Arizona poet Farid Matouk named USA Fellow by American Artists

Written by Logan Burtch-Buus, University Communications

Tuesday

Farid MatoukThe poet and director of the University of Arizona’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing has been named a 2024 USA Fellow by Artists of America.

The Chicago-based organization’s mission is to “recognize the value of artists to American society” by providing fellowships designed to recognize artists from a variety of disciplines for their contributions to “the cultural fabric of the nation.” “to clarify.” Each fellowship comes with an unrestricted $50,000 stipend.

Matuk, an associate professor in the Department of English in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said his fellowship strongly affirms his pursuits as a writer and clearly shows that people are connecting with his work.

“One of the things that makes this such an honor is that you can’t apply,” Matuk said. “I need to be nominated anonymously, which means my work is circulating and gaining the kind of attention and readership that creates this opportunity.”

In addition to writing, USA Fellows pursue architecture, design, crafts, dance, film, media, music, and theater. Nominations are made anonymously and applications are reviewed by a field-specific panel. This year’s fellows are based in 22 states and Puerto Rico and include both emerging and established artists and creators.

“Together with this year’s fellow USA Fellows, we are excited to support a group of artists whose diverse approaches and contexts offer valuable avenues of healing, expression, and collaboration,” said United States Artists. said JudyLee Reed, president and CEO. In a statement. “They invite us to join them in imagining the limitless possibilities for ourselves and our communities.”

Matuku is the author of the poetry collections “This Isa Nice Neighborhood” and “The Real Horse,” as well as several poetry collections including “Is It the King?,” “My Daughter La Chola,” and “Riverside.” His work has been anthologised, among others, in “The Best American Experimental Poetry,” “Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing,” and the Library of America’s “Latino Poetry: A New Anthology.”

In addition to the USA Fellowship, Mr. Matuk is also a previous recipient of Ford and Fulbright Fellowships.

“Farid’s work is experimental in every sense of the word, and in the most pleasurable sense.” Ander Monson, professor of English. “It’s an adventure rather than a chore, one that approaches and often straddles the boundaries of genre. And it’s not a chore, it’s an adventure, one that approaches and often straddles the boundaries of genre. And it’s the kind of work that he does with the USA Fellowship, which seems almost perfectly designed to foster work like his. I’m thrilled to see this recognition.His work is not easy.It fits within an academic category, which I’ve always understood to be a strength, and as a result, it’s important to recognize cultures, languages, and communities. , he is able to articulate truths that some of us have difficulty articulating about harm and beauty.”

A “lonely child” finds solace in poetry

Matuk’s literary journey has begun When he was in high school, his cousin gave him a collection of poems by American poets printed to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial. Matouk remembers Archibald MacLeish’s poem “Eleven” as having a particularly lasting influence on him.

In this poem, a nameless, mute child enduring hatred from his family finds solace in exploring the sights and smells of farm equipment in a gardener’s shed. The gardener eventually discovers the child, but leaves the boy to explore in a moment of tacit support.

Matuku, who was a self-described “sad high school student,” felt a sense of peace in that moment.

“I was a lonely child who didn’t fit in with the culture around me,” he said. “The child was being cared for in the privacy of an adult man, and that poem struck me. As a child without a father, this poem spoke to a deep need within me. I think it resonated with me.”

Matuk, a child of Peruvian and Syrian descent, was brought to the United States by his mother at the age of six to escape the violence of his father. Matuk’s family, including his aunt, became naturalized in 1987, but they did not face cultural, economic, and linguistic displacement in Southern California.

Despite having a difficult childhood, Matuk achieved great success in his studies. He was the first person in his family to graduate from high school, earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine, and then graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Michener Writers Center at the University of Texas at Austin. did.

Matouk’s desire to achieve academically began in his childhood, but those difficult years also fostered a “certain sensibility” for observation that developed into his artistic vision as a writer.

Matuk’s own journey from observation to poetry really took shape after graduating from college, when he won a Fulbright scholarship and spent a year in Chile studying the legacy and works of Pablo Neruda. Matuk said he left for Chile “with the intention of becoming an intellectual, a thinker and a critic,” and returned to the United States interested in expanding his creative output.

Now, Matouk uses his poetry to invite readers, and himself, to “travel through contradictory impulses and sit with contradictions.”

“The more I write over the years, the more I risk exploiting contradictions to create moments and declarations that feel like ‘truths,’ and I want to say them as clearly as possible,” Matouk said. “Can I include contradictory things in my poems? Do they push me into a moment of clarity? I want to learn what I’m witnessing, and what I’m caught up in. And I want someone to do that. My poems are moments of truth and declarations that struggle I understand that this is a win, but also a provisional one, and I read that it could follow a similar trajectory through my work.”

Memoirs along the way

After working on a long line of poems, Matouk said he is looking forward to changing genres for his next project. It is a memoir that explores his friendship with Lyndon W. Barrett, a scholar and professor of African American studies at the University of California, Riverside. Someone who passed away in 2008.

“Lyndon was a mentor and a great friend,” Matouk said. “I want to write about all the things I’ve learned from him and piece by piece the legacy he left on my life. This has been a very painful project, and I’ve written about all the things I think I’ve learned from him, and I want to slowly unravel the legacy he left on my life. This has been a very painful project, and I feel like I should have felt in 2008. It reminds me of the sadness I felt at not being able to do that. But what it means to be a middle-aged person around young people, what doors are open and which doors are open. It’s also a great way to think about what you’re doing.”

Although Matuk is proud of his accomplishments, he said his success is largely due to the Creative Writing program and his colleagues. Many have their own prestigious awards and fellowships.

“While these awards are so valuable and so generous and so much appreciated, they obscure the networks of influence and co-creation that actually occur when a single writer does their work.” he said. “I truly believe that not only do we influence each other, but we write shoulder to shoulder, and that each of us is responsible for part of the larger story. , I hope it’s a way to honor invisible or unseen groups.” “Giving an award to one writer is obfuscating, and that’s exactly what we all do.” There are so many writers and heroes who are my contemporaries and ancestors, and I’m not interested in singling out just one of them.It’s more important that I work side by side with them. It’s an honor to be considered.”