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MARCH 2004

Women Shaping History 2004:
Agueda Pizarro Rayo: Poet & Professor
by Sarah N. Lynch

Factors in Career Choice: "There were various influences on that. My own father was a poet and he was of the generation of 27. He was friends with [Garcia] Lorca. . . both my parents were lovers of literature and poetry and language, as such. My mother was a philanthropist, so she'd follow me around with a little red notebook writing down everything I said in Spanish because I spoke Spanish until I went to school."

Rayo went on to teach at a variety of places including the graduate program at Columbia, Brooklyn College and various private schools in the New York area. After publishing her first book of poetry, "Sombraaventadora." she came to teach at Barnard College in 1981. To date, Rayo has written about 15 different books of poetry, almost all of which are in Spanish.

Achievements and Pivotal Points: Rayo said the biggest achievement of her career as a poet occurred when she founded what are known as "Encuentros de Poetas Colombianas" (The Congress of Colombian Women Poets) in 1984. These poetry readings take place once a year in Roldanillo, Colombia at her husband's art museum "El Museo Rayo." Every year, women poets from all over Colombia gather at the museum to share their poetry and their culture. Rayo has taken her experiences from the encuentros and incorporated them into the classroom, offering courses such as "Colombian Women Writers of the 20th Century" and "Lives of Creative Women" at Barnard. "The reason it [the creation of the encuentros] changed me so much is that I was really able to look within women's poetry in Colombia. There's a very rich oral tradition in Colombia—the tradition of the Caribbean and the Pacific Coast," she said.

"It's an extension of teaching in a way. It's what teaching should be like. We participate in the Congress, we listen to one another, we learn about each other's work."

Obstacles: "I think my biggest obstacle was that I didn't decide early enough in my life what I really wanted to do. My teaching career could have gone in other directions, but I don't know if it would have been better."

Advice: "Do what you love. Don't pick a career because somebody wants you to do it or because you think you'll have a better life that way."

"Real success occurs when you can give yourself to it, and not only love it, but lose yourself in it."

Mentors: In addition to her parents' love of writing, both also were teachers as well. Rayo said that her mother really inspired her to teach literature and language. "She was a wonderful teacher," Rayo said. "She was a very charismatic person, very beautiful and very sure of herself. She would go up to each student and she would actually touch their faces sometimes to help them to pronounce and they adored her."

Goals: Rayo hopes to write an entire book about the life and literary accomplishments of her father. To date, she has already written an introductory essay about her father in a reprint of his poetry.

"I really want to do a biography on my father—a full-blown one, but I don't want to do a traditional biography," she said. "I want to make it more like a memoir and remember him as I knew him and also as I didn't know him."#

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