Reading

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

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.

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In this performance, Alison Hawthorne Deming reads both poetry and prose, including excerpts from a book published the year of this reading, The Edges of the Civilized World, and poems from a collection that would be published seven years later, Genius Loci.
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Here, Hass reads from his collections Field Guide and Praise. He also reads poems that would later be published, under different titles, in his 1989 collection Human Wishes.

Reading

In her opening lecture for the Poetry Center's "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology" series, Alison Hawthorne Deming draws connections between the folk tale of Baba Yaga and the myth of Demeter in order to explore the intersections of science, myth, and ecology.

Reading

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.

Reading

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.

Reading

Juliana Spahr reads from The Connection of Everyone with Lungs (2005) and "Gentle Now, Don't Add to Heartache" as part of the Poetry Center's Fall 2009 sequence of themed readings, "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology." This reading was given alongside Jonathan Skinner.

Reading

David Dunn presents his work with soundscapes as part of the "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conservations about Art and Ecology" series.

Reading

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.

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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).

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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.

Reading

Jonathan Skinner presents his work as part of the Poetry Center's Fall 2009 sequence of themed readings, "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology." After opening with a talk titled "Thoughts on Things: Poetics of the Third Landscape," he reads poems from With Naked Foot (2009) and Political Cactus Poems (2005). He closes the reading with poems from an ongoing series titled Warblers, some of which would be published in chapbook form by Albion Books (2010). This reading was given alongside Juliana Spahr.

Reading

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.

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Katherine Larson reads pieces from Radial Symmetry (2011) as well as "Of the Unsolved Problem of the Origin of the Angiosperms," a new poem.

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Ofelia Zepeda reads primarily from her collections Ocean Power (1995) and Where Clouds are Formed (2008). She also reads from an unpublished essay and from her chapbook Jewed 'I-Hoi/Earth Movements (1997).

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

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

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John T. Price reads from two memoirs: Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships (2008) and Daddy Long Legs: The Natural Education of a Father (2013).

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

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Leslie Marmon Silko reads Sacred Water (1993), a book-length lyric essay. This reading was originally given with Joy Harjo.

Reading
Linda Hogan reads new and unpublished poems along with poems from The Book of Medicines (1993) and excerpts from her novel Solar Storms (1995). The reading concludes with questions from the audience.
Reading

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.

Reading

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.

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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.

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Aracelis Girmay discusses intersections between ways of thinking about poetry, ecologies, and climate change. She also reads from the black maria (2016) and Kingdom Animalia (2011). This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Reading

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.

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Brian Teare reads new and uncollected work and discusses ecopoetics, ecofeminism, and climate change. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Reading

Alec Finlay reads selections from two long poems: Global Oracle: a Work of Prophetic Science (2014) and The Road North: a journey through Scotland guided by Bashō's oku-no-hosomichi (2014).

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As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke reads from her book-length poem Look at This Blue (2022), focusing on extinctions and climate change in California, as well as on poverty and violence. This reading was originally given alongside Julie Swarstad Johnson and Derek Sheffield.

Reading

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.

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