Valerie Martínez

Life

Valerie Martinez was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico and descends from Tewa and Dine (Navajo) ancestors as well as the 16th century Spanish colonizers of the Southwest U.S. She left New Mexico in 1979 to attend Vassar College and received her B.A. in English/American Literature in 1983. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry in 1989 from the University of Arizona.

Before returning to New Mexico to settle permanently in 2003, Martinez traveled widely in the U.S. and Europe as well as Mexico, Israel, Japan, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. For three years (1993-1995) she lived in Swaziland where she taught English in elementary and middle schools. Since 2003 she has traveled to Peru, Germany, Belgium, Russia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia. Her travels have had a significant impact on her creative work.

Martinez is the author of five books of poetry, two chapbooks, and one book of translations.

Each and Her (winner of the 2011 Arizona Book Award) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, the William Carlos William Award, the National Book Critics Circle award, the PEN Open Book Award, the Ron Ridenhour Prize (among other honors) and was an honorable mention in the 2011 International Latino Book Awards. Each and Her is a book-length, collage poem which addresses the murders of women in Juarez, Mexico, as well as the phenomenon of femicide. It continues to receive wide acclaim and is taught in Latino Literature, Women's Literature and other literature classes nationwide.

Martinez's first book of poetry, Absence, Luminescent (Four Way Books 1999), won the Larry Levis Prize and a Greenwall Grant from the Academy of American Poets after being a finalist in the Walt Whitman, National Poetry Series, and Intro Award competitions. Prize judge Jean Valentine praised the book thus: "Valerie Martinez 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." A second edition of the book was published in 2010.

Martinez's second book, World to World, was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2004 and her translations of the poetry of Uruguay’s Delmira Agustini (1886-1914), A Flock of Scarlet Doves, was published in special edition by Sutton Hoo Press in 2005. A collection of poems about Santa Fe, New Mexico (written during her tenure as Poet Laureate of Santa Fe), And They Called it Horizon, was published by Sunstone Press in 2010.

Martinez's chapbook-length hybrid work (poetry & prose), "A Hundred Little Mouths," premiered in November 2015 with Susan Silton's "Whistling Project" at SITE Santa Fe. Her long poem, "This is How it Began," a creation story about the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was published by the Press of the Palace of the Governors in 2010, at the end of her tenure as Santa Fe Poet Laureate.

Martinez’s poetry, translations, and essays have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines including Poetry, The American Poetry Review; Parnassus; The Colorado Review; Puerto del Sol; The Notre Dame Review; Mandorla, Tiferet, The Bloomsbury Review, and AGNI. Her work appears in many anthologies of contemporary poetry, including The Best American Poetry; New American Poets--A Breadloaf Anthology; American Poetry--Next Generation, Touching the Fire--Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance and Renaming Ecstasy--Latino Writings on the Sacred. Martínez also served as assistant editor of the anthology Reinventing the Enemy’s Language--Contemporary Writing by Native Women of North America (Norton 1997) and an essay about Joy Harjo (along with poems by Harjo and Martínez) appears in the anthology Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (University of Iowa Press, 2008). Valerie’s poem “September, 2001” was featured in the Washington Post’s “Poet’s Choice” Series (September 2009). An animated version of Valerie’s poem, “Bowl,” appears in the Poetry Everywhere Series (PBS/The Poetry Foundation) and has been put to music by composer Glen Rover and sung by soprano Talise Trevigne on her acclaimed CD, At the Statue of Venus (GPR Records).

Martinez taught for over 22 years as a college/university professor with emphases in Poetry, American Literature, Women's Literature, Native American Literature and Latino/a Literature. At the College of Santa Fe (where she finished her academic career as a tenured faculty member in 2009) she was the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies, creating cross-disciplinary programs in Southwest Studies and Humanities. Her academic work includes dozens of literary papers, workshops and conference panels.

While in academia, Martinez also directed a wide range of community outreach programs engaging communities with poetry. She left academia in 2009 to focus on arts and community engagement work.

Martinez joined Littleglobe, Inc. in 2007 as a member of an interdisciplinary artist team for the "Memorylines" project--producing a new opera in creative collaboration with 38 community members in Santa Fe. She was a Core Artist and Executive Director with Littleglobe from 2008-2015. In 2015 she founded Artful Life, an Albuquerque-based organization that works with hundreds of community members and artist teams to transform communities through the beauty and power of collaborative art. Since 2008, Valerie has served as a project director for large-scale arts and community engagement projects including Stories of Route 66: The International District; El Puente (in the Barelas and South Valley neighborhoods of Albuquerque); Margin to Margin, End to End: The Santa Fe Bus Opera; Rivers Run Through Us; Lines and Circles: A Celebration of Santa Fe Families, EKCO, and Women & Creativity.

Martinez is also a collaborative artist who works with other writers, visual artists, dancers, singers, composers and actors in a wide range of creative projects, including Susan Silton's Whistling Project, Polyphony, Salve: Women on War and Warriorship, and through the EKCO Poetry Project.

In 2014 Martinez received a Creative Bravos Award for her extraordinary contributions to Albuquerque's creative economy. In 2009 Martinez was awarded the Albuquerque Journal/SAGE Magazine award, honoring “Twenty Women Who Have Made a Difference.” Martinez and Shelle Van Etten de Sanchez delivered a 2014 TEDx ABQ talk entitled: "Collaboration Driven by Imagination" on September 6, 2014 in Albuquerque.

Published Works

Full-Length Poetry Collections

Chapbooks

Translations

Anthologies Edited

Honors & Awards