protest

Stella Pope Duarte performs The Day I Was Born and There is a Place for You in a powerful reading given as part of a Noche de Cultura held at Tucson's El Casino Ballroom.

Poetry Center Summer Resident Stephen Willey reads from "Living In," a manuscript-in-progress; the section performed here was composed during his residency. This reading was originally given with Brian Blanchfield and Karen Brennan.

Annick Smith reads the title essay from her first collection, Homestead (1995), as well as essays from her collection Big Bluestem: A Journey into the Tallgrass (1996), an exploration of the history of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma. She also reads "Sink or Swim," her contribution to a multi-author collection, Headwaters (1996), assembled in protest of industrial mining along the Blackfoot River. She concludes with "Writing Down the River," an essay on the Grand Canyon.

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. 

Brenda Hillman reads poems related to climate change from Cascadia (2001), Practical Water (2009), and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013). She also reads a new sequence of poems titled "The Rosewood Clauses." This reading was originally given with Robert Hass as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Forrest Gander reads widely from his translations from the Spanish, including poems by Coral Bracho, Alfonso D'Aquino, Pura López Colomé, Nezahualcóyotl, and Jaime Saenz. He also reads from his translations of Pablo Neruda's rediscovered works, published as Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems (2016).

Poet Douglas Kearney and percussionist/electronic musican Val Jeanty present a collaborative performance titled "Fodder," which combines poetry and music at the 2017 Thinking Its Presence Conference. The poems primarily come from Kearney's Buck Studies (2016).

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.