CWU English lecturer to visit Notre Dame next week for poetry residency

Central Washington University English lecturer Xavier Cavazos will join one of his former students, Karla Maravilla, on the University of Notre Dame campus next week for a special event titled Ritual Y Sanción (“Ritual and Sanction”).

The evening of poetry, performance, and healing will begin at 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday, April 14, and is presented by Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies and the Creative Writing Program. Maravilla (’23) is currently pursuing her PhD at Notre Dame and serves as the Graduate Student Assistant Director for the University Writing Program.

As part of his weeklong poetry residency in South Bend, Indiana, Cavazos will perform an intimate reading from his poetry collection The Devil’s Workshop, winner of the 2024 Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur Award. The honor is given to “the best on the frontier of poetry, the experimental, the innovative, the daring and stunning, the impromptu in technique and voice.” 

During the special presentation of Ritual Y Sanción, Cavazos will be reading alongside Maravilla in a semi-formal, call-and-response poetic exchange that moves through themes of grief, trauma, assault, and addiction. Their goal is to place vulnerability at the center of their reading as an act of folk ritual and transformation rooted in brujeria (“witchcraft”) in the forms of curanderismo and santeria.

Along with Tuesday’s event, Cavazos will host a class visit to Latinx Poetry Now!, conduct an oral history interview, and participate in a joint artist residency with Maravilla at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art as part of “Poets and Art.” The multi-year partnership between Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies, and the Raclin Museum was formed to create new literary art in response to the museum’s permanent collection.

Cavazos was named a Nuyorican Grand Slam Champion in 1995 and has written three award-winning poetry collections: Barbarian at the Gate (Poetry Society of America), Diamond Grove Slave Tree (Ice Cube Press), and The Devil’s Workshop (Cleveland State University Poetry Center).

Maravilla, a former CWU McNair Scholar, has been an English PhD student at Notre Dame since 2023 and was named a Joseph Gaia Distinguished Fellow in Latino Studies last year. 

Maravilla’s research examines “Latinx literature at the intersection of health, religion, education, and sustainability, with a focus on how latinidad shapes narratives of labor, wellness, spirituality, and ecojustice in the hyper-contemporary.”