About Philopoetics

Influenced by Indohispano theories of the borderlands, Petra Salazar, a poet and educator, launched Philopoetics as a space located between the traditional academic boundaries of poetry and philosophy. Philopoetics facilitates reading groups and workshops, which bring together contemporary philosophers and poets to create an alternative learning community. One-on-one creative support also available.

About Petra Salazar

Petra Salazar is a coyote (regional term for an indohispano/anglo racial identity) from Española, New Mexico. They teach children at a Montessori school and adults at Philopoetics.com. Petra's work has been published or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Sonora Review, The Southampton Review, Latin American Literature Today, and elsewhere.

Petra holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from UNC-Greensboro, where they graduated as a Fred Chappell Fellow. They also hold a Master of Education degree & a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from George Washington University. Petra has received other training as an Army National Guard diesel mechanic, certified master gardener, herbalism apprentice, community organizer, higher ed administrator, and mindfulness and Tai chi practitioner. 

Pedagogy Statement

I consider teaching and poetry as healing, liberatory practices that occur both inside and outside traditional learning and literary spaces. I value process over product and dialogue over isolation. My teaching approach is informed by my commitments to: mindfulness; the pedagogical theories of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Maria Montessori; metacognition or what I call "breaking the fourth wall in educational settings"; fostering live questions or making personal connections to the material; self-reflection; co-directed learning; and dwelling in states of curiosity and wonder rather than states of competitive, authoritative, and prescriptive judgement. 

Through my work, I'm excited to contribute to movements in guerrilla publishing; the undercommons (the informal, unauthorized, and invisible safety net or mutual aid networks under-girding the social, public, and private sectors); and alternative learning communities that challenge traditional hierarchical schooling, which tracks learners, values tradition over innovation and equity, abuses credentialing power, and commodifies and weaponizes knowledge at the cost of wisdom, love, empathy, and oral and embodied knowledge traditions.

Support

If you find value in my work, you can pay me directly for my creative, scholarly, and administrative labor via this platform buymeacoffee.com/philopoetics or via paypal.me/philopoetics.

Email [email protected] if you have any questions about workshops, reading groups, or creative support or to discuss fee reductions and waivers.

Visit my artist and philopoetics sites to learn more about me and my work. And follow me @petrasalazarpoet on Instagram, where I explore the borderlands between creator:creation and artist:audience.