humor

Jay Hopler reads poems from Still Life (2022), written during his time living with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Hopler was unable to travel to Tucson but appeared for an in-person audience via Zoom. This reading was originally given with Kimberly Johnson.

Luis Alberto Urrea reads poems from The Tijuana Book of the Dead (2015) focused on life in the US-Mexico borderlands. He opens with one poem forthcoming in Piedra (2023) and concludes with a chapter from The House of Broken Angels (2019), retold from memory. This reading was presented as part of the 2021 Tucson Humanities Festival.

Los Angeles poet Sesshu Foster reads from City Terrace Field Manual (1996), World Ball Notebook (2008), and City of the Future (2018). He reads poems that engage with East LA, the influences of his father, and his own life as a father, mixing candor and humor throughout.

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.

Eileen Myles reads poems from a "Working Life" (2023) focused on daily life, love, animals, humor, and the act of writing. Myles opens with an unpublished essay and concludes with new poems—several of which respond to animal cruelty—as well as a short story.

Sawako Nakayasu reads work stemming from her 2017 return to the United States from Japan and the challenges of being immersed again in the violence of American culture. She opens with several new ant poems before reading from Say Translation Is Art (2020), Some Girls Walk Into the Country They Are From (2020), Pink Waves (2023), and her forthcoming book Settle Her. This reading was presented in collaboration with the American Literary Translators Association and as part of the ALTA46 conference.

Marilyn Chin reads from her sixth collection, Sage (2023), sharing poems that employ humor, puns, rhyme, allusions to Chinese and English literature, and a wide array of traditional and modified verse forms. Chin opens the reading by performing from memory two poems from A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (2018).