Browse Reading by Year

X.J. Kennedy reads from Nude Descending a Staircase (1961) and Cross Ties: Selected Poems (1985), commenting humorously on many of the poems and performing several as songs.

Carolyn Kizer reads from her poems, many of which are dedicated to historical heroes or to figures who played an important role in her personal life.

Miguel M. Méndez reads from poems translated by Pulitzer Prize–nominated poet and translator Valerie Martínez during the time when Martínez was an MFA student at the University of Arizona. Méndez reads the poems in Spanish, then Martínez reads her English translations. Poems include "Moon," "Legend of the Breeze," "Saguaros," and "Workshop of Images."

Leslie Scalapino reads work appearing in The Return of Painting, The Pearl, and Orion (1997) and Way (1988).

Adam Zagajewski reads from Tremor (1985) and Solidarity, Solitude (1990). He also reads early drafts of translations of poems that would go on to be collected in Canvas (1991); most differ from those that appear in the published version of the book (translated by Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry, and C.K. Williams).

Adrienne Rich reads poems from the collections Your Native Land, Your Life (1986) and Time's Power (1989).

Ishmael Reed performs poems from his extensive body of work, including several unpublished poems. He remarks that his reading will "start out with a song and end with a song"--that is, with his poems "Betty's Ball Blues" and "I'm Running for the Office of Love" as set to music by Taj Mahal and Allen Toussaint.

Italian writer Paolo Valesio reads poems in English translation. He opens the reading with "In Memoriam" from La Rosa Verde (1987) in the original Italian.

In this classroom session at Rincon High School, Terry Tempest Williams leads students in writing exercises that explore students' knowledge of their home places and environments. Williams also answers student questions and reads from two stories published in Coyote's Canyon (1989).

Steve Orlen reads poems appearing in The Bridge of Sighs (1992) as well as passages from the draft of a novel entitled Homesick For the Land of Pictures.

Nancy Mairs reads poetry and nonfiction from her first three books, In All the Rooms of the Yellow House (1984), Plaintext (1986), and Remembering the Bone House (1989).

Jon Anderson reads widely from his work, including unpublished poems. He also shares music from his son's "post-punk minimalist" band The Necroambulites. This reading was originally given with C.E. Poverman. 

C.E. Poverman reads "Intervention," which would go on to be published in his collection Skin (1992). This reading was originally given with Jon Anderson. 

David Kirby reads from his poetry. Kirby provides many anecdotes between poems, explaining the role of research in his creative process, and telling witty stories of the personal experiences that spark much of his work.

Houston Baker reads widely from his work, including poems from No Matter Where You Travel, You Still Be Black (1979), Spirit Run (1982), and Blues Journeys Home (1985).

Erin McGraw performs a Southern dialect to read the story Until It Comes Closer from her collection Bodies at Sea (1989).

W.S. Merwin reads poems from collections spanning four decades of work, including poems that would be collected three years later in Travels (1993). Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

Gary Soto reads poetry and prose from Who Will Know Us (1990) and A Summer Life (1990), along with poems that would later be collected in Home Course in Religion (1991).

Li-Young Lee reads primarily from his second collection, The City in Which I Love You, which was published the same year as this reading. He also reads one poem from his first collection, Rose (1986).

Mary Elsie Robertson reads a chapter from her novel What I Have to Tell You (1989). This University of Arizona Creative Writing faculty reading was originally given with Vivian Gornick.

Vivian Gornick reads from Fierce Attachments (1987), a memoir of the author's past and present relationship with her mother. This University of Arizona Creative Writing faculty reading was originally given with Mary Elsie Robertson.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and novelist Maxine Kumin reads from her then-recent collection Nurture (1989), together with poems written throughout her career, as well as two poems that would go on to be collected in her next book, Looking for Luck (1992). Many of the poems consider connections between animals and humans. Kumin also reads a series of three elegies to her longtime friend Anne Sexton.

Linda Hogan reads poems from her collections Calling Myself Home (1978), Seeing through the Sun (1985), Savings (1988), and The Book of Medicines (1993). The reading also includes an essay from Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (1995).

Romanian poet and translator Nina Cassian opens the Poetry Center's Fall 1990 reading series. The quality of the original audio recording is poor, making Cassian's voice difficult to hear.

John Ashbery reads poems that would later be collected in Hotel Lautréamont (1992), as well as an excerpt from Flow Chart (1991).

In response to questions from attendees, John Ashbery discusses cinema, wide-ranging responses to his two earliest books (Some Trees, 1956, and The Tennis Court Oath, 1962), and his appreciation for the poetry of Walt Whitman. He also considers movements in American poetry including modernism, postmodernism, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and new formalism.

Robert Houston reads from the manuscript of a novel in progress with the working title The Book of the South, about Reconstruction era Alabama. He dedicates this reading to the memory of Cecil Robinson, former chairman of the University of Arizona English Department.

In a notably measured style, Jorie Graham reads poems that would be published the following year in her fourth book, Region of Unlikeness (1991). She also reads an early draft of a long poem, "Manifest Destiny," which would later be collected in Materialism (1993).

Nanao Sakaki performs poems and songs in the courtyard of the Poetry Center on Cherry Avenue. Asking the audience, "Any questions? I'll answer by my poems," Sakaki addresses themes raised by audience members such as anger, feeling at home, time, walking, and love for the desert and all forms of life.

Yusef Komunyakaa reads widely from his poetry published in the 1980s, including many poems from Dien Cai Dau (1988). He also reads poems that would soon thereafter be collected in Magic City (1992) and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1993).

Phillip Lopate opens with three poems from his collection The Daily Round (1976) before reading personal essays from Being With Children (1975), Bachelorhood (1981), and Against Joie De Vivre (1989).

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads primarily from Emplumada (1981) and From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (1991). She also reads several poems that would go on to be collected in Drive: The First Quartet (2006). 

In this bilingual reading, Alex Dunkel reads English translations of Aleksandr Yudakhin alongside the author. Yudakhin was flown from the Soviet Union to read in Tucson with the help of Soviet and Russian Studies, UA Poetry Center, UA Office of International Programs, the Soros Foundation, and Tucson Pima Arts Council. The English translations read were created by Alison Hawthorne Deming and Alex Dunkel. They were created ad hoc to provide context for those who were not familiar with the Russian language and are not considered to be definitive.

In Alan Dugan's last performance at the Poetry Center, he reads widely from work published during the 26 years between 1963 and 1989. He reads poems about art and artists, Greek and Roman antiquity, contemporary life in Provincetown, World War II, work, and cats.

Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig read for the Writers At Work Series. Wittig and Zeig team to play the parts of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in a play written by Wittig and translated by Zeig, Le Voyage sans fin (The Constant Journey, 1985), based on Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel. Before performing the play, Wittig gives a brief talk explaining the role of transposition and gender roles in her adaption of Cervantes's work.

With intense emphasis and concentration, Frank Bidart reads the first two poems and the long last poem of his collected works, In the Western Night (1990).

Judith Ortiz Cofer reads prose and poetry from Terms of Survival (1987) and Silent Dancing (1990), as well as work that would later be collected in The Latin Deli (1993), Reaching for the Mainland (1995), and A Love Story Beginning in Spanish (2005).

Boyer Rickel reads poetry from his first book, Arreboles (1991), touching on family and childhood memories, experiences living in Tucson, and musicians and writers of previous centuries. He also reads an essay that would go on to be published in Taboo (1999), which he introduces by discussing his approach to writing essays that follow the form of poems, not returning to a main idea but moving through it.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa reads widely from her extensive body of work; this reading includes uncollected and unpublished poems.

Alan Cheuse reads from his novel The Light Possessed (1990), inspired by the life of Georgia O'Keefe and several other U.S. women painters. The novel's title comes from a poem by Walt Whitman, "A Prairie Sunset," which Cheuse reads as an introduction to his own work. Cheuse's novel has "two beginnings," and he reads both: the first is a chapter titled "River."

Cornelius Eady reads poems from Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1986) and The Gathering of My Name (1991), many of which focus on dancing, jazz musicians, and the pervasive racial injustice experienced by Black Americans.

Carolyn Forché reads from her first three collections of poetry, Gathering the Tribes (1976), The Country Between Us (1981), and The Angel of History, which would be published three years after this reading. She also speaks about French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos and reads her translator's note to The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos (1991).

Daniel Lopez reads several of his poems and sings songs; this performance includes the poems "Preservation," "Village Progress," and "Naming," along with "Corn Planting Song."

Simon J. Ortiz reads poems following the theme that poetry is the voice that we all speak.

Nora Marks Dauenhauer reads Tlingit oratories from Haa Tuwunáagu Yís, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory (1990), along with selected poems from The Droning Shaman (1988) and Life Woven with Song (2000).

Luci Tapahonso reads poems from throughout her career, including poems from her collection Sáanii Dahataal (the women are singing) (1993).

Toi Derricotte reads from her first three collections: The Empress of the Death House (1978), Natural Birth (1983), and Captivity (1989). She also reads poems and prose that would later be collected in Tender (1997) and The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey (1997), along with two unpublished poems, including one written in Tucson the night before this reading. She closes by singing an original song.

Ofelia Zepeda reads from her poems in O'odham and in English. She also reads from an unfinished translation of a story originally told by an O'odham medicine man.

Roberta J. Hill opens with two poems from her first collection, Star Quilt (1984), before reading more recent work that would later be collected in Philadelphia Flowers (1996). Both collections were published under the name Roberta Hill Whiteman.

Greg Sarris reads a story titled "Waiting for the Green Frog," in the voice of an elderly medicine woman, from his collection Grand Avenue: A Novel in Stories (1994).