Interviews + reviews
Poetry Centered Podcast
Poetry Centered features curated selections from Voca, the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s online audiovisual archive of more than 1,000 recordings of poets reading their work during visits to the Center between 1963 and today. In each episode, a guest poet introduces three poems from Voca, sharing their insights about the remarkable performances recorded in our archive. Each episode concludes with the guest poet reading a poem of their own.Sara Borjas introduces poems that focus on the connections between a particular, collective ‘us’—people connected by lineage or language, by place, or by the acts of writing and reading.
Get Lit Minute: “Lies I Tell”
In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Sara Borjas.
Chills at Will Podcast: Episode 99 with Sara Borjas
On Episode 99 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Sara Borjas, and the two talk about, among other topics, Sara’s relationship with language, bilingualism and identity, pochismo, formative and transformative writers and teachers, and themes and ideas from Sara’s standout collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff.
by Monique Quintana, November 2020, Luna Luna Magazine
Between Imagination and Experience: a review + writing prompt of Sara Borjas’s Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff
by José Angel Araguz, October 2020
In my own life as a Latinx writer, editor, professor and citizen, I have had to forge my own ideas of imagination and how it relates to experience.
Review: Heart Like A Window, Mouth Like A Cliff
by Alina Stefanescu, June 2020
The title of each numbered section of this review is directly excerpted from Borjas’ list poem, the first of two “Ars Poetica,” found in this collection.
2020 American Book Awards
The Before Columbus Foundation announces the Winners of the Forty-first Annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS. The 2020 American Book Award winners will be formally recognized on Sunday, October 25, 2020, from 2:00–3:30p.m., online.
Alta Asks Live: Virtual Q&A
by Heather Scott Partington, June 2020
Writer, poet, and educator Sara Borjas joins Alta Asks Live to discuss her debut poetry collection, how the current global movements around racism and oppression are represented in the arts and why that's important, and so much more.
Alta Asks:Talking with Sara Borjas
by Heather Scott Partington, June 2020
Sara Borjas’ work is confrontational. It isn’t poetry for anyone’s comfort, least of all the speaker of her poems. Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff challenges Borjas’ ideas about identity and the dynamics of family, thereby asking readers to examine their own biases and assumptions. The poet’s words describe a raw and affectionate love, a heart often broken by its own intensity.
Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry
by Dana Isokawa, December 2019
For our fifteenth annual look at debut poetry, we chose ten poets whose first books struck us with their formal imagination, distinctive language, and deep attention to the world.
14 Unmissable Poetry Books from 2019
by Christina Orlando, December 2019
Some of the best poetic works to come out of a challenging year.
Words on a Wire Podcast
October 2019
Host Daniel Chacon talks with Chicanx pocha and Fresno poet, Sara Borjas about her new book of poems just released, " "Heart like window, Mouth like a Cliff."
by Abigail McFee, August 2019
“For me, this has meant leading people I love like my mom and dad out of the fantasy of their lives. This means willfully recognizing the reality of our colonization, assimilation, and deep desire to belong somewhere as internalized tools of oppression as well as one of our most human desires. This means destroying a type of faith my father has put on repeat in his heart so he could survive. If we know our worth, then we are dangerous because we won’t be content with scraps anymore.”
Episode #130: Sara Borjas, Author of Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff
MT Vallarta talks with Sara on The Blood-Jet Writing Podcast.
on Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff by Sara Borjas
by Diego Báez, March 2019
“This is perhaps the most salient feature of Borjas’s breakout collection, the way her speakers reckon with these competing drives, the twin impulses to honor the best but shrug off the worst of one’s upbringing, to sneer at dominant cultures while admitting a degree of inevitable assimilation.”
Navigating Chicana Identity Through Poetry
by Leticia Urieta, July 2019
Sara Borjas, author of "Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff," on finding inspiration at home and building a Latinx community.
17 of the Best Poetry Books
April 19, 2019
Oprah Magazine celebrates lyrics suggestions by acclaimed writers for National Poetry Month.
8 Excellent Poetry Books for National Poetry Month
by Rigoberto González, April 18th, 2019
April is National Poetry Month, a time to highlight the splendor and the strength of the written word. Across the country, poetry lovers are hosting literary readings, writing workshops and conversations about why verse evokes joy, surprise, pride and other emotional responses.
Sara Borjas Writes Poems Like Your Abuela Makes Tamales
Review by Alan Chazaro, May 2019
“In Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff, Sara Borjas makes tamales, except her tamales are actually poems; and she is your woke millennial proudly-Pocha sister; and she might cuss you out if you tell her to fetch you anything; but you’ll be damned if you’ve never tasted poems with such an intensive love and family history packed into them.”
A Cleansing Tornado: Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff by Sara Borjas
Review by Emily Perez, May 10, 2019
Emily Perez reviews Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff for The Rumpus.
Queer Poetry Collections to Read During National Poetry Month
by Christina Orlando, April 15, 2019
“Listen, we all know every month is National Poetry Month if you’re doing it right. And apparently, you are—we’re seeing a huge resurgence of poetry, with the NEA reporting an increase in U.S. adult poetry readers, from 6.7% in 2012 to 11.7% in 2017. It’s a really exciting time, with some incredible work being published.”
Pocha & Proud: An Interview with Sara Borjas
Interview by Brenda Delfino, April 14, 2019
Brenda Delfino interviews Sara Borjas about her new collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff, pocha life, family, and seeing.
Tour Grind: Sara Borjas
Interview by Christopher Hopkins, March 6, 2019
Sara Borjas’s debut collection Heart like a Window, “Mouth like a Cliff is not only two images that I’m immediately a little jealous of, it’s also a title that feels both inviting and somehow challenging all at once, and that’s all before opening the book. Furthermore, the title is a kind of promise that continues to deliver from the first page to the last, as the speaker of Borjas’s poems reveals deep, and often complicated, relationships to friends, parents, partners, and even the self with a carefully measured amount of observational wit and with images of immeasurable intensity. Whether she’s exploring or reimagining Narcissus from Greek Mythology, the personal mythos of one’s ancestors and family, or the destructive myth of whiteness, what Borjas is about to say is so sharp that it might scare you a little, and yet so soft that it might be just what you need.”
Poetry Weekly: Diannely Antigua, Gradelynn Chung-Yan Lau, Sara Borjas
by Joanna C. Valente, March 14, 2019
“As the senior managing editor at Luna Luna and the founding editor at Yes Poetry, you could say writing is important to me, especially poetry. For me, it’s vital to highlight poetic voices in order to support literature, activism, and expression.
Here are three of my favorite poems I read recently.”
Latinidad: Interview with Sara Borjas
Interview by Marcela Landres, Spring 2019
Founder of Latinidad, Marcela Landres, interviews Sara about her debut poetry collection, teaching as a part-time professor, present and past inspiration and the publishing process.
