SPRINGFIELD — The latest project by Magdalena Gómez, the former poet laureate of Springfield, has attracted national attention and support.

Gomez has received a $10,0000 award from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, National Fund for Artists for 2023.

This is the latest honor for Gomez and her work. She is the recipient of the 2019 Latina 50 Plus Award in Literature from Fordham University, 2019 Latinx Excellence on the Hill Award from the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, 2019 Excellence in the Arts Award from the Springfield Cultural Council and the 2018 New England Public Radio Arts and Humanities Award.

The project is a performance adaptation of her memoir “Mi’ja,” which she explained to Reminder Publishing describes her childhood up to the age of 19.

She said, “The book focuses how the wisdom of children is overlooked and under-appreciated. Children are born artists and when a child is extraordinary it can frighten adults. It can be too much to deal with and I was that kind of child.”

Gomez added, “It is my desire to bring together elements of theater, poetry, ritual, humor, celebration, visual art, music, and radical, raw, shameless love, into our collective experience. What I have always called, a theater of intimacy.” The working title of the bilingual work is “Yo Soy Mi’ja/I am My Own Daughter.”

Of her new project she explained she is “creating a solo performance work from my book about trauma in a way that doesn’t traumatize people.”

Gomez explained that her mother had been the victim in sex trafficking and “was very abusive because that’s all she knew.” Yet her mother was a talented seamstress, who could reproduce a dress just by looking at it. Gomez said her mother had “an innate creative genius.”

Gomez lived in the Bronx, New York, and said her family was poor. She was “raised in a cycle of trauma.” She learned though “the powers of imagination could transcend the horrors of life.”

She added the public library was “part of my salvation.”

She has used her experiences in her work to tell stories about people who have been over-looked or marginalized as well as show the healing power of creativity and imagination.

Gomez said that “people already have power. My job is to unlock it.”

For the performance piece, Gomez is working with a psychologist “to make sure the piece won’t re-stimulate trauma in others.”

She is also seeking to involve musicians to collaborate in the performance. With support from other funding sources “it adds up to enough money to actually get it done.”

She explained she wants audiences to “not blame themselves and not blame their parents. There are outside factors.” She said her intention is to answer the question “how can we interrupt the pattern and bring love and imagination back into our lives?”

Gomez is planning to have several rehearsals open to invited audiences to solicit feedback before the performance makes its premiere in Springfield and Holyoke.

The writer is planning to have the performance piece completed by this time next year. Although she will perform it initially, she will only do several performances and then “pass it along to a younger woman.”

“It’s exciting. I want people to feel the piece belongs to them,” she said. “I will welcome audiences into the experiences of my life so they can experience their own.”