About Philopoetics

Philopoetics is committed to providing an accessible respite from cultures of competition and scarcity. Come fill your bucket at this community wellspring!

Influenced by Indohispano theories of the borderlands, Petra Salazar, a poet and educator, conceived of Philopoetics as a location between the traditional academic boundaries of philosophy and poetry. These are fruitful borderlands Petra has long explored in their marriage to the philosopher Francisco Gallegos.

Philopoetics facilitates community groups and courses, which bring together contemporary philosophers, scholars, and poets, to create accessible learning communities. One-on-one consultations also available.

Philopoetics is situated within the lineage of radical study, which resists the norms and power structures of conventional academia and is grounded in collaboration, mutual aid, and a kind of collective intellectual practice that is not bound by institutional agendas. Alternative learning communities such as these de-center elitist attitudes towards knowledge sharing and work to increase public access to continuing education and meaningful conversation.

About Petra Salazar

Petra Salazar is a white (tres)passing "coyote" (regional term for an indohispano/anglo racial identity) from Española, New Mexico. Petra is an educator at a Montessori school and at Philopoetics.com. They were a finalist and honorable mention in the 2022 Button Chapbook Contest. 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, military conscientious objector to the Iraq War, labor activist, community organizer, higher ed administrator, certified master gardener, herbalism apprentice, and mindfulness and Tai chi practitioner.

Pedagogy Statement

I consider education 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 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 judgment.

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.

In my role as an educator, I prepare the learning environment, curate texts and media, encourage and affirm curiosity and expression, ask questions, identify patterns, synthesize ideas, and make connections.

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 philopoetics@gmail.com 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.

Creative Coaching