Roberto Tejada

👉🏼👉🏼 In time to pre-order for those considering titles for fall 2026 courses. Eager to share that my collected essays on Latin American and Latinx art will be published this summer and can be pre-ordered from Fordham University Press (link in bio). Cover image featuring Celia Álvarez Muñoz and a foreword by Mary K. Coffey. @marycoffey1968 From the Fordham catalog: "With a poet’s eye and a critic’s insight, Guggenheim Fellow and celebrated scholar Roberto Tejada brings together a dynamic collection drawn from decades of lectures, articles, cultural criticism, and catalog essays that reframe our understanding of Latin American and U.S. Latinx art throughout the diaspora." "A landmark work from one of today’s most vital minds in art criticism and cultural thought, Along the Diagonal moves fluidly between close readings of memoir, visual analysis, and political history to offer an expansive and deeply personal journey. Rather than defining Latinx or Latin American art as fixed categories, Tejada explores them as overlapping and diverging trajectories shaped by migration, colonization, media culture, and institutional visibility. He pushes against narrow conceptions of Latinx identity as well as isolated histories of Civil Rights movements to situate artists, works of art, and images in sociopolitical contexts and within a web of identity, memory, and often-contested meanings." "Opening with Celia Álvarez Muñoz’s participatory installation, A Brand New Ball Game, Tejada sets the tone for his diagonal approach: one that favors slantwise perception, speculative connection, and aesthetic risk. From there, the book spans the street-level murals of Chicano Los Angeles, the photobooks of contemporary Brazil, and the multimedia installations of Puerto Rican duo Allora & Calzadilla. Tejada draws on his personal experiences in Mexico City in the 1990s, the theory of Roger Caillois and Vilém Flusser, and the activism of queer and Latinx artists to stage a rich and restless conversation about art as both a record and agent of historical change." @uhenglishdepartment @uh.arch.art.library @uhcwp @uhschoolart @gulfcoastjournal @warholfoundation @uslaforum @guggfellows

Beautiful photos by Nicki Evans of "Undercurrents" the new interactive installation that opens tomorrow Friday at the @buffalobayou @thecistern in Houston. We have converted this breathtaking space into an audiovisual switchboard mixing live and recorded voices, including 27 poems commissioned for the project by Nick Flynn, Aris Kian, Martha Serpas, Jennifer Teets and Roberto Tejada. Photos by @nickievansphoto Nicki Evans.

👉🏼👉🏼 Please join me for a reading on April 30 as part of the The Holloway Poetry Series sponsored by the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, funded through an Endowment made by Roberta C. Holloway in 1981. Thursday April 30, 2026 5:30 – 7:00pm Wheeler Hall Room 315 Maude Fife Room University of California Berkeley

👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼 Please consider supporting Nameless Sound at the 2026 Resounding Vision Awards celebration on Saturday April 18 at 7:00pm (Roots Café at DCH: 5120 Woodway Drive Houston Texas 77056) honoring @ayanna_annaya Ayanna Jolivet McCloud, Israel McCloud and @rbttjd . “From visual communication to poetry to voice to sound to mentorship. How are artists involved in building communities, leading, following, giving voice, nurturing future generations, and providing care for our planet? All three of our honorees have dedicated their lives to doing all of the above—with the sensitivity and the sense of responsibility that comes from knowing that everything we do affects others. Their work is embodied and holistic—lives lived in art. Houston is a better place with their vision and persistence, and we are grateful.” Food, drinks, music, silent auction, award ceremony Attire: Festive Reserved Table for 10 $3,000 Individual Ticket + Sponsor an Artist Ticket $350 Individual Ticket $250 Image 2: Juan Garcia, Roberto Tejada, Rachel Hulsey (They Who Sound, 23 March 2026) photo by Stalina Villarreal @profstalina

👉🏼👉🏼They, Who Sound March 23, 2026 THEY, WHO SOUND on Monday, March 23 will feature: Juan Garcia/Rachel Hulsey/Roberto Tejada & Joe Wozny/Nancy Wozny Juan Garcia (Houston) - double bass Rachel Hulsey (Houston) - synthesizer Roberto Tejada (Houston) - voice, text Joe Wozny (Houston) - voice, text, guitar Nancy Wozny (Houston) - voice, text   �THEY, WHO SOUND Every Monday Concerts are held on every Monday at 7:30pm (doors open at 7pm) at Lawndale Art & Performance Center 4912 Main St. Houston, Texas � They, Who Sound is free of charge. Donations are greatly appreciated. In 2008, trombone player David Dove organized a short series of concerts as a personal DIY project, independent from his work as Founding Director of Nameless Sound. Held at a mid-town Houston bar, Dove had minimal expectations for They, Who Sound. It was casually organized as an opportunity for friends, colleagues, and various Houston experimental musicians to perform with each other and for each other (and for who ever else happened to show up on a Sunday evening). On the afternoon of the third concert, Dove and friends arrived to locked doors. The bar had cancelled They, Who Sound without notice Shortly after this auspicious beginning, the series was moved to Avant-Garden, a Montrose mainstay for diverse crowds and eclectic programming. Under the generous hospitality of owner Mariana Lemesoff (and key bar staff), the weekly series that was meant to last only a few months carried on for 9 years. In those 9 years They, Who Sound not only became the sounding ground for a growing circle of local and regional experimental musicians. It also developed a reputation outside of Houston, as many well-known international artists would play They, Who Sound for their Houston tour stop, often collaborating with local artists. Sometimes They, Who Sound featured seasoned veterans, immediately following a young artist performing their first ever gig. Conversations after concerts were often as important as the performances themselves, and They, Who Sound became a place where new projects and collaborations were born.

👉🏼 👉🏼  My deepest thanks to Dale Martin Smith for the generosity of his attention and insights in this review-essay of Carbonate of Copper (Fordham University Press, 2025), published in Chicago Review. He writes: "Carbonate of Copper audibly charges a visual field that merges in scale and in dislocations of language, earth forms, and people. Tejada’s writing draws substance from auditory and visual stimuli entangled with psychic projection and desire; through bodily senses of sound and sight, the poems articulate a macrocosm of mineral, plant, animal, and human life caught in webs, the 'wireless ether' of systems of control. Poetry becomes a medium through which sonic and visual fields find realization in language. Tejada does not separate his lyric “I” from local and historical environments but instead exposes the ‘I' to these surroundings, while refusing commentary in favor of revelation.” Via Linktree in bio

AWP 2026 is in full swing! 📚🎉 Stop by Booth 835 and say hello—our Editorial Director, Richard Morrison, is on site, and FUP authors will be signing books throughout the day. Take 25% off + free shipping at . Use promo code: AWP2026 at checkout. Join us tomorrow night for readings at Cedar House. Details at the link in bio. @fordham_press #AWP2026 #AWPConference #AWPBookfair #AWP26 #FordhamPress #UniversityPress #IndiePublishing #ScholarlyPublishing #PoetryCommunity #Lithub #WritersCommunity #AWPAuthors #AcademicPublishing #BooksAndIdeas #ReadUP #UniversityPress #ReadUP #Poet #Poems #Baltimore

👉🏼👉🏼 Please join me and my fellow Fordham University Press mates for our book signings and poetry reading at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, which runs March 4-7, 2026 in Baltimore, MD. Book signings will take place at the Fordham University Press table - #T835 Thursday, March 5, 2026: 👉🏼 Henk Rossouw 12:00 p.m. Friday, March 6, 2026 👉🏼 Carol Mavor 12:00 p.m. 👉🏼 Adedayo Agarau 1:00 p.m. Saturday, March 7, 2026 👉🏼 Rosalind Morris 10:00 a.m. 👉🏼 Marcella Durand 11:00 a.m. 👉🏼 Roberto Tejada 12:00 p.m. 👉🏼 Daniel Tiffany 1:00 p.m. Visit the Forhdam University Press Virtual Book Exhibit! Use the promo code AWP2026 to get 25% off all exhibit titles plus free domestic shipping.

In this conversation, writers Robert Tejada and Lisa Olstein discuss their respective work, both of whom examine the meeting place of word and image. Tejada, well known to Houston audiences, addresses his latest work, "Carbonate of Copper" (2025), which brings together lyric poetry, documentary photographs, and lives lived along the U.S.-Mexico borderland. Olstein highlights poems from her newly published work, "Distinguished Office of Echoes" (2025), which is a collection of collage, cutout, and erasure-based poems. Both Tejada and Olstein lean into the intersection of word and image, exploring the revelatory language they make together. A book signing will follow the discussion. #houstonartists #houston #libraries #artistbooks #art @mfahouston

👉🏼👉🏼 Join us next Thursday 12 February 2026 (6:30 PM-7:30 PM) at the Hirsch Library (Museum of Fine Arts Houston) where I’m excited to be in conversation with the award-winning poet and artist Lisa Olstein about her collection of erasure-based poems and collages Distinguished Office of Echoes (Copper Canyon 2025). It’s a riveting bookwork that reenchants the meeting place of word and image while animating the intervals between the near and far. Both critical and playful in its methods, and inciting wonder from the pages of bygone volumes—on human history, the natural sciences—the book conjures a tactile intimacy from the past into an untimely present of haunting beauty. From the Hirsch Library website: “Artists have long used books as tools for education and inspiration. Increasingly, contemporary artists make books and research central to their artistic practice, mining the past in order to create new narratives." "This series engages artists in conversation about the nature of books, research, and the creative process. In this conversation, writers Roberto Tejada and Lisa Olstein discuss their respective work, both of whom examine the meeting place of word and image. Tejada, well known to Houston audiences, addresses his latest work, Carbonate of Copper (2025), which brings together lyric poetry, documentary photographs, and lives lived along the U.S.-Mexico borderland. Olstein highlights poems from her newly published work, Distinguished Office of Echoes (2025), which is a collection of collage, cutout, and erasure-based poems. Both Tejada and Olstein lean into the intersection of word and image, exploring the revelatory language they make together.” "Lisa Olstein is the Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She has authored six poetry collections, as well as two non-fiction works. In addition to her published works, Olstein is the lyricist for the rock band Cold Satellite. Olstein’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Lannan Writing Residency, Hayden Carruth Award, Writers League of Texas Discovery Book Award, and Sustainable Arts Foundation Award."

👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼 Profound thanks to Rey M. Rodríguez and IAIA Chapter House for this opportunity to discuss my collection, Carbonate of Copper. The book, set across the Texas-Mexico borderlands from West Texas to the Rio Grande Valley, employs the notion of "lyric breath" to create suspended moments that resist conventional narrative structure. I discuss an approach to poetry as "a way of thinking through the entangled encounters of life and language." Drawing on my relationship to experimental sound composition and the visual arts, I discuss crafting poems as "sound sculptures" and the use of FSA photographs from 1939-1942 to create parallel storytelling across time, connecting historical documentation of Mexican American life in the Rio Grande Valley to today's urgent realities of surveillance, ICE raids, and border militarization, while ultimately gesturing toward hope and deliverance. [On Linktree in Bio] Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a poetry book inspired by a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He participated in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a second-year fiction writing MFA student at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His poetry is published in Huizache. His other interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, Chapter House's Storyteller’s Corner, Full Stop, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review. He is a graduate of Cornell, Princeton, and U.C. Berkeley Law School. @uhenglishdepartment

👉🏼👉🏼 Houston: This Tuesday at Basket Books! Mia Kang, mónica teresa ortiz, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, and Roberto Tejada Tuesday Dec 16th, 2025 7:00 PM-9:00 PM Please join us for an evening of poetry on Tuesday, December 16 at 7pm to celebrate the publication of Mia Kang’s poetry collection All Empires Must (Airlie Press), with fellow poets mónica teresa ortiz, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, and Roberto Tejada lending their voices to this festive reading. Mia Kang (she/her) is the author of City Poems (ignitionpress, 2020) and the winner of the 2023 Airlie Prize for All Empires Must (Airlie Press, 2025). Her poems appear in Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, wildness, and more. Named the 2017 winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest, Mia has received fellowships from Brooklyn Poets and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as residencies from Millay Arts and the University of the Arts. Mia holds a PhD in the history of art from Yale University. She lives in Philadelphia. mónica teresa ortiz is a poet and critic born, raised, and based in Texas. The author of the poetry collection Book of Provocations (Host Publications, 2024), mónica's work has appeared in Protean Magazine, Poetry Daily, The Brooklyn Rail, Shade Literary Arts, Split This Rock!, Poets.org, The Tiny, The Book Page, and Scalawag Magazine. They call for a liberated Palestine in our lifetime. Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a writer, scholar, educator, curator and translator. She is the author of three poetry and essay chapbooks, including Somewhere Else the Sun is Falling into Someone’s Eyes (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2019). With a Ph.D. from Yale University in American Studies and Black Studies, Parhizkar is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Parhizkar grew up in the Alief neighborhood of Houston, Texas with familial roots in eastern El Salvador and northern Iran. Roberto Tejada is a translator, editor, essayist, art historian, and cultural critic, is the author of several poetry collections including, most recently, Carbonate of Copper (Fordham University Press, 2025).