formal poetry

Bill Knott reads widely from his work. This reading includes poems from Becos (1983), Outremer (1989), and Poems 1963-1988 (1989), as well as work collected later. 

Marilyn Hacker reads from Squares and Courtyards (2000), Taking Notice (1980), and Going Back to the River (1990). She also reads two poems that would later be published in Desesperanto (2003). This reading was originally given with Aleida Rodríguez.

Aleida Rodríguez reads from Garden of Exile (1999). This reading was originally given with Marilyn Hacker.

Natalie Diaz reads poems from When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012) as well as new and uncollected work. This reading was originally given with Eduardo C. Corral to inaugurate the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Angel Nafis reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice Series. This reading was originally given alongside Patricia Smith. Leilani Clark represents BIPOC United Tucson in an opening presentation.

Patricia Smith reads new work commissioned as part of the Art for Justice Series as well as poems from her collection Teahouse of the Almighty (2006). This reading was originally given alongside Angel Nafis. Leilani Clark represents BIPOC United Tucson in an opening presentation.

torrin a. greathouse reads poems from two manuscripts in progress: DEED, focused on the intersections of desire, desirability, and violence, and a newer manuscript that turns to California's Central Valley and climate change. Discussions of poetic form recur throughout. greathouse was selected as the Poetry Center's 2020 Summer Resident; due to the Covid-19 pandemic, her residency was deferred, and this reading was presented online.

Nicole Sealey reads from her first full-length collection, Ordinary Beast (2017), sharing poems that approach the embodied experience of mortality and the violence-haunted reality of being a Black woman in contemporary America. Her selections include an ekphrastic poem and a true cento, composed of one hundred lines collected from other poets.

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.

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).