human connection

Poetry Center Summer Resident Lehua M. Taitano gives an interactive reading of poems from her collection Inside Me an Island (2018). She also presents her latest work, a video poem created for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's "A Day in the Queer Life" project. This reading was originally given alongside Bojan Louis.

Mark Doty reads mostly new, uncollected poems that revolve around his observations and experiences living in New York City, with a focus on his co-op apartment building. He opens the evening with a memory of the mentorship he received as a high-schooler from Richard Shelton, who had recently passed at the time of this reading. This reading was given as part of the Tom Sanders Memorial Reading Series. 

As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Derek Sheffield reads poems via Zoom on the connection between humans and the natural world, drawn from his collections Through the Second Skin (2013) and Not For Luck (2021). He also discusses and reads from two anthologies he co-edited, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry (2023) and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (2020). This reading was originally given alongside Julie Swarstad Johnson and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke.