grief

Jack Gilbert reads widely from poems published in the 37-year period between his first book, Views of Jeopardy, and his fifth book, The Dance Most of All, ultimately published in 2009.

In Louise Glück's first performance at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, she opens with some poems from her third book, The Garden, and then reads from the manuscript of her book Descending Figure, which would be published two years later.

Ellen Bryant Voigt reads what she describes as future work: poems from a manuscript that would be published two years after her reading as The Lotus Flowers.

Diane Wakoski reads widely from her works, including Discrepancies and Apparitions (1966), Inside the Blood Factory (1968), and The Magellanic Clouds (1970). She also reads poems that would be collected in Smudging (1972) and Greed: Parts 8, 9, 11 (1973).

Claudia Rankine reads from Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004).

In this performance, Michael Burkard reads from his first three books, particularly from the 1981 collection Ruby for Grief. He also reads some uncollected work.

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

Marie Howe reads poems appearing in What the Living Do (1998).

Timothy Schaffert reads from The Coffins of Little Hope, published in 2011, and The Swan Gondola, which would be published in 2014.

Frances Washburn reads from Elsie's Business (2006) and The Sacred White Turkey (2010).

Nancy Mairs reads from a draft version of a manuscript that would later be published as Remembering the Bone House: An Erotics of Place and Space (1989).

G.C. Waldrep reads from the collection Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (2011); he also reads some uncollected poems.

Robin Robertson reads poems from A Painted Field (1997), Slow Air (2002), and Swithering (2006), as well as one unpublished piece.

Thomas Kinsella reads poems from Downstream (1962), Wormwood (1966), and Nightwalker and Other Poems (1968), as well as poems that would later appear in Collected Poems 1956-1994 (1996) and Selected Poems (2007).

Brent Hendricks reads from his memoir A Long Day at the End of the World: A Story of Desecration and Revelation in the Deep South (2013). This reading was originally given with Nicole Walker.

Richard Siken reads poems that would later be published in Crush (2005). This reading was originally given with Brian Blanchfield.

Melissa Buckheit reads from Noctilucent (2012), as well as new and uncollected work. This reading was originally given with Karen Rigby and Anne Shaw.

Dexter L. Booth reads poems from Scratching the Ghost (2013) along with new and uncollected work. This reading was originally given with Samuel Ace and Polly Rosenwaike.

Semezdin Mehmedinović reads poems from Sarajevo Blues (1998) and Nine Alexandrias (2003).

Frederic Tuten reads a short story, "The Ship at Anchor" (2005).

Jack Gilbert reads primarily from The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (1995) and Refusing Heaven (2005).

Rodney Jones reads from Apocalyptic Narrative and Other Poems (1993), Things That Happen Once (1996), and Elegy for the Southern Drawl (1999).

Mary Szybist reads from her National Book Award-winning collection Incarnadine (2013).

Tim O'Brien reads his short story "How to Tell a True War Story," later published in The Things They Carried (1990). This reading was given as part of the Writers at Work series.

James Thomas Stevens reads poems from Combing the Snakes from His Hair (2002), as well as poems that would later be collected in A Bridge Dead in the Water (2007). This reading was originally given with Matthea Harvey and Olena Kalytiak Davis for the Next Word in Poetry Series.

In this lecture on Homer titled "We Should Shudder," Michael Schmidt discusses the distance of early Greek sensibility from our own and the power of impersonal writing in Homer's poems, reflecting upon what modern poets can learn from this approach. He also incorporates readings of poems by W.H. Auden and Edwin Muir.

C. K. Williams reads poems from throughout his career, highlighting the musicality of the long lines that have become his signature.

Poet and Poetry Center Interim Director Mark Wunderlich reads a series of poems in response to trauma, loss, and HIV/AIDS. The poems in this reading are from a manuscript-in-progress that at the time was titled The Grooves of This. Most would go on to be collected in Wunderlich's debut, The Anchorage (1999). 

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.

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Stephen Dunn opens with "Under the Black Oaks," the poem he had most recently written at the time of this reading. Dunn reads poems from throughout his career, often on the theme of family, including a poem about losing his mother, an atheist's parenting dilemmas as his daughter moves toward Christianity, and an ode to the sister he never had.

Roland Flint, Poet Laureate of Maryland at the time of this reading, opens with early poems from Say It (1979) and Resuming Green (1983). Flint reads from his National Poetry Series volume Stubborn (1990), interspersing work from Stubborn with recently written poems, some of which would go on to be published in Easy (1999). Flint also discusses his work as a translator of Bulgarian and reads several of his translations.

Jane Miller opens her reading with "Miami Heart" and "The Poet," both from Memory at These Speeds: New and Selected Poems (1996). She continues with work from Wherever You Lay Your Head, published in 1999. This reading was originally given with Eleni Sikelianos.

Tarfia Faizullah reads poems from her collection Seam (2014) and from an early version of Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018). This reading was originally given with francine j. harris as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Brenda Hillman reads from her books Bright Existence (1993), Practical Water (2009), and Seasonal Works With Letters On Fire (2013), along with uncollected and new poems. 

Poet David Baker gives a collaborative performance alongside Lauren Baba, Andrew Rowan, Alina Roitstein, Harrison Kirk, and Gregory Uhlmann of the River Song Quintet, who perform musical settings of his poems. Included in this performance are uncollected and new poems, as well as poems from Baker's collections The Truth about Small Towns (1998) and Scavenger Loop (2015).

Camille Dungy discusses climate change and reads from What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (2006), Smith Blue (2011), and a forthcoming manuscript titled Trophic Cascade. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Alison Hawthorne Deming discusses the Climate Change & Poetry Series. She also reads from Stairway to Heaven (2016) and from uncollected work. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Poetry Center Summer Resident July Westhale reads from her first full-length collection, Trailer Trash (2018), as well as from Via Negativa (2020), which would be published two years after her residency. This reading was originally given with Felicia Zamora.

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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Browse a selection of performances by women who read for the Poetry Center in the first three decades of the Reading Series. 

Maddie Norris reads from The Wet Wound: An Elegy in Essays (2024), focused on grief and loss of her father. She reads an essay from the book written in the second person and addressed to her childhood. This reading was originally given alongside Gabriel Dozal, Gabriel Palacios, and Margo Steines, all fellow alumni of the University of Arizona creative writing MFA program.