Browse Reading by Year

Nikky Finney reads poems from her collections The World Is Round (2003) and Lovechild's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry (forthcoming in 2020). Finney also reads her new work titled "Black Boy with Cow: A Still Life" commissioned for the Poetry Center's Art for Justice series. Members of the American Friends Service Committee, Tucson give an introductory presentation.

Peggy Shumaker reads poems from Cairn: New and Selected Poems and Prose (2018) as well as one uncollected poem. This reading was originally given with Maurya Simon as the inaugural reading in the Tom Sanders Memorial Reading Series.

Maurya Simon reads poems from The Wilderness: New & Selected Poems 1980-2016 (2018). This reading was originally given with Peggy Shumaker as the inaugural reading in the Tom Sanders Memorial Reading Series. 

Myriam Moscona reads with Jen Hofer and John Pluecker of Antena Aire, a language justice and language experimentation collaborative. The three give an interactive presentation while reading from both their translated and original works. 

Natalie Shapero reads poems from Hard Child (2017) along with other uncollected poems.

Evie Shockley reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice series. This reading was originally given with Patrick Rosal for the Art for Justice series. Representatives of Tucson's Sex Workers Outreach Project give an opening presentation. 

Patrick Rosal reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice series, focused on race riots which occurred in Watsonville, California in 1930. This reading was given alongside Evie Shockley for the Art for Justice series. Representatives of Tucson's Sex Workers Outreach Project give an opening presentation. 

Natalie Diaz reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice series. Representatives of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project give an opening presentation. 

Cherríe Moraga reads excerpts from her memoir Native Country of the Heart (2019).

Naomi Shihab Nye reads from her poetry collections Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018) and The Tiny Journalist (2019). She also reads from new work, including one poem that would appear in Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (2020). 

Rigoberto González reads from his memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood (2018) and his newest collection of poetry The Book of Ruin (2019).

Poetry Center Summer Resident Lehua M. Taitano gives an interactive reading of poems from her collection Inside Me an Island (2018). She also presents her latest work, a video poem created for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's "A Day in the Queer Life" project. This reading was originally given alongside Bojan Louis.

Bojan Louis reads from his poetry collection Currents (2017) along with other uncollected poems. This reading was originally given alongside Lehua M. Taitano. 

Erika L. Sánchez reads poems from her collection Lessons on Expulsion (2017) as well as uncollected work. This reading was originally given alongside sam sax as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

sam sax reads poems that would be published four years later in Pig (2023), as well as work from his first two collections, madness (2017) and bury it (2018). This reading was originally given alongside Erika L. Sánchez as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Javier Zamora reads uncollected work as well as two poems from his collection Unaccompanied (2017). This reading was originally given alongside Joseph O. Legaspi and Kim Addonizio at the Center for Creative Photography. 

Joseph O. Legaspi reads poems from his collections Imago (2007) and Threshold (2017) as well as two uncollected poems. This reading was originally given alongside Javier Zamora and Kim Addonizio at the Center for Creative Photography. 

Kim Addonizio reads poems from her collection Mortal Trash (2016) as well as new work that would go on to be collected in Now We're Getting Somewhere (2021). This reading was originally given alongside Joseph O. Legaspi and Javier Zamora at the Center for Creative Photography. 

Angel Nafis reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice Series. This reading was originally given alongside Patricia Smith. Leilani Clark represents BIPOC United Tucson in an opening presentation.

Patricia Smith reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice Series as well as poems from her collection Teahouse of the Almighty (2006). This reading was originally given alongside Angel Nafis. Leilani Clark represents BIPOC United Tucson in an opening presentation.

T Clutch Fleischmann reads new work as well as excerpts from their book Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through (2019). This reading was originally given with Andrea Lawlor as part of the UA Prose Series.

Andrea Lawlor reads excerpts from their novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017). This reading was originally given alongside T Clutch Fleischmann as part of the UA Prose Series. 

Tongo Eisen-Martin reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice series. Timoteio Padilla represents Sustainable Nations in an opening presentation.

Sandra Cisneros reads new work as part of the Tucson Humanities Festival. Most of these poems would go on to be collected in Woman Without Shame (2022). 

Following a full reading, Sandra Cisneros and Manuel Muñoz discuss Cisneros' work. The full reading is only available for viewing in person at the Poetry Center.

Matthew Zapruder reads poems from his collection Father's Day (2019) and excerpts from his book of criticism Why Poetry (2017). This reading was given at the Center for Creative Photography. 

Aimee Bender reads one uncollected story and one story from The Color Master (2014).

Arthur Sze reads from his poetry collection Sight Lines (2019).

Dean Young reads work from his collection Solar Perplexus (2019) as well as several uncollected poems. 

Li-Young Lee reads new and uncollected work as well as two poems from his collection The Undressing (2018). This reading was given as part of the Tom Sanders Memorial Reading Series. 

Rosa Alcalá reads from her translations of Cecilia Vicuña's poetry presented in New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (2018). She also reads uncollected poems of her own. This reading was given as part of the Hannelore Quander-Rattee Works-in-Translation Series.

Carolyn Forché reads excerpts from her memoir What You Have Heard Is True (2019) and poems from her collection In the Lateness of the World (2020).

Tiana Clark reads from her poetry collection I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (2018) as well as two uncollected poems. This reading was originally given alongside Monica Sok. 

Monica Sok reads poems from her collection A Nail the Evening Hangs On (2020). This reading was originally given alongside Tiana Clark.

Ada Limón reads from her poetry manuscript What Is Caged Is Also Kept From Us, commissioned by the Poetry Center as part of the Art for Justice series. Lola Rainey gives an opening presentation focused on pretrial detention.

LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and Joy Harjo discuss and read poetry from the anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020). Diana Marie Delgado leads a conversation to conclude the event. This reading was given online as the first event from the Institute for Inquiry and Poetics, a thought center founded at the University of Arizona Poetry Center and designed to create space and time for poets to respond to pressing questions that reside at the intersection of social concern and poetry. 

As part of the Institute for Inquiry and Poetics, Peter J. Harris, Michael Warr, Luivette Resto, and Luis J. Rodriguez read from and discuss collected and uncollected work, including from their books Bless the Ashes (Harris, 2014), The Armageddon of Funk (Warr, 2011), Ascension (Resto, 2013), Unfinished Portrait (Resto, 2008), Borrowed Bones: New Poems from the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles (Rodriguez, 2016), and From Our Land to Our Land: Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings from a Native Xicanx Writer (Rodriguez, 2020). Diana Marie Delgado leads a conversation to conclude the event.

As part of the Institute for Inquiry and Poetics, Sin À Tes Souhaits (Frank Johnson), Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and Raquel Salas Rivera read and discuss poems from their unpublished manuscripts Literal Dope (À Tes Souhaits), Racial Calculus (Villarreal), and Oso Blanco (Salas Rivera). Diana Marie Delgado leads a conversation throughout the event.

As part of the Institute for Inquiry and Poetics and the Art for Justice series, Nicole Sealey, John Murillo, and Hanif Abdurraqib read from and discuss their writing centered on police violence, the carceral justice system, and racial injustice towards Black Americans. Sealey specifically reads excerpts from her then-unpublished manuscript The Ferguson Report: An Erasure (2023). Diana Marie Delgado leads a conversation throughout the event.

As part of the Institute for Inquiry and Poetics and the Art for Justice series, Reginald Dwayne Betts performs a portion of Felon: An American Washi Tale, a one-man play centered on the importance of books and paper in and after prison. Diana Marie Delgado leads a conversation with Betts and guest Joe Watson to conclude the reading, focused on the play, the Art for Justice series itself, and the Million Book Project.

Luis Alberto Urrea reads poems from The Tijuana Book of the Dead (2015) focused on life in the US-Mexico borderlands. He opens with one poem forthcoming in Piedra (2023) and concludes with a chapter from The House of Broken Angels (2019), retold from memory. This reading was presented as part of the 2021 Tucson Humanities Festival.

Mahogany L. Browne reads poems from her collection I Remember Death By Its Proximity to What I Love (2021) and closes with a guided meditation.

Laurie Ann Guerrero reads from across her body of work as collected in I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New and Selected Poems (2020). This includes portions of her heroic sonnet crown, A Crown for Gumecindo, written for her grandfather, alongside other poems rooted in family experience. Guerrero also reads from Redwork, her manuscript in progress. This reading was originally given alongside Carl Marcum.

Carl Marcum reads poems from his second collection, A Camera Obscura (2021), primarily focused on the night sky and space exploration. He also reads two poems from his first collection, Cue Lazarus (2001), in addition to two poems from a manuscript in progress. This reading was originally given alongside Laurie Ann Guerrero as part of the Tom Sanders Memorial Reading Series.

Jericho Brown reads from across his published body of work: Please (2008), The New Testament (2014), and The Tradition (2019), his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection. He reads poems that touch on childhood and family, southern Black culture, racial injustice, and violence— from the home to the nation. He answers audience questions on musicality, his approach to writing and teaching poetry, and his invented form, the duplex.

Forrest Gander reads from his translation of Mexican poet Coral Bracho's It Must Be a Misunderstanding (2022), as well as from his own collection Twice Alive (2021). The reading begins with three poems by Gander's late wife, C.D. Wright, read by two other poets and Gander himself. Gander closes with his translation of a poem by Pablo Neruda published in Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems (2016).

Joy Williams reads from the final section of her fifth novel, Harrow (2021), sharing a stream-of-consciousness passage from the perspective of Jeffrey, a precocious, ten-year-old judge presiding in a post-apocalyptic future. This reading was presented as part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series.

Jay Hopler reads poems from Still Life (2022), written during his time living with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Hopler was unable to travel to Tucson but appeared for an in-person audience via Zoom. This reading was originally given with Kimberly Johnson.

Kimberly Johnson reads primarily from her fourth poetry collection, Fatal (2022), along with several poems from A Metaphorical God (2008) and Uncommon Prayer (2014). This reading was originally given with Jay Hopler, who appeared via Zoom.

torrin a. greathouse reads poems from two manuscripts in progress: DEED, focused on the intersections of desire, desirability, and violence, and a newer manuscript that turns to California's Central Valley and climate change. Discussions of poetic form recur throughout. greathouse was selected as the Poetry Center's 2020 Summer Resident; due to the Covid-19 pandemic, her residency was deferred, and this reading was presented online.