05 Apr Everyday We Get More Illegal by Juan Felipe Herrera

About the Poet

photo credit Carlos Puma

Juan Felipe Herrera was the 21st U.S. Poet Laureate from 2015-2017, the first Latino to receive this honor. The son of migrant farm workers, he was educated at UCLA and Stanford University, and received his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His numerous poetry collections include Everyday We Get More Illegal (City Lights Publishing, 2020) , Notes on the Assemblage (2015), 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007 (2007), Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008), and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1999), and Notes on the Assemblage was named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Library Journal, NPR, and BuzzFeed. In addition to publishing more than a dozen collections of poetry, Herrera has written short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature.

In 2012, Herrera was named California’s poet laureate. He has won the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Focal Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN West Poetry Award. In April 2016, Herrera received the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times. His other honors include the UC Berkeley Regent’s Fellowship as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Stanford Chicano Fellows. More recently, in 2021 he received Los Angeles Review of Books/UC Riverside Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award, The Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry in 2023, and in 2024 was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. His poetry collection Half of the World in Light was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize in 2009.

He has also received several grants from the California Arts Council.

Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. His creative work often crosses genres, including poetry, opera, and dance theater. His children’s book, The Upside Down Boy (2000), was adapted into a musical. His books for young people have won several awards, including Calling the Doves (2001), winner of the Ezra Jack Keats Award, and CrashBoomLove (1999), a novel-in-verse for young adults, which won the Americas Award. Herrera lives in Fresno, CA.

This poem is the title poem of his 2020 collection Everyday We Get More Illegal (City Lights Publishing).

Related Event

• • The Buffalo AKG Art Museum is pleased to announce a special poetry reading by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, who wrote two beautiful poems featured in the exhibition Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way on Friday, April 17, 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

    Kicking off the day, local poets from Los Artistas del Barrio Buffalo will set the stage with select poetry readings from their own collections. Following the readings, Herrera will be signing copies of his books.

    The event will take place in the Lipsey Auditorium of Seymour H. Knox Building and Wilson Town Square at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 1280 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. It is free and open to the public.

    Prior to the reading on Thursday, April 16, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera will lead an Exhibition Walk-through & Poetry Workshop in conjunction with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum’s ongoing exhibit Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way, in which two poems of his are featured and provide the exhibit’s title. The workshop is also free and open to the public, but registration is required. Visit buffaloakg.org/events to register.

  The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.