Biography of jimmy santiago baca
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Jimmy Santiago Baca
American poet and educator (born )
Jimmy Santiago Baca | |
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Baca during the videotaping of Add-Verse, | |
| Born | () January 2, (age&#;73) Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Notable works | Martin and Meditations on the South Valley |
| Notable awards | American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, International Hispanic Heritage Award, International Award. |
| Spouse | Married |
Jimmy Santiago Baca (born January 2, ) is an American poet, memoirist, and screenwriter from New Mexico.[1][2]
Early life and education
[edit]Baca was born in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, in Abandoned bygd his parents at the age of two, he lived with one of his grandmothers for several years before being placed in an orphanage. At the age of 13 he ran away and wound up living on the streets. When he was 21, he was convicted on charges of drug possession and incarcerated. He served five years in prison,[3] three of them in isolation, and
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POETRY
IS LIFE
Jimmy Santiago Baca is an award-winning American poet and writer of Chicano descent.
While serving a five-year sentence in a maximum security prison, he learned to read and began to turn his life around, eventually emerging as a prolific artist of the spoken and written word.
He is a winner of the prestigious International Award for his memoir, “A Place to Stand,” the story of which is now also a documentary by the same title.
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Jimmy Santiago Baca, photographed by Lonnie J. Anderson
WRITERS RETREAT
JUNE
"In June of , fresh and unleashed from America’s covid crisis, a room full of excited poets gathered for the Annual Jimmy Santiago Baca Writer’s Retreat, held at the Albuquerque Museum. Besides the expected daily workshops, we were surprised to receive sessions on ecstatic dancing, hip-hop verses, gardening, native ceremonial movements, and an opportunity to learn a Buddhist chant. In his
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From Prison to Poet
His biography has the outlines of a movie and indeed it has been told in a memoir, “A Place to Stand,” published in , and a documentary film in Born in Santa Fe to a father who drank and was largely absent and a mother who abandoned him and his brother and sister when they were small, he was taken in by his grandparents, then delivered to a Catholic orphanage at age 7, where he lived until he ran away at 13 and was placed in youth detention. At 15, he ran away from there and lived a hand-to-mouth existence, drinking, fighting, getting high, crashing in abandoned homes. Arrested at 17 for a crime he didn’t commit, he spent some time in the county jail before being released. He headed West and was running a lucrative marijuana distribution business in Yuma, Ariz., when he was visiting a heroin dealer’s home as it was raided by federal agents. An agent was shot and Baca was sentenced to five years behind bars for drug possession.
‘I can’t describe how words electr