Self-described “taco poet” Eduardo R. “Eddie” Vega has been named the City of San Antonio’s new poet laureate. Vega’s three-year term will begin with his investiture at City Hall on April 15, timed to coincide with National Poetry Month, and will run through March 2027.
The McAllen native has worked in the San Antonio poetry community for decades and has regularly expressed his love for the city in his poetry, including in the 2018 Love Poems to San Antonio tricentennial exhibition at the Culture Commons gallery. Vega’s poem “Paleta Man” describes the common neighborhood fixture as a superhero wearing a uniform of a plaid shirt and Spurs hat “with the two hardest working legs in the business,” and his taco poet moniker derives from the city’s signature cuisine.
Vega said of his appointment to the official city position, “It gives a title to what I’ve been doing because I’ve been doing my best to promote poetry to San Antonio for a while.”
Vega hosts a biweekly poetry night at the Dakota Ice House called The Mouth Dakota Poetry Project, with thematically-driven programs from last Sunday’s “Wine, Women & Poetry” for International Women’s Month to a “Daddy Issues” program years ago featuring dad poets in their forties.
In a description of his 2019 poetry collection Chicharra Chorus, former San Antonio poet laureate and Texas State Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla said of Vega, “This is a poet whose sensitivity to human suffering is draped gracefully in a finely tuned sense of humor.”
His recently published book of poems titled Somos Nopales is described on his website as “about growing up in the Nepantla,” or the in-between. Among other honors, Vega received a literary arts grant from the Luminaria Artist Foundation in 2021, won the Head to Head Haiku competition at the 2022 Southern Fried Poetry Slam and was named Best Local Poet for 2022 in the San Antonio Current.
“His style and focus on South Texas culture and language exemplifies what makes us unique from any other city in the world,” said Yadhira Lozano, executive director of the Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival. “His poetry is relatable and elevates our distinct identity.”
Vega’s appointment establishes a new three-year-term schedule for the poet laureate position, necessitated by the shortened term of former poet laureate Nephtalí De Leon who was removed from the position in August after four months.
Vega was chosen by a panel of four nationally recognized poets, Catherine Bowman, Valerie Martinez, E. (Eugene) Ethelbert Miller and Edwin Torres, with input from three former San Antonio poets laureate — Tafolla, Octavio Quintanilla, and Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson —– who reviewed and rated nomination packets based on merit and community involvement and engagement.
In an announcement to media, Department of Arts and Culture Executive Director Krystal Jones said, “As an extremely active member in our local poetry community as well as an educator, Eddie is an excellent advocate for literary arts who demonstrates a strong commitment to community engagement.”
Vega said he looks forward to working in his new position on “the cultivation of literary arts to impact all of the gente de este pueblo mágico while introducing voices of every corner of this city to our community and beyond.”
Vega will appear Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at The Twig Book Shop for a reading and book signing for Somos Nopales.
