birds

James Tate reads from his first collection, The Lost Pilot (1967), along with poems that would be collected in The Oblivion Ha-Ha (1970).

In this reading, Mona Van Duyn reads poems appearing in To See, to Take (1970); Letter From a Father and Other Poems (1982); and Selected Poems (2002).

Sandra Alcosser reads from A Fish to Feed All Hunger (1986, reissued 1992) and a working manuscript for Except by Nature (1998), which would be published six years later. She describes her selections as creating a daybook, and the poems follow her moves between Montana, New Orleans, and San Diego. This reading was originally given with Pete Fromm.

Mark Halperin reads work primarily from Backroads (1976). He also reads some unpublished poems at the time, which would go on to be collected in A Place Made Fast (1982).

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). 

Geraldine Connolly reads poems informed by sense of place, particularly Montana, in a performance for the Tucson Festival of Books.

Pamela Uschuck reads poems from Scattered Risks (2005), Greatest Hits (2009), and Crazy Love (2009).

In his first visit to Tucson, Franz Wright reads prose pieces, most of which were unpublished at the time of his reading, as well as several lineated poems. He comments generously on his writing process and friendships with other poets.

Billy Collins discusses the poetic process. He begins by reading a poem he composed the morning of the colloquium, "Lying in Bed in the Dark I Silently Address the Birds of Arizona," which would later be published in Nine Horses.

Jonathan Skinner presents his work as part of the Poetry Center's Fall 2009 sequence of themed readings, "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology." After opening with a talk titled "Thoughts on Things: Poetics of the Third Landscape," he reads poems from With Naked Foot (2009) and Political Cactus Poems (2005). He closes the reading with poems from an ongoing series titled Warblers, some of which would be published in chapbook form by Albion Books (2010). This reading was given alongside Juliana Spahr.

Marguerite Young reads selections of her poetry and excerpts from her novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (1965), offering commentary on the process and context for each piece. 

In this reading given with Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Kate Bernheimer reads two stories from her collection Horse, Flower, Bird (2010).

A group reading celebrating the release of Spiral Orb 5, a poetic inventory of saguaro national park.

Zachary Schomburg reads from Fjords (2012) and Scary, No Scary (2009). This reading was originally given with Joyelle McSweeney.

Reed Whittemore reads poems that would later appear in his collection Poems: New and Selected (1967), as well as one unpublished poem.

Natalie Diaz reads poems from When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012) as well as new and uncollected work. This reading was originally given with Eduardo C. Corral to inaugurate the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

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.

Thalia Field reads from Bird Lovers, Backyard (2010) with University of Arizona MFA students Mike Coakley, Kendra Mullison, and Erin Zwiener. Each selection is read poly-vocally, i.e., one reader per paragraph.

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.

Annie Guthrie reads poems from her collection the good dark (2015) and from a manuscript titled let x (be rogue). This reading was originally given with Richard Siken.

Richard Siken reads poems from his collection War of the Foxes (2015). This reading was orginally given with Annie Guthrie. 

Robert Hass reads one poem from The Apple Trees at Olema (2010) along with recent, uncollected poems on the subject of climate change. This reading was originally given with Brenda Hillman as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Johanna Skibsrud reads from The Description of the World (2016) as well as from a manuscript-in-progress titled Medium. This reading was originally given with Cynthia Hogue.

Joy Harjo reads from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015) and from uncollected work at the Phoenix Art Museum. She also reads one poem from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). This reading was originally given with Sandra Cisneros and Rita Dove in partnership with ArchiTEXTS: A Conversation Across Languages with Natalie Diaz.

Ada Limón reads poems from Bright Dead Things (2015) and The Carrying (2018).

Maggie Smith reads poems from Good Bones (2017) as well as other uncollected poems.