ocean

Sandra McPherson reads from her first two collections of poetry, Elegies for the Hot Season (1970) and Radiation (1973). She reads one love poem that remains uncollected.

Rebecca Seiferle reads a long sequence, "On the Island of Bones," from her poetry collection Wild Tongue (2007). This reading for the 2009 Tucson Festival of Books was originally given alongside Demetria Martínez.

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.

Carolyn Forché reads from her first three collections of poetry, Gathering the Tribes (1976), The Country Between Us (1981), and The Angel of History, which would be published three years after this reading. She also speaks about French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos and reads her translator's note to The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos (1991).

Ofelia Zepeda reads from her poems in O'odham and in English. She also reads from an unfinished translation of a story originally told by an O'odham medicine man.

Felicia Zamora reads poetry from her collections Of Form & Gather (2017) and Instrument of Gaps (2018). She also reads two poems that would go on to be collected in Body of Render (2020). This reading was originally given with July Westhale.

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.