Carmen Tafolla is, if anything, a fighter.  Ask anyone who
knows her. The local writer and teacher, who became San
Antonio's first poet laureate in April 2012, will be honored for
her lifelong achievement to literature at Gemini Ink's
Inkstravaganza! gala Sept. 6 at Pearl Stable.  The author of the
short-story collection "The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans,"
which won the Tomás Rivera Award, and the acclaimed poetry
collection "Sonnets and Salsa" has called her experience as the
city's literary ambassador "dizzying and exhilarating."  A
diminutive dynamo, Tafolla, 61, was diagnosed with breast cancer
last year and battled it with conventional and alternative
medical methods. Through it all, she kept up an exhaustive
schedule, never missing an opportunity to read to a group of
third-graders on the South Side.  Tafolla was motivated in her
fight by her mother, who survived two bouts of colon cancer.
"She buried all the doctors," Tafolla said.  Q. Why does poetry
matter? A. Because life matters. And the botto