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By New England Poetry Club board member Doug Holder

I first met Nidia Hernandez at a meeting of the literary group, the “Bagel Bards,” that was then housed in the basement of the Panera Bread in Porter Square, Cambridge. She had recently arrived from Venezuela and was already in a frenzy of activities for the poetry community. Right off the bat, she recorded the poetry of many of our members and seemed to bring the high holy to our work.

Nidia Hernandez with Doug Holder.

Nidia Hernandez was a refugee from the oppressive Maduro regime in Venezuela. For over three decades, she was considered a leading figure in the Latin American poetry scene. She had a long-running poetry interview program, La Maja Desnuda. Her radio show was eventually closed down, and she wound up leaving her homeland for the promise of America and its freedom. Since 2017, she has been an immigrant in this country and has proved to be a valuable member of the poetry community.

Hernandez, who resides in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, noticed that Sylvia Plath’s first house, near Hernandez’s own residence, has been overlooked. Hernandez, a zealot of all things poetry, organized a successful effort to get a plaque on the outside of the house, so it would have more recognition as a valuable literary landmark.

Hernandez continues to record important poets during her stay in this country. Many of them are on Spotify and can also be accessed from the Arrowsmith Press website. Hernandez reflected, “I have interviewed poets like Marie Howe, Charles Simic, Joy Harjo, Robert Pinsky, and many others.”

She has worked consistently with Askold Melnczuk, the director of the prestigious Arrowsmith Press, on a Latin American Poet Curation project. She featured such poets as Rafael Cardenas and other writers from Cuba, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

When Denise Provost and I were the co-presidents of the New England Poetry Club, a venerable literary institution that was founded by Robert Frost, Amy Lowell, and others, we decided to lead the effort to bring her on the board of directors. She went right to work. She has spearheaded a project to honor the poet Amy Lowell, and even secured Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey to read an Amy Lowell poem, which she videotaped. She created a string of well-designed posters and flyers and did valuable work on our website.

While in the country, Hernandez has completed her first book of poetry, The Farewell Light, a bilingual edition that is a profound compilation on culture, family, language, as well as a critically acclaimed anthology that she edited, The Invisible Boarders of Time: Five Female Latin American Poets (both books from the Arrowsmith Press).

Hernandez has truly thrived and contributed to her new homeland, as evidenced by her body of work. She is an essential and notable woman in our poetry community.

For more info on Hernandez, go to:   https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/journal/tag/More+by+Nidia+Herna%CC%81ndez