pandemic

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads from her unpublished manuscript titled Fire: Poems Against Pandemic, as well as from her latest published collection, April on Olympia (2021).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.

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 Myles opens with an unpublished essay and concludes with new poems—several of which respond to animal cruelty—as well as a short story.

Brenda Hillman reads from In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022), her eleventh collection of poetry, including poems set during the COVID-19 pandemic. She briefly discusses her translation—done in collaboration with her mother—of Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar, and closes with two new poems focused on her mother's garden and her childhood home.

Anselm Berrigan reads from Don't Forget to Love Me (2024), sharing poems that emerge from everyday life in New York City during the lockdown phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. He closes with new, uncollected poems, including a long poem on the death of his mother, healthcare systems, and friendship. Wordplay and humor, as well as reflections on grief, recur throughout the reading.

Alicia Ostriker reads from her seventeenth book of poems, The Holy & Broken Bliss: Poems in Plague Time (2024). Written during the Covid-19 pandemic, these poems move through domesticity, political division, police brutality, and Ostriker's ongoing spiritual quest. Ostriker was delayed in reaching Tucson and appeared via Zoom for an in-person audience. This reading was originally given with Eleanor Wilner.