Poetry, Plankton, and Play: Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera hangs out with some of the Exploratorium’s Explainers in 2013. (Claire Pillsbury)

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When we first met him, Juan Felipe Herrera was the poet laureate of California. The appointment was the first for a Latino in California. A few days ago, the Library of Congress announced a promotion of sorts: He has been tapped as the next poet laureate of the United States. Many of us will never forget the plankton poetry workshop Juan Felipe led, which was infused with creativity, fun, and warmth. We couldn’t be happier for him.

The article below was written in May 2013 when Juan Felipe was an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium. Osher Fellows work with our staff on programs, exhibit projects, and new endeavors, and share their own research and work with staff and the public. We bring outstanding artists, scholars, authors, and scientists to the museum as Osher Fellows through the generosity of the Bernard Osher Foundation.

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Poetry, Plankton, and Play: Juan Felipe Herrera

By Dana Goldberg

Juan Felipe’s tenure as poet laureate of California has taken him to Los Angeles to inaugurate a city park, to San Francisco to cruise in a low rider parade, to Sacramento to judge the Poetry Out Loud competition, and to Bakersfield to acknowledge students receiving college scholarships. He leads the Unity Project—an ongoing, collaborative, crowd sourced poem about unity—and a poetry-based antibullying initiative for fifth graders called the I Promise Joanna Project. He’s also busy with his Stars of Juarez musical about the unheralded singers, Cuca and Eva Aguirre, in Juarez and El Paso after the Mexican Revolution.

So what’s a poet to do at the Exploratorium? Play with plankton, for one thing. “When I see plankton underneath the microscope,” says Juan Felipe, “I see life in its most dynamic, vivid form. Plankton do so much work for the whole planet, giving us oxygen as it seeks out light. If we let poetry come from our most inner self, then it’ll be like plankton—seeking the light and helping people experience life at its most vibrant level.”

Juan Felipe experiences life at its most poetic level, and his time at the Exploratorium is no exception. He’s been working on the Ballet Sonicolor, combining dance with sound and color in innovative ways. He has grand plans for something called the Plankton Bicycle and Infinity Ribbons Theater, and another staged work called Tinker Dancer, about a girl who builds dancing partners out of wood scraps with her uncle’s old tools.

For Juan Felipe, the Exploratorium is a natural place for a poet to come and find inspiration. “How the Exploratorium presents material is very poetic,” he says. “You’ve created poetic stations where people play. And when they play, they have microfauna epiphanies, or magnetism epiphanies, or electrical epiphanies. And that’s what a poem is all about. All those same epiphanies, we want from poetry, too. So I feel very at home here.”