Promoting literacy, culture and the arts to the UTRGV community, the Festival of International Books and Arts (FESTIBA) hosted Mexican poet Estrella Del Valle and Dominican poet María Palitachi Thursday evening on the Brownsville campus.
Students, faculty and fellow writers attended the event held in the Main Building’s Salón Cassia, where the poets spoke about topics relating to their work.
The event began with Del Valle, a native of Córdoba, Veracruz, Mexico. She told the audience about her upbringing and her journey as a poet. She has published five poetry books and is working on her sixth.
Del Valle shared the subjects of her work, like the collection of love poems titled, “Bajo la luna de Aholiba,” as well as “Fábula para los cuervos,” written about her family, and “La cortesana de Dannan,” about her life and struggles.
The poet described that in her early writings, she drew all the attention to herself, as if the sun revolved around her.
It wasn’t until Del Valle left to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, that her writing inspiration changed.
“When I left my city and moved to Juárez, I wrote another book and it won the Premio Latinoamericano de Poesía Benemérito de América in Oaxaca. That book is called ‘El desierto; Dolores,’ and that’s when I started to write about what I was seeing around me,” Del Valle said in Spanish.
Del Valle spoke about her transition to the United States. Her book, “Vuelo México-Los Ángeles. Puerta 23”, shed a light on her journey in a foreign land and the hardship that came along with it.
“After I moved to Los Angeles, everything was a cultural shock to me. In Mexico, everybody knew and loved me,” Del Valle said. “When I got to L.A., that’s when I truly understood what it meant to be Mexican. It didn’t matter how educated I was or how many books I had written.”
Del Valle concluded her presentation by reading a few poems from a work in progress that she hopes to release this year, titled “Calima,” which was inspired by the “Planet of the Apes.”
A native of the Dominican Republic, poet María Palitachi read a reflection of her home country’s literature. The poet opened her presentation by explaining that the island’s work was not as known as it deserves to be.
Palitachi is a member of “Dominican Poets USA” and she is the author of the books “My Little Paradise,” “Amongst Voice and Spaces” and “Laberinto de la Espera,” among others.
Asked about her inspiration, the author replied that in 2016 she drew ideas from many places.
“I published three books, in a trilogy, so it’s hard to tell because each one of them has a different voice,” Palitachi said. “One is about love, one is social and the third one is a game I did.”
Her book, “Once puntos de luz (Eleven) Spotlights,” is composed of 11 verses and each can be read top to bottom, bottom to top and from the center out. That is the game to which Palitachi is referring.
Palitachi said she writes every day.
“I don’t let a day go by without writing something,” she said. “I’m very weird. I could be in a bathroom, on a balcony, on the beach. I spend a lot of time at the beach in the Dominican [Republic]. … I could even write a poem right here. … I function differently. I listen to people talk and I hear poetry. I could be writing a poem and then I hear somebody speak and then I hear a verse and I’ll write it on another page.”
