Raquel Salas Rivera
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Poet Laureate of Philadelphia
& winner of the 2018 Ambroggio Prize! 
Winning me over entirely with their fiercely rendered tenderness and emergent sense of a simultaneously tough and tender I, these poems and their speaker are, to use so simple a word for so complex a world, strong. Strong. —Alberto Ríos, winner of the Walt Whitman Award Raquel opens to us, and we join them—as friends, as family, as warriors. Their investment in strength in numbers means that collectively these poems become more and more powerful, each one drawing on the strength of the other. And this investment means that we draw power from becoming a part of Raquel’s world. Raquel calls to us “come here/ i invoke you. let’s invoke ourselves together,” and together, we do." —Carmen Giménez Smith, Boston Review "Poet's Sampler" introduction |
Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia and a CantoMundo Fellow. Their work has appeared in journals such as the Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Apogee, McSweeney’s, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, and has been featured on the Academy of American Poets website.
They are the author of Caneca de anhelos turbios (Editora Educación Emergente), oropel/tinsel (Lark Books), tierra intermitente (Ediciones Alayubia), and lo terciario/the tertiary (Timeless, Infinite Light) a longlist selection for the 2018 National Book Award. Their collection x/ex/exis (poemas para la nación) (poems for the nation) was selected by Alberto Ríos as the winner of the 2018 Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Currently, Raquel serves as an organizer, editor, and translator for Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. Twitter: @rugamarspr 
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Like no poet I have ever read, Raquel Salas Rivera talks to Marx via the monstrous colonial devastation of Puerto Rico. This genius poet also speaks to Trotsky who said workers could not make art. Here is one of the most riveting, beautifully written declarative poetics of our lives! A fierce document that fully transfers its radical transformative powers into our bones! —CA Conrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death |