2025-2026 AALANA & BIPOC Inclusion Fellowship Recipient:

Jose Trejo-Maya

Eductation:

MFA, Creative Writing/Poetry, Antioch University, Los Angeles, CA
BA, Sociology and Social Work, Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, CA 2000
AA, Social and Behavioral Sciences Citrus College, Glendora, CA

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“I am a remnant of the Nahuatlacah oral tradition a tonalpouhque mexica, a commoner from the lowlands (i.e. Mexico) from a time and place that no longer exists. At present my poetry has been reified as it has been published in the UK, US, India, Spain, Australia, Argentina,

Germany and Venezuela. I have been exhibited in different venues with a work that’s titled: Transparencies in Time: Cuahpohualli embedded in ethnopoetic language poetry:. I seek to expand on this work into a comprehensive exhibit in a gallery and/or installation in 3D public art sculptures (i.e. three simultaneous monumental works that expand into multiple levels of perception and/or dimensions). In this the sculptures came from dreams, it’s a refraction of our ancestors so you see a mirror in yourself.

I was born in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico, where I spent my childhood in the small neighboring rural pueblo of Tarimoró and wherefrom my family immigrated in 1988. My inspiration(s) include Netzahualcoyotl, Humberto Ak’abal, Ray A. Young Bear, and James Welch.

I have a work in progress of a short-story series where I interpolate the sunstone calendar (i.e. the primary source of the Cauhpohualli Computo del tiempo azteca y su correlacion actual Anahuacayotl de Tlaxcalancingo, Puebla). To bring to life a micro-fiction project titled San Miguel de Tarimoro ca. 1546. It’s a micro-fiction work of short stories that delve into the immaterial aspects of time. It will be digitized into video with simultaneous audio in video-book view narration. Namely, it’s a bridge from poetry to narrative storytelling. The work is a catalog of the 365 days in the Tonalpohualli or count of days in hologram. My work is rooted in Mesoamerican lore and a pre-Columbian notion of time that’s extant in the poetics and as such it’s the foundation and bedrock. While in ceremony with Chololo medicine men in the Tule River Reservation he dreamt this written prophecy...” - Jose Trejo-Maya