V.B. Price

V.B. Price and Cat Byron, photo by Gloria Graham, taken during the video taping of Add-Verse

Vincent Barrett "V.B." Price (born August 30, 1940 in Los Angeles, California) is an American poet, human rights and environmental columnist, editor, journalist, architectural critic, novelist and teacher.^[1] He is co-founder of New Mexico Mercury, an online platform featuring news, commentary and analysis from a variety of experts and writers around New Mexico. He is currently an emeritus lecturer in the University of New Mexico’s Honors College, where he has taught since 1986 and at UNM’s School of Architecture and Planning. He teaches ancient Greek and Roman literature in translation, modern poetry, urban studies, and New Mexico environmental studies.

Biography

Price was born on August 30, 1940 in Los Angeles, California, the son of film legend Vincent Price (1911–1993) and his first wife, actress Edith Barrett (1907–1977). He graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1962 with a B.A. in anthropology.^[2] In 1969 he married the artist Rini Price.

Writing

He has been writing in New Mexico for over 53 years. Price's poetry and prose has appeared in over 70 national and international publications since 1962. He was the architecture editor for Artspace Magazine of Albuquerque and Los Angeles and the former editor of New Mexico Magazine.^[3] Price was the city editor for the New Mexico Independent (print publication) and worked for the publication through the 1970s^[4] and was the founding editor of Century Magazine which ran from 1980–1983. He was architecture critic at the Albuquerque Journal in the mid 1980s. He wrote for the Albuquerque Tribune from 1978 till the paper closed in 2008, most notably as a weekly columnist. Price was an editorial contributor to the New Mexico Independent (online publication) from 2008-2009. He was the series editor of the Mary Burritt Poetry Series at the University of New Mexico Press from 2004 to 2012. As an editor, he has brought work of well over 500 New Mexican authors, poets, and scholars into print.

In November 2011, UNM Press published Price's latest book, The Orphaned Land: New Mexico's Environment Since the Manhattan Project. In the book, Price analyzes fifty years of newspaper articles and government reports to reveal the environmental toll New Mexico has paid for decades of military munitions testing, uranium mining, population growth and unsustainable development, air and water pollution by multinational corporations and undue strain on the state's limited water supply, to name a few.^[5] Framing New Mexico as, "a microcosm of global ecological degradation,"^[6] Price offers New Mexico natives and interested outsiders a case study of the impacts and systematic breaches of public trust by some of the pervading power structures affecting the environment around the world: the military-industrial complex, multinational corporation's impact on local natural resources and the lack of consideration of long-term environmental consequences in development planning. Speaking with Gene Grant on KNME's, New Mexico In Focus, Price states that the Manhattan Project both transformed and deformed the American West by elevating New Mexico into one of the intellectual and scientific epicenters for the Cold War but also resulting in 2,100 waste sites at Los Alamos National Laboratories in Northern New Mexico and 400 waste sites at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.^[7] Marc Simmons of the Santa Fe New Mexican calls the book, "a stellar compendium focused on the state's slide toward ecological degradation."^[8]

Recognition

• 2016 – Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters (Litt. D.), University of New Mexico
• 2016 – Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize of the University of New Mexico, Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2014 – Top of the Rockies Award, First Place, Environmental Enterprise Reporting Online
• 2006 – Bravo Award for Excellence in Literary Arts from the Arts Alliance.^[9]
• 2004 – Price's book, Albuquerque: A City At The End of the World, won the Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez Award for Historic Survey and *Research.^[10]
• 2003 – Citizen Planner of the Year award by the American Planning Association of New *Mexico.^[11]
• 2002 – Erna Furgusson Award, UNM Alumni, "for touching the minds of many and for service the University of New Mexico and to the greater community."^[12]
• 1999 – Humanist of the Year Award by the Humanist Society of New Mexico.^[13]
• 1996 – ACLU-NM First Amendment Award for excellence in journalism.^[3]
• 1989 – Friend of the Environment Award by the New Mexico Conservation Voters Alliance.
• 1989 – UNM Centennial Distinguished Alumni award.^[9]
• 1985 – Governor's Award for Historic Preservation in New Mexico.^[9]
• 1984 – Award of Merit from the New Mexico Society of Architects for architectural criticism.
• 1975 – Governor's Cultural Properties Review Committee's award for his, "penetrating provocative editorials in defense of New Mexico's cultural environment."^[3]

Books

• The Cyclops Garden (1969), San Marcos Press
• Semblances (1976), Sunstone Press
• Monsters, with Vincent Price (1982), Groset and Dunlap
• Chaco Body (1992), Photographs by Kirk Gittings, Artspace Press
• Albuquerque: A City at the End of the World (1995, 2003), UNM Press
• Anasazi Architecture and American Design (1996), co-edited with Baker Morrow, UNM Press
• The 7 Deadly Sins (1997), La Alameda Press
• Chaco Trilogy (1998), La Alameda Press
• The Oddity (2004), UNM Press
• Myth Waking: Homeric Hymns: A Modern Sequel (2004) St. Elizabeth Street Press, Brooklyn
• In Company: An Anthology of New Mexico Poetry Since 1960 (2004), (co-editor), UNM Press
• Canyon Gardens: The Ancient Pueblo Landscape of the American Southwest (2006), Edited by V.B. Price and Baker Morrow, UNM Press
• Broken and Reset: Selected Poems 1966–2006 (2007), UNM Press
• The University of New Mexico (2010), UNM Press
• The Orphaned Land: New Mexico's Environment Since the Manhattan Project (2011), Photographs by Nell Farrell, UNM Press
• ROME MMI, Poems by V.B. Price and Photographs by Jan Schmitz, printed on demand

Television

• In the 1989 opening episode of KNME's Colores series, Price interviews Godfrey Reggio about the film Koyaanisqatsi.^[14]
• In a 1993 episode of KNME's Colores series, Price reads from his book, Albuquerque: A City at the End of the World, and expands on the past, present and future of the city in videotaped interviews.^[15]
• In October 2011, Price was interviewed by Gene Grant for the KNME produced New Mexico In Focus. The interview revolved around Price's recently published book, The Orphaned Land: New Mexico's Environment Since the Manhattan Project.^[16]

Poetry Readings

• In March 2010, Price was videotaped while reading from a variety of his published and unpublished poems at Acequia Booksellers in Albuquerque's North Valley.^[17]

Personal life

Price was born in Los Angeles but has lived in Albuquerque's North Valley for over 47 years. He has been married to artist Rini Price since 1969 and the two have collaborated since the early 1970s with Rini creating artwork for the majority of Price's books of poetry.^[18] The Prices have two sons, Jody Price of Santa Fe, NM, and Keir Price of Kinnelon, NJ and two grandchildren, Ryan Price and Talia Price.^[3]

References

External links

• "Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project V.B. Price participated in