nature

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.

Thom Gunn reads poems appearing in The Man with Night Sweats (1992) and The Passages of Joy (1982).

Seamus Heaney reads from Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1975), Field Work (1979), and Sweeney Astray (1983). The reading also features Heaney's lively banter.

Kenneth Koch opens this reading with two poems about place: Senegal and Kenya specifically. The rest of the performance is devoted to poems collected in One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays.

Maxine Kumin reads primarily from House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate (1976), along with selections from her earlier work.

W.S. Merwin reads from his early collections The Moving Target (1963) and The Lice (1967), as well as from The Carrier of Ladders (1970), which had not yet been completed at the time of this reading. Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

W.S. Merwin reads widely from his works. Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

Richard Shelton reads from The Tattooed Desert (1970), as well as several poems from Journal of Return (1969) and Of All the Dirty Words (1972).

Galway Kinnell reads primarily from his 1968 collection of poems Body Rags, which received a special mention from the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969. He begins by discussing and reading poems by Tu Fu, James Wright, Theodore Roethke, Robert Bly, and Walt Whitman.

John Haines reads from Winter News (1966), The Stone Harp (1971), and Twenty Poems (1971).

Peter Wild reads poems primarily from Terms & Renewals (1970). He also reads from other recent collections, including The Afternoon in Dismay (1968), Mica Mountain Poems (1968), Love Poems (1969), and Fat Man Poems (1970).

Mark Doty reads poems from his third book, My Alexandria (1993), together with poems that would be published two years later in Atlantis (1995). Reflections on the act of description recur throughout the poems, which inhabit Provincetown, Boston, and New York City. Doty also reads one poem set in Tucson from his second book, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (1991).

Peter Wild reads poems appearing in Getting Ready for a Date(1984), The Peaceable Kingdom(1983), and Barn Fires(1978) as well as uncollected works.

This reading was given six years before the publication of Jaguar of Sweet Laughter and thirteen years before the publication of I Praise My Destroyer. It also took place during the same year the poet received the Peter I. B. Lavan Award.

John Williams reads from three novels: Butcher's Crossing (1978), Stoner (1965), and Augustus (1972).

In this performance, Jimmy Santiago Baca reads from Black Mesa Poems, a collection published the year after this reading took place. He also performs poems from Martín & Meditations on the South Valley, a book that was awarded the Before Columbus American Book Award and earned Jimmy Santiago Baca an NEA grant for the year of this reading.

W.S. Merwin reads from his most recent collections of poetry: The Lice (1967), The Carrier of Ladders (1970), and Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (1973). He also reads then-new work that would be collected in The Compass Flower (1977). Merwin opens the reading with prose from The Miner's Pale Children (1970) and also reads three prose pieces that would appear in Houses and Travellers (1977). Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

Bill Roecker reads poems appearing in Willamette (1970), You Know Me (1972), and Closer to the Country (1976).

Paul Zimmer reads from The Republic of Many Voices (1969), along with poems that would be published in The Zimmer Poems (1976) or remain uncollected. Making use of persona, narrative, and humor, he addresses topics such as childhood, identity, and mortality.

Bert Meyers reads from Early Rain and The Dark Birds.

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.

Richard Shelton reads widely from his work.

Here, Hass reads from his collections Field Guide (1973) and Praise (1979). He also reads poems that would later be published, under different titles, in his 1989 collection Human Wishes.

Greg Pape reads from Border Crossings (1978) and Little America (1976). This reading was originally given with Steve Orlen and Criss E. Cannady. 

Ken Lamberton reads from Wilderness and Razor Wire (2000) and Time of Grace (2007); both collections explore his views of nature from prison.

Louise Glück reads from her 2001 collection of poems The Seven Ages. This reading was originally given with Dana Levin. 

W.S. Merwin reads from Travels (1993), The Rain in the Trees (1988), and The Shadow of Sirius (2008). Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

Ofelia Zepeda reads from Where Clouds Are Formed (2008). This reading was originally given with Christopher Burawa.

Hayden Carruth reads work written from the 1960s to the early 1990s, from his Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 (1992), published the same year as this reading. Many of the poems embody the people, places, and rural culture of Vermont. By request, he closes the reading with a poem about fellow poet James Wright.

Given as part of the Poetry Center's "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology" series, this performance begins with Sandra Alcosser speaking about a variety of writers and artists in the context of The Language of Conservation Project and ends with readings from Except by Nature, A Fish to Feed All Hunger, and several uncollected sonnets.

Lila Zemborain and Rosa Alcalá present their work as part of the Poetry Center's Fall 2009 sequence of themed readings, "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology." In the first half of the reading, Zemborain reads poems in Spanish and Alcalá reads their translations in English. Next, Alcalá reads her own poems. The performance closes with a poem read simultaneously in English and Spanish.

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 this performance, originally given with Alice Notley at the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge reads poems that would go on to be collected in Hello, the Roses (2013).

Mexican poet Tedi López Mills reads from her work in Spanish at the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books, accompanied by her translator, Wendy Burk, who reads the poems in English. The reading includes work from an unpublished bilingual manuscript of López Mills's selected poems.

Gary Snyder reads poems that would go on to be collected in The Back Country (1968) and talks about his experiences in Japan. He also reads one section of his long work Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996).

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.

Mexican poet Homero Aridjis reads work reflecting his environmental activism and engagement with Mexican history, drawn from his 2001 bilingual publication Ojos de otro mirar / Eyes to See Otherwise: Selected Poems. The English translations of Aridjis's poems (by Eliot Weinberger, George McWhirter, and Betty Ferber) are read aloud by Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Ofelia Zepeda reads from her collection Where Clouds Are Formed (2008). This reading was originally given with Luci Tapahonso. 

In his first reading at the Poetry Center since 1969, Gary Snyder reads broadly from his work, including poems from his most recent collection, Danger on Peaks. He ends by reading uncollected newer poems. Snyder also speaks of his time in Japan, his studies of Zen Buddhism, and his friendship with Poetry Center founder Ruth Stephan.

Sherwin Bitsui reads from his work in English and Navajo as part of a multilingual poetry reading also featuring Alberto Rios (reading in English and Spanish) and Ofelia Zepeda (reading in English and O'odham). The reading includes selections from Water, an artist book created by Karla Elling to commemorate the Poetry Center's 50th anniversary. "Water" features a chainlink of poetry composed and translated by Bitsui, Rios, Zepeda, and Zapotec poet Natalia Toledo.

Alberto Ríos reads from his work in English and Spanish as part of a multilingual poetry reading also featuring Ofelia Zepeda (reading in English and O'odham) and Sherwin Bitsui (reading in English and Navajo). The reading includes selections from Water, an artist book created by Karla Elling to commemorate the Poetry Center's 50th anniversary. Water features a chainlink of poetry composed and translated by Bitsui, Ríos, Zepeda, and Zapotec poet Natalia Toledo.

Pat Mora reads from her first two books of poems, Chants (1984) and Borders (1986), as well as poems that would later be published, sometimes in different versions, in Communion (1991) and Agua Santa (1997). Mora, who hails from El Paso, includes several poems about the desert in honor of what she describes as "probably the first time I have done a reading in another desert area."

Laura Tohe reads from Tséyi': Deep in the Rock; Reflections on Canyon de Chelly (2005), which pairs Tohe's texts with images by photographer Stephen E. Strom. Following Tohe's reading, Strom discusses the images contained in the book.

Joni Wallace reads primarily from her collection Blinking Ephemeral Valentine and also an unpublished piece accompanied by the guitarist Greg Lewis. This is the first half of a reading which also featured Mary Jo Bang.

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

John D'Agata reads from his book About a Mountain (2010).

Peter Wild reads primarily from Chihuahua (1976). He also reads several poems from a variety of other publications.

Byrd Baylor reads from Yes Is Better than No (1977) and I'm In Charge of Celebrations (1986).

Ruth Stone reads extensively from In an Iridescent Time (1959) and Topoography and Other Poems (1971); she also reads some unpublished poems.

In this reading, originally given with Jane Miller, Alison Hawthorne Deming reads primarily from her collection Genius Loci (2005).

In this reading and presentation, originally given with Charles Alexander, writer and biologist Elizabeth Bernays reads from her large body of literary works and discusses her entomological research.

In this reading, originally given with Eloise Klein Healy, Peggy Shumaker reads from the collection Toucan Nest: Poems of Costa Rica (2013) and presents photographs from a series of residencies in Costa Rica.

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).

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

Tedi López Mills reads poems from While Light Is Built (2004) with translations read by Wendy Burk.

Aurelie Sheehan reads from Jewelry Box: A Collection of Histories (2013). This reading was originally given with Farid Matuk.

Linda Gregg reads primarily from Too Bright to See (1981). This reading was originally given with Alan Feldman and Faye Kicknosway. 

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

Terry Tempest Williams reads primarily from Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape (1995); she opens this reading with a performance of a poem by May Swenson.

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

Australian poets Vincent Buckley, Les Murray, and David Malouf visit Tucson to read their work, also providing background and commentary. Les Murray reads a selection of poems in chronological order, including his oldest poem "The Burning Crook." Vincent Buckley reads from Golden Builders (1976), Late Winter Child (1979), and The Pattern (1979), as well as some unpublished poems. David Malouf reads both poetry and passages from his novel An Imaginary Life (1978).

Felipe S. Molina speaks about the traditions of the Pascua Yaqui people during Holy Week. The program includes testimonies from Jenny Murrieta, Susana Garcia, and Minnie Valenzuela, discussing their cultural backgrounds, family, and the spiritual time of Cuaresma.

Robert Bringhurst reads selections from his poetry and translations, providing background and historical context.

Gretel Ehrlich reads from and discusses the process of collaboration on Arctic Heart (1992), a series of poems composed for a ballet. She also reads excerpts from "The Fasting Heart," an essay on destruction and abundance in the natural world, collected in Islands, The Universe, Home (1991).

Medbh McGuckian reads poems from throughout her career, not long after the announcement of a historic ceasefire in her native Northern Ireland. The reading opens with several early poems that are uncollected to the best of our knowledge. 

Longtime University of Arizona faculty member Peter Wild reads poems from The Brides of Christ (1991), together with poems that would remain uncollected or appear in his final poetry collection, Easy Victory (1994). Throughout, he reads poems about individuals from American history, European art history, and the Bible.

This celebration of Ruth Wulpi Meenan's life and work includes reflections and excerpts from her biography, poems, and songs, performed by Francesca Jarvis, Edna Church, and David J. Ashcraft. At the end, the audience is invited to contribute memories and reflections, and the event concludes with orchestral/choral performances of "Silent Night," "Joy to the World," and Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," among others.

This reading was originally scheduled as a joint appearance by Brazilian poet Adélia Prado and her translator Ellen Doré Watson, but Prado was unable to travel due to health issues. Watson thus reads her translations of Prado's poetry, as collected in The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems (1990), and plays recordings of Prado reading some of her poetry in the original Portuguese.

1995 Summer Resident Kymberly Taylor reads poems including "Where the Wild Things Went" and "Bird by Bird, Into This and This," which incorporates notations of birdsong from the book Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song (1992) by Charles Hartshorne.

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer reads poems from her collections The Witch and the Weather Report (1972), Granite Lady (1974), The Rhymes and Runes of the Toad (1975), and Alphabet for the Lost Years (1976), many inspired by nature, teaching, and biblical themes.

James Galvin reads from poems on themes such as the age of exploration and museum art.

Pattiann Rogers reads poems from her collection Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems (1994).

John A. Williams reads poems from an early manuscript that would eventually come to form his collection Safari West (1998). He then reads from his novel !Click Song (1982), investigating issues of race, colonialism, and diaspora. Both books are winners of the American Book Award.

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.

Luci Tapahonso reads from her collections Seasonal Woman (1982) and A Breeze Swept Through (1987), beginning with a piece that combines spoken poetry with song.

Ofelia Zepeda reads from her poetry collections When It Rains, Papago and Pima Poetry = Mat hekid o ju, 'O'odham Na-cegitodag (1982), Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995), and Jewed 'I-hoi, Earth Movements (1997). She reads the poems first in O'odham, and then in English.

Judith Barrington reads from History and Geography (1989) along with poems that would go on to be collected in Horses and the Human Soul (2004) and several that remain uncollected. The poems she selects for this reading center on place, landscape, memory, and Lesbian identity; horses recur throughout.

Diane Glancy reads a range of works on the theme of story, including a number of poems that would subsequently appear in The West Pole (1997) and (Ado)ration (1999). She also reads excerpts from Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears (1996) and closes the reading with a brief extract from Firesticks (1993). 

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.

Richard Jackson reads long poems from his collection Worlds Apart (1987) and others that would be collected in Alive All Day (1992). He begins with a poem by Thomas Hardy, "I Looked Up from My Writing."

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.

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.

Mark Doty reads from his collection of poetry Deep Lane (2015).

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. 

Essayist and poet Erik Reece reads poems from A Short History of the Present (2009) and essays from An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (2009) as well as Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016).

Wendy Burk discusses and reads from her translation of Tedi López Mills' Against the Current (2016) and her own first collection of poems, Tree Talks: Southern Arizona (2016). This reading was originally given with Renee Angle.

Joy Harjo reads from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015) and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (2002). She also plays flute and soprano saxophone. 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.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil reads poems from At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), Lucky Fish (2011), and her forthcoming collection Oceanic (2018).

At the 2017 Thinking Its Presence Conference, members of the MT+NYC Collaborative (Ciara Rose Griffin, William F. Hubbard, Kendra Mylnechuk, Aja M. Sherrard, and Brooke Swaney) perform an early draft of The Buffalo Play, a play written by Ciara Rose Griffin and Kendra Mylnechuk. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Saretta Morgan reads extensively from Alt-Nature (2024), her first full-length collection. Rooted in southern Arizona, her poems consider the militarization of the US-Mexico border and the legacies of colonialism in American culture.

CAConrad reads from Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (2024), an ecopoetic work considering animal and human realities in the Anthropocene. To open, CAConrad briefly discusses and reads from Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (2021); to close, they read one poem from the chapbook First Light (2024). This reading was presented in connection with CAConrad's exhibit 500 Places at Once on display at MOCA Tucson.