Raquel Salas Rivera

Raquel Salas Rivera (born December 26, 1985) is a bilingual Puerto Rican poet who writes in Spanish and English, focusing on the experience of being a migrant to the United States and of identifying as a queer Puerto Rican and Philadelphian of non-binary gender. They are currently a graduate student attending the University of Pennsylvania and were selected as the fourth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2018.

Raquel Salas Rivera was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico and moved to Madison, Wisconsin when they were 6 months old, later returning to Puerto Rico during their teenage years, and finally returning to Philadelphia for graduate studies. Their grandfather, Sotero Rivera Avilés, was a Puerto Rican poet, as was their mother, linguist Yolanda Rivera Castillo. Salas Rivera grew up with the literary influences of Cuban poet José Martí and Dominican songwriter Juan Luis Guerra.

The poet attended the Universidad de Puerto Rico at Mayaguez for their undergraduate degree, and had an instrumental role in organizing student protests at that campus in 2005 and 2010.

Salas Rivera's writing emphasizes movement and often deals with themes of migration. In speaking about their heritage, the author acknowledges that migrating people have multiple homes and allegiances, and states that "My home is Philadelphia, and my home is Puerto Rico.”

They prefer to write in Spanish, and later sometimes translate their works to English. For public readings, they often recite works only in Spanish. According to the poet, "It's a political act" to have an audience of non-Spanish speakers listen to a language they don't understand, becausethe momentary discomfort echoes the everyday struggles of immigrants who don't yet understand the language of their new country. In their writing, they often leave some words untranslated, which they refer to as "knots" that "resist assimilation and loss" because language and experience can be so tightly bound as to defy separation.

Their work lo terciario/the tertiary focuses on the Puerto Rican debt crisis and the economic and social impact of the 2016 United States congressional measure called the PROMESA Bill that transferred control of the territory's finances and outstanding debt to an external control board. Salas Rivera titled each poem after Marxist economic ideas from Das Kapital: “The Debt-Production Process,” “The Debt-Circulation Process,” and “Notes on a Derailed Circulation", beginning each poem with a quote by Karl Marx, as both a critique and a subversion of Marxist language.

The poet identifies as non-binary gender and refers to themself with the pronoun "they". They have adopted the Spanish word "buchipluma",in as a neologism for a "feathered butch" to describe their gender identity. One of their inspirations is the Puerto Rican Latin trap singer Bad Bunny. To Salas Rivera, poetry has given them "an inside", "an outside", and "a means for talking about things", referencing gender identity. Acknowledging a historical lack of transgender persons' voices in literature, Salas Rivera has attempted to "navigate" this gap by speaking from a transgender perspective. Through their writing and civic activism, they seek to "engage people throughout Philadelphia neighborhoods" and "make a Philadelphia that is safe for difference".

During their tenure as Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Salas Rivera created a multilingual poetry festival called "We (Too) Are Philly" inspired by the work "I, Too" by the African-American poet Langston Hughes. The summer 2018 festival, co-organized with poets Ashley Davis, Kirwyn Sutherland, and Raena Shirali, featured Philadelphia-based poets of color. The goal of the organizers was to diversify the poetry scene to encourage the mixing or desegregation of audiences, while selecting locations of significance to particular Philadelphia neighborhoods that usually do not host poetry readings.

Salas Rivera lives in Philadelphia. They are a supporter of various Philadelphia civic groups: the Nuevo Movimiento Santuario de Filadelfia (The New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia), Juntos (LatinX immigrant organization), SANCTUARY Poets, Galaei (queer LatinX social justice organization) and the Mazzoni Center for LGBT healthcare. In 2017, Salas Rivera and Allison Harris raised thousands of dollars to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Puerto Ricans who were impacted by Hurricane Maria that year. Through their efforts, they were able to bring 5 queer/transgender refugees to the United States and support them, with assistance from the Mazzoni Center.

Books of Poetry

• forthcoming: x/ex/exis. Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe.
• 2019: while they sleep (under the bed is another country). Birds, LLC.
• 2018: lo terciario/the tertiary, ISBN 9781937421274 OCLC 1055273795
• 2017: tierra intermitente/intermittent land. Ediciones Alayubia, 1st ed.
• 2017: Desdominios. Douda Correria. (Portuguese translation) OCLC 1076641364
• 2016: oropel/tinsel. ISBN 9780996766920 OCLC 1021770124
• 2011: Caneca de anhelos turbios, ISBN 9781450760966 OCLC 764494213

Artist Books

• Gringo Death Coloring Book, with art by Erica Mena and Mariana Ramos Ortiz

Editorial Works

• #27 :: Indigenous Futures and Imagining the Decolonial, co-edited with BBP Hosmillo and Sarah Clark, Anomalous Press.
• Puerto Rico en Mi Corazón, co-edited with Erica Mena, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, and Carina del Valle Schorske, Anomalous Press.
• The Wanderer, co-editor, 2016-2018.

Contributor to Anthologies

• 2018: Small blows against encroaching totalitarianism., ISBN 9781944211615 OCLC 1049785850

Salas Rivera has also published in periodicals such as the Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Apiary, Apogee, BOAAT, and the Boston Review.

They are currently a resident artist of the 2018-2019 Kimmel Center Jazz Residency and will be a 2019 Playwright Fellow at the Sundance Institute Theater Program.

Salas Rivera was a 2018 fellow of the CantoMundo Poetry Workshop to develop LatinX poets and poetry.

Salas Rivera was chosen as the fourth poet laureate of Philadelphia in 2018, under the auspices of the Free Library of Philadelphia. According to the selection committee, the poet was chosen because of their desire to use poetry to engage the subject of diversity in Philadelphia and its Puerto Rican community.

In October 2018, Salas Rivera was a featured poet at the Festival Internacional de Poesia Latinoamericana (FEIPOL), a poetry festival in McAllen, Texas.

They received the 2018 Ambroggio Prize, honoring poets whose first language is Spanish, for their manuscript x/ex/exis (poemas para la nación).

Their work lo terciario/the tertiary was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2018.