Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

FEARLESS, DEFIANT, ALBUQUERQUE POET LAUREATE ANNA MARTINEZ READS HER POWERFUL POEM "WOMEN OF BURQUE" AND SPEAKS OUT ABOUT POETIC REBIRTH, IDENTITY, HAVING A VOICE, AND THE POWER OF WORDS.

RESILIENCE, SPIRITUALITY, AND COMPASSION - THE VALUES MUHAMMAD ALI LIVED BY ARE HONORED THROUGH POETRY.

ARMED WITH IMAGINATION AND COLORED PENCILS, ARTIST DERIN FLETCHER CREATES A MONOCHROMATIC WORLD OF ORIGINAL CHARACTERS WITH UNIQUE PERSONALITIES.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

THE POWER WORDS HOLD [Chatting] >>Faith Perez: How has writing poetry helped you find your voice?

>>Anna Martinez: I knew that poetry was an acceptable way to present your story on a stage and I wanted to be on a stage telling my story.

When I first started out, I had never been to a poetry slam before and- the first persons that I saw doing it were Jessica Lopez, Carlos Contreras, Jazz, Kofe, you know, there's a handful of people there; Hakeem Bellamy, we all had a class together- spoken word class with Levi Romero.

So, I was able to kind of commune with these people that were already kind of my idols and mentors.

It's really beautiful that in a community like this that you can have an idol that you look up to and yet you can sit down and have a conversation with them at the same time, because these people were the ones that showed me that my story was valid.

And I came to UNM and I attended a Lobo Slam.

It just opened my eyes.

It was like a rebirth.

I watched and I can tell you the moment that it happened.

I watched Carlos Contreras get up on the stage and read a poem about being a little boy living in the that wants so badly to love the rain.

Like he- ripped his soul out to talk about this on stage and when I saw him do it so eloquently and beautifully, I'm like "wow, I think I can do that too!"

That's- that finally kind of put the skills that I had together.

>>Anna Martinez: This first poem is called the Women of Burque Those eyes, you've seen them smolder of blue black kind that don't look back the still poor poor the still young dying before they're spent wondering what they meant when they said repent not really concerned with boundaries Like a west mesa bone collector made a left turn at Burque of half a million where women can vanish into thin air without anybody giving a damn buried on the blue black basalt west mesa borderlands Ancestral petroglyphs 100-acre boneyard scene "crime of the century" their names Cinnamon Doreen Evelyn Jamie Julie Michelle Monica Syllania Veronica Victoria Virginia baby unborn broken discarded bones of the less alive and now the less dead nothing but a list of missing hookers to cops who made no effort to find them APD declines to comment everyone's a theory and yet no incentive to investigate what victims had coming you see, a man's gotta be tougher than the timber he's cutting perhaps as Cinnamon told friends before her untimely end that "a dirty cop was chopping off the heads of prostitutes and burying them on the west mesa" now I'm no stranger to the streets to labels to scars on my cheeks but not a week after the DOJ condemned APD for it's brutality APD Jeremy Dear shot and killed 19-year-old Mary Hawkes pretty, petite maybe 89 pounds wet hawk eyes younger than her street-wise She loved horses She was homeless She was known to sleep in unlocked cars And for her knack at evading APD trying to catch her in that act until her last because blue lies matter Jeremy Dear was literally at Dunkin' Donuts when the call came surely a hard on when he heard her name As he had been trying to get her for so long He knew he was not going to catch her in the act but he had to act fast His statement he said, 'facing her, I stared down the barrel of her gun' yet the bullets that killed her came from the side and above 'I was so close I could see the silver on the tip where the black gun was scratched' yet no blood spatter no DNA no fingerprint or evidence to match 'I was scared to death I've never been so scared in my life I didn't want to die' That was all a lie as in truth he had aimed his bullets not at her spritely frame but at her head as bullets say That she was on her knees or falling as they burst through her skull throat clavicle oozing out her armpit And Jeremy Dear again with no lapel cam plugged in not since the last time it caught him in another white lie about another gun in the hands of another dead unarmed man and the other cop's cam video city sanctioned tampered because blue lies matter And the only, only remorse that Jeremy Dear ever media quipped was having had to walk the beat over 'that freaking witch' And day after day the city paid a crew Paid to have her name erased sidewalk chalk tags teddy bears handwritten notes candles lit in the glow of Virgen of the rainbow left by a community enraged in pain erased day after day after gosh darn day the still poor poor the still young dying before their time nothing but black-and-blue lives but black-and-blue lives are BLACK MATTER surely as love is the first born out of their chaos.

>>Faith Perez: Why is it important for us to know about the Women of Burque?

>>Anna Martinez: That question is loaded for me on so many levels, um- it's important first of all, to remember these women that we've just forgotten.

I mean it was national news for a while, but we've never gotten any closer to finding out who the killer was.

It's important to remember their names because that in itself was, you know- I just did a poem yesterday for the Holocaust Museum and I don't know if anybody's been there lately, but they've got these beautiful new displays because Jews, what happened to them during World War II, that's not the only Holocaust that we know.

The United States has known its own holocausts and you know that was kind of a little Holocaust going on here in Albuquerque, that it's still unexplained.

Families still don't have answers.

And one of one of the mothers of one of these women, was a woman that I graduated from high school with in Espanola and while her daughter was missing, her grandson and my son went to the same elementary school and I would see her every morning in the loop dropping off her grandson and it was emotional for me every time I saw it happening.

You know, because here I was lucky enough to be a mother dropping off my son and she was having to be a grandmother dropping off her grandson because she had no idea what had happened to her daughter.

But we still don't know what happened to these women.

We still don't have an invest- as far as I know, we don't have a running investigation.

And these families of these women still deserve answers.

>>Faith Perez: How did you feel while writing the poem?

>>Anna Martinez: I felt angry.

I still feel angry and I feel radical.

I feel um- sometimes targeted.

I've had people get up and walk out of venues when I've read that.

>>Faith Perez: So then, why have you taken up the fight to defend people's rights?

>>Anna Martinez: I don't know, I'm a Libra!

[Laughter] >>Anna Martinez: I always blamed it on that.

Justice is just something to me, I- from the time I was young.

Being the oldest, I always got the choice "oh, well you could stay in with your mom, make some tortillas, or you could come out here and help me lay adobes," and sometimes I would stay and make tortillas with my mom, sometimes I'd go out and lay adobes with my dad and so I feel like that was a privilege that I was given and I use that to its fullest extent.

So, I also use that privilege to challenge gender norms at home that I didn't agree with and then also to be aware of them at large and to understand that as a woman, the battle goes on every single day.

>>Faith Perez: There was a community thing you were going to start as the sixth Poet Laureate, what's the significance and why?

>>Anna Martinez: I really would like to bring back social engagement.

There's so many ways that we have whittled away people's identities.

From a young age I was a reader and a writer and that was the identity that I stood upon when things happened in my life that were out of control.

I understood the nature of human nature, and human character and The duality of it from reading books.

So, for me that identity as a reader writer was everything to me and it got me here right now talking with you and I want kids to have that kind of identity by the time they are 18 and ready to vote.

To have an identity that you can stand upon, so that no wind can really sway you.

>>Faith Perez: Well, what power do words hold?

>>Anna Martinez: Every Power.

They don't call it spelling for nothing.

Because you kind of cast a spell, as to how your life will take shape.

I didn't realize this, I mean I knew I followed the path of my writing, right.

But when I was in undergrad, I had this adjunct professor and he told me "look, you wrote yourself into being," after that it became intentional.

I wrote myself places and I wrote myself here.

So yeah, you can do it that- and writing all it takes is a paper and pen and an imagination you know, so it doesn't have to be writing.

It's what sparks your heart.

That's what can drive you all the way through.

Writing stories, hearing people's stories, telling my own, that sparked my heart.

That gave me that gave me- a foundation that was deep and it gave me an identity that helped shape who I am.

I wrote myself into being, cast that spell.

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEE - So tonight is a super combination of athleticism, and also literature and poetry.

We've got four of the best poets in the city, who are gonna be competing head-to- head.

They wanted a stage to voice their love for Muhammad Ali, and his principles, and things like - [Woman] The way that the entire event is going to be organized, it's almost like a boxing match.

- Please clap it up for your first - So I focused my poem on resilience and overcoming obstacles.

And so I spin it into just kind of fighting against depression and those everyday things that prevent you from being your best self, from seeing the light.

Every word they say, just stings.

Like, like, like will I ever be all I am not a champion.

In this moment, you may not feel like a champion, or your best self, but always standing up again, and just staying in the ring.

Until one day you look, and you're like, hey, I'm the champion.

- How am I going to put my socks on today?

And walk a mile in everyone else's shoes while I stay stuck in cement, still trying to sooth, I know.

Someone like Muhammad Ali, even he got tired and exhausted on days, I'm sure.

Because it's all just so much sometimes.

So the poem that I wrote is just kind of saying that like, it's okay to have bad days, and it's okay to have days where you focus on yourself, and do things for yourself.

And you're still a great person.

- I miss the days when we pulled out boxing gloves, instead of handguns.

Before fists became semi-automatic pistols and double action revolvers.

- 2017, I started Growhouse because I wanted to do something different.

The idea was to take the elements of slam poetry, and the competition structure, and use it for other forms of art.

- Nosy shipwrecks resurface to watch dolphins ornament black braids with gold.

She pulls Mount Everest out of her breasts, and each nail lines up for its turn at getting even.

- 2019 is when I partnered up with Dennis.

He's an excellent host and he's a great like just people person.

He's a lot more outgoing than I would say I am.

And so we're definitely a great partnership, in that I'm more reserved, and he's great at just being a people person.

- One of the most prolific and profound poets that I personally know, Walter Wally B. Jennings!

- Wally B. is kind of like this tree trunk, right?

And he's kind of brought poetry as spoken word down from Tallahassee.

When he brought it here to Tampa, from that, just blossomed all out of everything that you see today.

- This work was not built by brick and mortar.

What you do may make you important, but why you do it will make you immortal.

The poem that I have is really about the whole aging process.

And how it's important for us to really recognize the totality of our life as one cohesive experience, rather than these fragmented parts.

Where we fall in love with one and we hate the other.

And so with Muhammad Ali, a lot of people kind of are able to segment his life into various sections.

When you talk about him as a young champion.

And then when you talk about the attention that he got as an activist.

And then in his latter years, as he dealt with Parkinson's, and a lot of medical challenges.

So most people, they experience or know him, and they really, his life resonates with them heavily, usually in one of those three areas.

And remind everyone that greatness is always just over the horizon.

- Ali is actually one of the few people that can be like, oh, that is like one of my like superheroes.

- I just look at him as someone who is so dedicated to getting what he wants.

- Just going back and watching old footage of him, and just seeing how he was able to just come out on top against some of the biggest fighters.

And then, of course, outside of the ring, he was just an artistic person overall.

- He was one of the first, I would say, like one of the first like well-known spoken word kind of poets.

- Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

Ah, rumble, young man, rumble.

- That's the best type of poetry, to me, is like the authentic genuineness.

And that's like all Muhammad Ali is, you know?

- The fact that he crafted himself as his own character and chose to be true to that, come hell or high water.

With all of the weight that each one of his decisions is made, not just for himself, but as a representative of his people here in America.

- He got something that he had been training for basically his entire life.

And he decided to give it up for the good of other people.

- I loved him as being a Black man who was completely confident in who he was.

At that time, that was very not okay to do that.

- He became the first, in my eyes, the first athlete that was more than his sport.

I wish I would've had the opportunity to actually meet, see, be in the presence of Ali, worthy of all praises, most high.

The poem that I wrote for this event, I was trying to take like some of his core tenants, and expound upon them, and find how I am trying to exemplify them in my life.

Just as a small homage to Muhammad Ali.

And conviction, spirituality, and dedication, he was respect and giving.

- We want Tampa to be a city that people think of when they think of like really dope spoken word poetry.

Like, oh, we've gotta go to Tampa to go to Growhouse.

And we really believe in building community and, and working together with other people in the community who have the same goals as us.

- Tampa as a whole, outside even just poetry, is really blossoming in a beautiful way in the art scene.

So, and we wanna be a part of that.

- We're all trying to get to the same place, we all want Tampa to be known as this awesome city.

And there's a whole bunch of talent here.

And Growhouse just wants to like be a platform to show that and put Tampa on the map, basically.

ESCAPING REALITY Speaker: Colored pencils are a staple for Derin Fletcher.

They have been for years since picking them up in high school.

Derin Fletcher: I went to Firestone, which is a performing arts school, and I had a really awesome art teacher, Mr. Dolphin, who pushed me and saw the potential in me.

And he was actually the first person to give me colored pencils.

Speaker: In 2020 as the pandemic was just getting started, video of her colored pencil portraits took off on Instagram.

Derin Fletcher: It came about because I could not find brown pencils during the pandemic.

Speaker: So she turned to greens, blues and other colors for her drawings.

She ended up creating a series of monochromatic portraits resonating with tens of thousands of viewers on social media.

Derin Fletcher: That's when I was like, oh, wow, okay, yeah, this is happening, okay, well, let me keep it up because I wasn't, I just wasn't, I wasn't expecting the reaction.

I was just doing what I usually do and creating, and I created the green image, had to be like maybe at midnight.

It took me a couple of hours and just kind of experimenting, but I was not expecting it to go the way it did.

Speaker: Fletcher says she's always been drawn to portraits.

While she does commissions of real people, her preference is to use her imagination and create freely.

Derin Fletcher: So I enjoy being able to kind of come up with different characters in my head of who these people are or what their personalities are like.

It's kind of creating a different character who doesn't exist really.

Speaker: Since sharing her portraits on social media, Fletcher's landed work for Hulu and Akron Metro, and now she's creating art full time.

Derin Fletcher: It jump started with the monochromatic drawings.

It was like, okay, I can do this.

I can become a full time artist.

And that's where it began.

Speaker: On a recent afternoon, Fletcher was working outside of her comfort zone on a larger piece featuring two women connected by a braid of hair.

Derin Fletcher: My goal is just to do more drawings of that style, bigger colored pencil drawings, and push myself on a bigger scale because I'm used to working small.

I don't usually go beyond the 9 by 12 or like 11 by 14, so I'm trying to push myself to work at a bigger scale.

Speaker: Fletcher seems to enjoy new challenges.

Last summer, she opened her own gallery near the campus of the University of Akron for both teaching and displaying art.

She says before opening the gallery, she struggled to get her art on view.

Derin Fletcher: It was hard finding a space that would either accept you.

I know a lot of different galleries you have to have, they want you to have at least so many solo shows under your belt.

And it's like, well, I'm trying to one.

And, you know, as of before, before opening a gallery, I only had one solo show.

Speaker: Part of Fletcher's vision is to help others exhibit their work.

Derin Fletcher: It shouldn't be that hard for artists to showcase their artwork.

So that was a goal of mine.

Like when I get a gallery, it's, it's going to be so easy.

Speaker: Fletcher's work as an artist has been a bright spot in what's been a tough time for people in general due to the pandemic.

She says art provides her a break from all of that.

Derin Fletcher: Things are starting to get worse before they're going to get better.

So that's kind of, that can be tough, yeah, to think about on a daily basis.

So having an outlet like art to kind of escape that reality sometimes is amazing.

TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under What We Do and Local Productions.

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"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.