 pm to listen to Albuquerque poet Jimmy Santiago Baca.
- He will read from his work at WNMU’s Light Hall theater.
- After the reading at Light Hall, several of Baca’s books will be for sale. Attendees may also buy a book to be given to an inmate at GCDC.
- This event is funded by a collaboration between the Humanities and Behavioral Sciences department.
Baca was born in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, in 1952.
Abandoned by his parents at the age of two, he lived with one of his grandmothers for several years before being placed in an orphanage and at the age of 13.
Soon after he ran away and wound up living on the streets, and at the age of twenty-one he was convicted on charges of drug possession and incarcerated.
He served six and a half years in prison, three of them in isolation.
During this time, Baca taught himself to read and write, and he began to compose poetry.
He sold these poems to fellow inmates in exchange for cigarettes.
A fellow inmate convinced him to submit some of his poems to the magazine Mother Jones, then edited by Denise Levertov.
Levertov printed Baca’s poems and began corresponding with him, eventually finding a publisher for his first book