Originally released as a bilingual collection in 1989 by Stephen Kessler’s Alcatraz Editions, Juan Felipe Herrera wrote the poems of AKRILICA starting in 1977, occasioned by the energy and dialogue that he encountered upon meeting writer and coconspirator Francisco X. Alarcon (1954-2016). Through a new interview included here and through his own Visual Introduction, archival photographs from his travels across the Americas, and new art created in conversation with the collection, Herrera offers a rich set of references, inspirations, and influences that shaped AKRILICA while sharing his take on this singular book’s place in his development as a poet and multimedia artist. This new edition and new translation of AKRILICA arrives now to expand the political and artistic possibilities that form our current horizon. This project is not one of inclusion or recovery. This is a project of retrieval. We steal AKRILICA away from literary institutions, away from the discipline of literature as such, and away from traditions of experimental poetics that should hope to claim it. Oriented toward the liveliness of the imagination, committed to fundamentally changing itself in order to meet the moment, AKRILICA belongs somewhere else; it belongs in the hands of those finding one another in a gathering that has yet to take place.

Edited by Anthony Cody, Carmen Gimenez, & Farid Matuk

Poetry. Latinx Studies.