Lupita Eyde-Tucker
Online Course Design Specialist / Center for Teaching Excellence / University of Florida
Biography
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator working in English and Spanish. A native of New Jersey, she moved to Guayaquil, Ecuador at the age of twelve, where she fell in love with poetry in Spanish. She’s the winner of the 2021 Unbound Emerging Poet Prize, and her poems have appeared in Women’s Voices for Change, Yemassee, Rattle, Night Heron Barks, McNeese Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cortland Review, Ninth Letter, Raleigh Review, MER, Anacapa Review, American Life in Poetry, and Poem-A-Day by Poets.org, among others.
A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Eyde-Tucker holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Florida. Eyde-Tucker was named a Best New Poet of 2022, a Vermont Studio Center Fellow, and has received generous institutional support from New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, and Bread Loaf Writers Conferences. In 2024, Eyde-Tucker’s English translation of Oriette D’Angelo’s poetry collection, “Homeland of Swarms” was published by Co•im•press.
A lifelong educator, Eyde-Tucker holds a Florida Professional Educator Certification, and since 1996 she has taught poetry, English Literature, writing, and economics at all levels, from elementary to undergraduate, both online and in person. Her website is www.NotEnoughPoetry.com
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
My South American ancestors on my mother’s side were Sephardic Jews who fled from Spain in the 1500s and settled in the mountains of Ecuador. For centuries my ancestors kept their Jewish faith a secret, pretending to be Catholic in order to survive. My maternal grandmother was raised Catholic but kept a Saturday Sabbath and some Jewish customs.
In 2022 my poetry manuscript, “Eucalyptus,” was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. The manuscript explores my Sephardic Jewish ancestry and bi-cultural heritage.
Published Works
Links to Sample Works
Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, “Without Reparations”
Anacapa Review, “Mi Telenovela”
Ninth Letter, “Alausí 1941”
The Cortland Review, “Elegy for Mainsail & Jib”
Philadelphia Stories, “Eucalyptus”
Rattle #71, “Mis Gacelas”
