mourning

Jenny Boully reads excerpts from of the mismatched teacups, of the single-serving spoon (2012) and not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (2011), as well as new and uncollected work. This reading was given as part of the Hybrid Writing Series, co-sponsored by the UA Prose Series.

Forrest Gander reads from his translation of Mexican poet Coral Bracho's It Must Be a Misunderstanding (2022), as well as from his own collection Twice Alive (2021). The reading begins with three poems by Gander's late wife, C.D. Wright, read by two other poets and Gander himself. Gander closes with his translation of a poem by Pablo Neruda published in Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems (2016).

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads from her unpublished manuscript titled Fire: Poems Against Pandemic, as well as from her latest published collection, April on Olympia (2021). In these poems, Cervantes touches upon grief, connectedness with the earth, and climate change. She also pays poetic tribute to a range of figures that include her grandmother, a homeroom teacher from junior high, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the writers Julia Alvarez and Allen Ginsberg.

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.