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It’s National Poetry Month, and San Antonio goes all in.
The local nonprofit URBAN-15 presents its Mega Corazón poetry marathon on April 16, starting at 8 p.m. It’s a non-stop 24/7 stream of nearly four hours of poetry.
Eighteen area poets, including past and present Texas and San Antonio poets laureate, read more than 100 poems on a video stream that will run 24/7 until the end of the month.
Participating poets include Carmen Tafolla, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, Anthony “The Poet” Flores, and Eddie Vega.
Mega Corazón is previewed here by George Cisneros, music & media director of URBAN-15, and San Antonio Poet Laureate Eddie Vega, in conversation with TPR’s Norma Martinez.
Cisneros: Oh, we started [Mega Corazón] in 2016, and it was an outgrowth of the first poet laureate of San Antonio, Carmen Tafolla. And Carmen's was a piece called Mi Pueblo, and we did it at the Guadalupe [Theater]. And it was 14 poets, and Carmen commissioned me to write the music.
And as a result of it, we formed a core group of poets that worked together and that was the origins of it. And that group now has worked together on several things, and we became part of National Poetry Month very early on, the first year.
The circle of poets, as a few come in every year, we bring a few new ones. And other people say, "I can't." We're probably getting close to 60 poets now that have gone through Mega Corazón.
Martinez: So is it a pretty quick answer when you do a call out for poets who when you want them to come onboard to the next Mega Corazón?
Cisneros: Well, it's very interesting. The process we use is we do a call out and we require them to send in at least a 90-second video of them performing, and then a letter of recommendation, and a conversation. They see this as a very important thing.
And every year we used to have one or two new people come in. And this year, Alejandra Alanís is the new person that came in.
Martinez: Eddie, when did you come on board?
Vega: I…probably about maybe 2018. And it was Carmen Tafolla who brought me in, actually. I was her mentee in a program through Gemini Ink, and somewhere in that process, she says, “Oh, you've got to come in and do Mega Corazón.”
And when Carmen Tafolla asks you to do something poetically, I just [say], “Yes, ma'am.”
Martinez: Poetry is a very performative art. It's not just words on a page. And so this is a video stream of these poets that's going to be running 24 hours. What did you contribute, Eddie?
Vega: I contributed five poems this year. George asked us to do four poems of our own, and then one of somebody else that we want to honor for National Poetry Month. So I put four of my poems together.
I always like going to record at Urban 15, because every year for Mega Corazón, George changes the backdrop and makes a really cool backdrop. So it's always kind of like an excitement of like, “what are we going to be recorded in front of this time?”
Martinez: George, tell us about the recording process this year. How did that go? Take us behind the scenes.
Cisneros: Okay, there is a different performance discipline that's needed to record in a room without an audience. Poets feed off of an audience, so it takes a certain kind of preparation, and over the years, people have been learning how to prepare.
And this year was amazing. Of the 18 poets that came in, we almost had nothing beyond a second take. And sometimes we'd have take six, take seven. But this year, everybody came in a little bit more disciplined.
And we were realizing this might easily be the last Mega Corazón.
Martinez: Ever?
Cisneros: Ever.
Martinez: Why?
Cisneros: The situation that we have at a funding level, censorship level, concern that many of the topics we speak of, from the heart — the big heart — in San Antonio, are not necessarily seen as humane reality.
We have a very gentle society here in San Antonio. It's a lot of heart, and that's not necessarily a valued character trait anymore, to be generous and empathetic and have your eyes open.
So we all, we're running on the concept of, “this could be the last one,” and all the poets got very serious. That this is a true portrait of where we are in the year 2025 in San Antonio.
Vega: So if you are doing poetry in San Antonio, you are doing poetry of your own heart, of your own community, of your own culture, of your own language. And this is who we represent when we're doing poetry here in town, just like any other poet anywhere else is representing their own culture, their own community.
But when you translate that to a larger level, when that world opens up, all of a sudden, it might look that we're trying to do something that's diverse and equitable and inclusive, which we probably are, but we're just representing who we are as a people, and we're not necessarily trying to be activists with our poems.
Maybe our own communication and our own self is, in some ways, the activism, or what's considered to be activistic.
Martinez: I don't know if I've really ever heard of a sense of fear being a shadow over many poets, but from what I'm hearing right now, it does seem like that is actually a reality in the world we're living now.
Vega: Right. As a poet, it's not so much that I have a fear — “I'm going to say what I want to say.” As somebody who's involved in the arts and who has to curate art programs and look for funding for different programs, now there's a little bit more of a…I'm not going to say “fear.” I'm going to say a trepidation of some sort.
Martinez: Well, Eddie, did you happen to bring anything that you maybe would like to read for us?
Vega: Yeah.
Cisneros: They're good.
Vega: So this is the "Ode to the Empanada." [reads poem]
Martinez: And full disclosure, I had an empanada de calabaza just yesterday, and an empanada de manzana this morning. Well, George, give us the details on the Mega Corazón launching tonight.
Cisneros: Yeah, we go up at eight o'clock Central Standard Time. And we always make sure that we say, “Central Standard Time,” because people are watching from throughout the world. We go up at eight o'clock tonight, and you go to urban15.org/live-stream. There's a little button up there also, and we do hyphenate “live-stream.” So it's really easy. Just check our website, urban15.org. A lot of stuff [is going on] between now and eight o'clock.
