Meet Our Board of Directors
Board Members Needed!
The NMSPS all-volunteer Board needs new members! If you are an adult NMSPS member and would like to help steer the organization going forward, consider volunteering for one of the open positions below. If you are not an adult member or prefer to help us in a non-Board position, consider volunteering for one or more of the duties described in the open Board positions below. Contact President Bernadette Perez to volunteer or for more information.
NMSPS Officers
Elected every two years by majority vote of the NMSPS membership.
Bernadette Perez, President
In February 2022, then Vice President Bernadette Perez accepted the NMSPS President position.
Perez says, “I am honored to serve as the NMSPS President for 2022-23, and I hope you will join me in the work ahead, as we strive to promote poetry in New Mexico and beyond. There is much to be done as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have been involved in NMSPS since 2005 as a Member, Chapter Chair, Historian, Vice President, and President. It has been a wonderful opportunity. The times I spend working with friends on NMSPS projects are the best parts of my week.
I hope to continue to positively influence others’ experiences and promote poetry into the future in New Mexico and Beyond in my newly appointed role of President of NMSPS.”
In 1990, Perez received the Silver Poet Award from World of Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Wishing Well: Musings, Small Canyons Anthology, and Poems 4 Peace. She contributed to La Familia: La Casa de Colores and won the Wagner Society of Santa Fe Audience Favorite “Write Your Own Prize Song.” Her work is included in the mega-unity poem by Juan Felipe and in The Americans Museum Inscription by Shinpei Takeda. She has been published in over 100 publications between 2015-2021. When she is not writing, she works full time as a Corporate Success Leader and balances her love of poetry and family.
Stan Crawford, Secretary
Stan is an attorney and poet who moved to Albuquerque in 2019 with his wife Dawn and their menagerie of dogs and cats. He has published his work in Borderlands:Texas Poetry Review, the Comstock Review, the Midwest Quarterly, Poet Lore, the Water-Stone Review, and elsewhere. His poetry collection Resisting Gravity was selected as a Finalist for the First Book of Poetry award given by the Texas Institute of Letters in 2017. Before moving to New Mexico, he served on the Board of Mutabilis Press, an independent publisher of poetry in Houston, for 18 years.
Chapter Chairs
Elected every two years by majority vote of the Chapter membership.
Janet Ruth, Chair
Albuquerque Chapter
Janet is a New Mexico ornithologist and poet. She has been active in the Albuquerque Chapter of NMSPS for a number of years and is a regular at local poet open mic events. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in cattails, Oddball Magazine, Fixed & Free Quarterly, Blue Heron Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Akitsu Journal. She was a Finalist for Talking Gourds’ Fischer Prize and therefore a featured reader in the Bardic Trails zoom series in May 2022. She has poems in recent anthologies including Where Flowers Bloom (anthology of poems for Ukraine, 2022), Moving Images: poetry inspired by film (2021), and New Mexico Remembers 9/11 (2020). Her first full-length book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. She also collaborated on a self-published chapbook with sister-poets from NM—Andi Penner and Faith Kaltenbach, What is the Boiling Point of Clouds? (2019). More information about her poetry can be found at this web page.
Kuan Tikkun, Chair
Rio Grande Valencia Chapter
Kuan Tikkun was a founding member of Rio Grande Valencia (RGV) poets and is currently the RGV chair. Kuan specialized in haiku/senryu for many years and has branched out into prose poems, rhyming limericks and free form. She has been published in several anthologies and is currently cocooning. Stay tuned.
Lynne Zotalis, Chair
River Poets (Silver City)
Lynne Zotalis is an award-winning author and poet, practicing the life-long pursuit to be a peacemaker. Her short stories have won publication in the R.H. Cunningham Short Story Contest for three years as well as poetry in Tuck Magazine, an online human rights journal, writinginawoman’svoice, The Poetic Bond VII, VIII and IX, and Lyrical Iowa. Interviewed by John Noltner; founder of A Peace of my Mind, the recording is available on his website. She has contributed to numerous anthologies including Peace Begins and Turning Points: Discovering Meaning and Passion in Turbulent Times, published by Changing Times Press. Saying Goodbye to Chuck promotes an interactive method of incorporating a daily journal to enunciate the readers’ personal grief process, available on Amazon. Her memoir/creative nonfiction, Hippie at Heart (What I Used to Be, I Still Am) won a Firebird Book Award and was a finalist in the Best Book Awards.
Directors
Appointed annually by the NMSPS president.
Shirley Blackwell, Chancellor
During 2008-20, Shirley Blackwell served successively on the NMSPS Board as chapter chair of the RGV Poets, chancellor, president, again as chancellor, and liaison to the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS). In 2014 she became an NFSPS board member as chair of the annual NFSPS College Undergraduate Poetry (CUP) competition. In 2018 she was appointed NFSPS 1st vice chancellor.
She resigned from both boards in the early days of the Covid pandemic to become a backyard farmer and write a children’s book based on her prizewinning poem “Kerchoo! Call the Zoo!” Her freezer is full and the book is still waiting.
Blackwell’s poems appear in more than a dozen anthologies, reviews, and journals under her pen name, Shirley Balance Blackwell. She also wrote a monthly column about poetry for the Valencia News Bulletin for three years. She has published two poetry books of her own, titled Already Thereand Ditchbank Diaries: Haibuñera from the Land of Enchantment, which traces acequia history and culture from ancient times to the present. Both books were finalists in the NM-AZ Book Awards in 2012 and 2013, respectively. In 2016, along with former presidents Fil Peach (NMSPS) and Eleanor Berry (NFSPS), she founded the NFSPS BlackBerry Peach Prizes for Poetry: Spoken and Heard, which annually awards prizes and publication for original performance poetry.
Jan Baca, Membership Chair
Jan writes in Albuquerque, NM, where she has lived since 1997 with her husband and son. Jan’s award-winning poetry and short stories have appeared in various publications, including the Santa Fe Reporter, Albuquerque Alibi, Earthships: A New Mecca, Central Avenue Poetry, and Glissando!: New Mexico State Poetry Society Anthology 2023.
Jan often explores themes of isolation, absurdity, and difference to uncover raw aspects of the human condition that are tender and vulnerable. In these soft spaces she believes connection, community, and healing may occur. Jan holds a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Elementary Education from the University of New Mexico. She is excited to be a part of the New Mexico State Poetry Society and looks forward to helping members with any membership questions or issues that may arise.
Kayleigh Stevens, Youth Chair
Keshi! Salutations
My name is Kayleigh Stevens and I’m a first-year student at the University of New Mexico (Go Lobos!) studying computer engineering with a minor in computer science. I’m from Zuni Pueblo and still go visit as often as I can! As both a STEM student and Native American woman, I value creativity and the arts. From silversmithing and painting to poetry and creative writing I believe it is the backbone of our people. I consider myself a poet and I’ve been writing poetry since I learned how to read. I hope I can do a great job as the youth chair and thank you all so much for giving me a chance! Elahkwa. Thank you.
Keep an eye out and I hope to see you soon!
Zachary Kluckman, Fundraising/Contests/Publications
Duties: the Fundraising/Contests/Publications Chair oversees any fundraising activities, secures judges for any contests NMSPS runs, and oversees any publications that NMSPS produces.
[ top ]Last updated on April 9, 2024