ALBUQUERQUE — In introducing Jimmy Santiago Baca this past Saturday, V.B. Price proclaimed to a packed house: "Many of us here would agree, poetry has saved our lives."

 

For Baca, a native New Mexican, few words are more true.

 

A Chicano poet renowned in literary circles for his lyrical and autobiographical verse, Baca is also known for his deep roots within the community and a philosopy of giving back.

 

Unlike many professional wordsmiths, he found his way to poetry through the the school of hard knocks — and prison — rather than the rarefied environs of academia.

 

His life story, in fact, appears to be a ready-made movie in the tradition of "Pinero", the 2001 film about the Puerto Rican poet Miguel Pinero, who helped found the Nuyerican Poets Cafe and who, like Baca, won acclaim as a poet and former inmate.

Baca often attributes his passion for writing to reading verse, especially the poems of Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda and Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca.

As Santiago Baca’s website tells it:

 

A runaway at age 13, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison that he began to turn his life around: he learned to read and write and unearthed a voracious passion for poetry. During a fateful conflict with another inmate, Jimmy was shaken by the voices of Neruda and Lorca, and made a choice that would alter his destiny. Instead of becoming a hardened criminal, he emerged from prison a writer.

The New Mexico Independent caught up with Baca this past Saturday as he was speaking as part of UNM’s Summer Sunset Lecture Series.

 

Baca, who was born in Santa Fe, explained, "Poetry is the bolt of truth that wakes us up" as he recounted his discovery of literature and poetry while serving a six-year prison sentence. "After about four years in prison you begin to engender hatred for society" he said.

 

He explained how a world of possibilities were opened after a death row inmate slipped some Latin American literature under his cell door.

In prison, according to the biography on his website, Baca made an important decision:

 

Baca sent three of his poems to Denise Levertov, the poetry editor of Mother Jones. The poems were published and became part of Immigrants in Our Own Land, published in 1979, the year he was released from prison. He earned his GED later that same year. He is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award and for his memoir A Place to Stand the prestigious International Award. In 2006 he won the Cornelius P. Turner Award. The national award recognizes one GED graduate a year who has made outstanding contributions to society in education, justice, health, public service and social welfare.

Baca has devoted his post-prison life to writing and teaching others who are overcoming hardship. His themes include American Southwest barrios, addiction, injustice, education, community, love and beyond. He has conducted hundreds of writing workshops in prisons, community centers, libraries, and universities throughout the country.

At Saturday’s event, Baca recounted a recent poetry convention in Nicaragua, where a young indigenous boy had won his heart with poetry. He originally thought that the boy’s poem was stolen until "he recited another that was better than the first." The boy would eventually approach Baca while on his way to the poems highlight reading. Baca remembered: "His family were these beautiful people who had skin that looked like copper which had been rubbed with honey for a hundred years."

The boy would eventually convince Baca to allow him to recite poetry alongside the world’s most eminent poets.

As a luminary for the convention, Baca recounted for the audience the many times he has had to answer for U.S. foreign policy around the world. Every poet he interviewed asked him "why is your country doing what it’s doing." While seeing dismembered men walking by in the plaza in Nicaragua, Baca remembers a local ‘comandante’ stating "your taxes did that."

 

Baca read from a variety of his works and allowed a 17-year-old boy whom he mentors to recite a poem in front of the audience.

Encouraging the youth and giving back to the community in order to break down societal barriers were constant themes within Baca’s talk.

In 2005 Baca started Cedar Tree, Inc. to "empower impoverished and imprisoned people through literacy."

Baca was on hand after the event to sign books and talk with the crowd.