Browse Reading by Year

Marwa Helal reads poems from her first two full-length collections, Invasive Species (2019) and Ante Body (2022). This reading was given alongside Marcelo Hernandez Castillo as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo shares new work commissioned by the Poetry Center as part of the Art for Justice series. Informed by Hernandez Castillo's work with youth in detention, these poems and video-text explore the relationship between facts and story as they communicate the pain of the carceral justice system. This reading was also given as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series, alongside Marwa Helal.

Donika Kelly reads from her first two books, Bestiary (2016) and The Renunciations (2021). She closes by reading several recent, uncollected poems.

Los Angeles poet Sesshu Foster reads from City Terrace Field Manual (1996), World Ball Notebook (2008), and City of the Future (2018). He reads poems that engage with East LA, the influences of his father, and his own life as a father, mixing candor and humor throughout.

Anthony Cody reads from his collection Borderland Apocrypha (2020), which comprises of visual, research-based poems centered on citizenship, the history of racial violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the American West, and ecopoetics. Cody also shares an original video piece paired with an uncollected poem, as well as a translation of a Juan Felipe Herrera poem that invites audience participation. This reading was originally given alongside Mai Der Vang. 

Mai Der Vang reads from her second book, Yellow Rain (2021), a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. In this collection, Vang reinvestigates the "yellow rain" incident, in which a chemical biological weapon was unleashed upon Hmong refugees as they fled Laos near the end of the Vietnam War. Grounded in a documentary approach to poetry, Vang's poems center the testimonies of the Hmong, whose voices were erased in the subsequent geopolitical fervor around the investigation. This reading was originally given alongside Anthony Cody.

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads from her unpublished manuscript titled Fire: Poems Against Pandemic, as well as from her latest published collection, April on Olympia (2021). In these poems, Cervantes touches upon grief, connectedness with the earth, and climate change. She also pays poetic tribute to a range of figures that include her grandmother, a homeroom teacher from junior high, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the writers Julia Alvarez and Allen Ginsberg.

Aria Aber reads from her collection Hard Damage (2022), which meditates upon the Afghan refugee experience and familial relationships, particularly the one with her mother. Aber concludes the reading with two uncollected poems that center on grief and mortality. This reading was originally given alongside Shayla Lawz as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Shayla Lawz reads from her book speculation, n. (2021), which revolves around survival and Black life amidst police violence within the age of social media and the 24/7 news cycle. Lawz creates a unique performed version of her book through repetition and distortions not present on the page. This reading was originally given alongside Aria Aber as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Victoria Chang reads from her published works Obit (2020), Dear Memory (2021), and The Trees Witness Everything (2022). She also shares new, uncollected poems. Chang's poems touch upon grief from the death of her parents, as well as found material from family archives. She also reads work structured in a Japanese syllabic form called waka.

Former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove reads poems from her book Playlist for the Apocalypse (2021). This reading was presented as part of the 2022 Tucson Humanities Festival. 

Sandra Cisneros and translator Liliana Valenzuela read from Cisneros' Woman Without Shame (2022) and Valenzuela's Spanish-language translation, Mujer sin vergüenza (2022), selecting poems that consider womanhood, aging, and freedom as a woman. Valenzuela also reads poems of her own from Codex of Journeys: Bendito camino (2012) and Codex of Love: Bendita ternura (2020), which also consider womanhood, desire, and the act of looking.

Cara Blue Adams, an alumna of the UA MFA in Creative Writing Program, reads a short story titled "Shoulder Season" from her collection You Never Get It Back (2021). This story takes place in Tucson and follows a protagonist who is in an optical sciences graduate program at UA, but decides to leave school and become a writer. This reading was originally given alongside Alberto Ríos and Aisha Sabatini Sloan to celebrate the MFA program's 50th anniversary.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan, an alumna of the UA MFA Creative Writing program, reads from her book-length essay Borealis (2021). In this excerpt from the book, Sabatini Sloan details her travel to Homer, Alaska, and how the stark landscape interacts with her identity as a Black, queer woman. Sabatini Sloan's writing also incorporates references to pop culture and Black artists. This reading was originally given alongside Cara Blue Adams and Alberto Ríos to celebrate the MFA program's 50th anniversary.

Alberto Ríos, poet laureate of Arizona and alumnus of the UA MFA in Creative Writing program, reads across his published body of work, specifically poems from his books Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), The Dangerous Shirt (2009), and Not Go Away Is My Name (2020). Major themes in this reading include Ríos' grandmother, language, ancestry, and occasions around food. This reading was originally given alongside Cara Blue Adams and Aisha Sabatini Sloan to celebrate the MFA program's 50th anniversary.

Mark Doty reads mostly new, uncollected poems that revolve around his observations and experiences living in New York City, with a focus on his co-op apartment building. He opens the evening with a memory of the mentorship he received as a high-schooler from Richard Shelton, who had recently passed at the time of this reading. This reading was given as part of the Tom Sanders Memorial Reading Series. 

Ander Monson reads from his first memoir, Predator (2022), titled after the 1987 sci-fi action film that he has watched 146 times. Monson shares excerpts from the memoir that closely draw upon select frames and scenes from the film. Part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series, this reading was given alongside Bojan Louis and Manuel Muñoz. 

Manuel Muñoz reads an excerpt from his short story collection The Consequences (2022), which centers on Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers around Fresno, California. This reading was given alongside Ander Monson and Bojan Louis as part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series. 

Bojan Louis reads from his debut short story collection Sinking Bell (2022). This excerpted story revolves around a young Diné narrator in Flagstaff, Arizona, who finds himself working as a chauffeur for his cousin and her friends. Part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series, this reading was presented alongside Ander Monson and Manuel Muñoz. 

Roberto Tejada reads poems from Why the Assembly Disbanded (2022), which he describes as inhabiting the "actual and surreal" US-Mexico Borderlands. He also reads from a manuscript in progress begun during the Coronavirus pandemic titled Carbonate of Copper, informed by a widening and blurring sense of the self, the human, and the non-human.

Poet and performance artist Cecilia Vicuña joins with poets and translators Daniel Borzutzky and Rosa Alcalá to read at Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in honor of Vicuña's exhibit Sonoran Quipu. Borzutzky and Alcalá both read forthcoming work, as well as pieces by Vicuña they have translated into English. Vicuña reads and improvises from Spit Temple (2012), a selection of past performances transcribed, edited, and translated by Alcalá.

Poet and singer-songwriter Brian Laidlaw performs the album Silently Loud (2023), a compilation of songs with lyrics by nonspeaking autistic songwriters set to music through collaboration between Laidlaw and the lyricists. Two Tucson lyricists whose work appears on the album, Joshua Greiner and Aulton Grubbs, respond to audience questions to conclude the event.

Tyehimba Jess reads historical persona poems from leadbelly (2005) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Olio (2016), including the full sonnet sequence about the McKoy twins from Olio. He also discusses the research behind Olio and the complex forms he uses throughout the collection, particularly his syncopated sonnets.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera begins with English and Spanish readings from Akrílica (2022), trading languages with translator Farid Matuk. Together, they also read Herrera’s poem "i am not a paid protestor," which Herrera terms a "duo poem" for two voices in dialogue with one another. Herrera closes out the reading with poems and remarks about mass shootings, classical music, space exploration, and human suffering and connection.

Nicole Sealey reads from her first full-length collection, Ordinary Beast (2017), sharing poems that approach the embodied experience of mortality and the violence-haunted reality of being a Black woman in contemporary America. Her selections include an ekphrastic poem and a true cento, composed of one hundred lines collected from other poets.

Jane Hirshfield reads from her ninth collection of poems, Ledger (2020), which meditates on the cascading effects of climate change and the griefs of contemporary human life. In recognition of National Poetry Month, she opens with "The Poet" from The Lives of the Heart (1997) and selections from The Ink Dark Moon (1988), her translations of Classical Period Japanese poets Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu. She closes with uncollected new work.

Michael Wasson reads poems primarily from his first full-length collection, Swallowed Light (2022), which inhabits both the fragmented self and the tensions of language and history experienced by Wasson's Nimíipuu community. Part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series, this reading was originally given with Jennifer Elise Foerster.

Jennifer Elise Foerster reads from The Maybe-Bird (2022), her third book of poetry. Her poems and commentary center on themes of poetry as deep listening, layered voices, and created forms that expand and circle back on themselves. Foerster closes with two short poems in Mvskoke. Part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series, this reading was originally given with Michael Wasson.

Summer resident Angel Dominguez reads poems rooted in ancestors and community as they protest colonialism, fascism, and gentrification. Dominguez first reads from across their published works: Black Lavender Milk (2015), RoseSunWater (2021), and Desgraciado (the collected letters) (2022). They close the reading with recent poems, including one written the night before the reading and others from a manuscript in progress titled Don't Tell My Mother If They Kill Me.

Dionne Irving reads the short story "An American Idea of Fun" from her second book, The Islands (2022). The story traces the impact of a summer spent in France across an American girl's life. Irving answers questions about the story, The Islands as a whole, and the writers and stories that have inspired her.

Paisley Rekdal presents from West: A Translation (2023), a documentary hybrid work centered on the Transcontinental Railroad, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and racism in America. Rekdal shares video poems from the book's companion website and reads the essays corresponding to those poems. She shapes her reading around topics selected by the audience: labor, Mormons, Chinese death rituals, Robert Smithson (creator of Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake), the biracial experience, prostitution, and Hollywood's portrayal of women and the railroad.

Yanyi reads from his two published collections, The Year of Blue Water (2019) and Dream of the Divided Field (2022), opening with two early, uncollected poems and closing with one recent draft. Intimacy emerges as a thematic center—in friendships, romantic relationships, and with the self.

Timothy Donnelly reads primarily from his fourth collection, Chariot (2023), choosing poems that look to both history and daily life as they consider the human experience of time and perception. He also reads from his third collection, The Problem of the Many (2019), and shares one new, unpublished poem.

Eileen Myles reads poems from a "Working Life" (2023) focused on daily life, love, animals, humor, and the act of writing. Myles opens with an unpublished essay and concludes with new poems—several of which respond to animal cruelty—as well as a short story.

Adam O. Davis reads from his first book, Index of Haunted Houses (2020), which inhabits the ghostly landscape of American capitalism. He closes with several poems from an unpublished manuscript. This reading was originally given with Manuel Paul López.

Manuel Paul López reads primarily from his fourth collection, Nerve Curriculum (2023), as well as from his third collection, These Days of Candy (2017), and uncollected work. Surreal but grounded in recognizable places and situations, his selection of poems also includes dialogue from a verse play. This reading was originally given with Adam O. Davis.

Sawako Nakayasu reads work stemming from her 2017 return to the United States from Japan and the challenges of being immersed again in the violence of American culture. She opens with several new ant poems before reading from Say Translation Is Art (2020), Some Girls Walk Into the Country They Are From (2020), Pink Waves (2023), and her forthcoming book Settle Her. This reading was presented in collaboration with the American Literary Translators Association and as part of the ALTA46 conference.

Marilyn Chin reads from her sixth collection, Sage (2023), sharing poems that employ humor, puns, rhyme, allusions to Chinese and English literature, and a wide array of traditional and modified verse forms. Chin opens the reading by performing from memory two poems from A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (2018).

Charif Shanahan reads from his second collection of poetry, Trace Evidence (2023), which considers mixed-race identity and the construction of race alongside the struggle to find and make meaning in one's life.

As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Julie Swarstad Johnson reads poems that consider the night sky, astronomy, and place. She primarily reads from a sequence of epistolary poems titled "Night Letters," and she opens with one poem from Pennsylvania Furnace (2019). This reading was originally given alongside Derek Sheffield and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke.

As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke reads from her book-length poem Look at This Blue (2022), focusing on extinctions and climate change in California, as well as on poverty and violence. This reading was originally given alongside Julie Swarstad Johnson and Derek Sheffield.

As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Derek Sheffield reads poems via Zoom on the connection between humans and the natural world, drawn from his collections Through the Second Skin (2013) and Not For Luck (2021). He also discusses and reads from two anthologies he co-edited, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry (2023) and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (2020). This reading was originally given alongside Julie Swarstad Johnson and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke.

Edgar Kunz reads from his first two books, Tap Out (2019) and Fixer (2023). Many of the poems he reads center on his father, who suffered from addiction, and reflect on his father's death. He closes with two love poems.

Brenda Hillman reads from In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022), her eleventh collection of poetry, including poems set during the COVID-19 pandemic. She briefly discusses her translation—done in collaboration with her mother—of Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar, and closes with two new poems focused on her mother's garden and her childhood home.

Robert Hass reads new translations from the Polish of postwar poems by Czesław Miłosz. These poems come from the period (1946-1953) during which Miłosz fled from Warsaw and worked in the United States for the Polish consulate. Throughout the reading, Hass provides commentary on the unique challenges of translating Miłosz.

Edgar Garcia reads from his manuscript Cantares Mexicanos, a series of translations, adaptations, and re-imaginings of the 16th century book of the same name, which collects Nahuatl-language songs. This reading was given as part of the Letras Latinas 20th Anniversary Reading with Gina Franco and Sheila Maldonado.

Gina Franco reads from her second book, The Accidental (2019), selecting poems connected to her family's history as copper miners in eastern Arizona. She also reads an excerpt from "Throne," a long poem from a recently completed manuscript. This reading was given as part of the Letras Latinas 20th Anniversary Reading with Edgar Garcia and Sheila Maldonado.

Sheila Maldonado reads poems from her second book, that's what you get (2021), and a manuscript in progress titled bloodletters. Many of the poems incorporate visual components, and primary themes include New York City, Honduran heritage, and ancient Mayan culture. This reading was given as part of the Letras Latinas 20th Anniversary Reading with Gina Franco and Edgar Garcia.

Matthew Zapruder reads poems from Father's Day (2019) and his forthcoming collection I Love Hearing Your Dreams (2024), many of which center on fatherhood, family life, and writing poetry. He opens and closes the reading with excerpts from his memoir Story of a Poem (2023), focused on the act of drafting and revising a poem.

John Murillo, the Poetry Center's spring poet in residence, reads from Up Jump the Boogie (2010) and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (2020). His poems—many of them long poems—consider masculinity, the divide between boyhood and manhood, violence, and the ways we construct our sense of self.