performance

Julie Carr and K. J. Holmes perform the writing/dance collaboration This is where we are (or take arms against a sea of troubles), an excerpt as part of the 2012 Poetry Off the Page Symposium.

Patricia Smith reads widely from her work, including several uncollected poems.

Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris perform as part of the Poetry Center's Conceptual Poetry and Its Others Symposium.

Quincy Troupe reads poems appearing in Avalanche (1996) and Choruses (1999).

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.

In her Next Word reading with Brandon Shimoda and Philip Jenks, Akilah Oliver reads from The Putterer's Notebook and A Toast in the House of Friends. Her reading includes a standout performance of the long poem "An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet," an elegy for her son Oluchi McDonald.

At this performance given with Abraham Smith during the Tucson Festival of Books, Kim Addonizio reads from her books Lucifer at the Starlite and What Is This Thing Called Love. Before a question-and-answer session with both poets, Kim Addonizio performs a short song on her harmonica.

Anne Waldman discusses and reads from two recent projects, Manatee/Humanity and the Chax Press chapbook Matriot Acts. This reading was given alongside Laynie Browne for the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books.

In celebration of the University of Arizona Poetry Center's 50th anniversary, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins reads his poems, including work from the forthcoming collection Horoscopes for the Dead. He is joined by David Fitzsimmons, Howard Altmann, Jennifer Lee Carrell, and Ernesto Portillo, Jr., reading favorite poems by a variety of authors.

Roger Bonair-Agard delivers a dynamic performance of poems from his second book, Gully (2010), as well as new work.

Thomas Sayers Ellis reads from The Maverick Room (2005) and Skin, Inc. (2010).

This event, a collaboration with the University of Arizona School of Dance, pairs poetry by Richard Siken and Catherine Wing with original music, choreography, and dance performances by School of Dance faculty and students. Original music for this performance was composed and performed by Suzanne Knosp, with choreography by Elizabeth George, Jory Hancock, and Melissa Lowe.

David Mura reads from After We Lost Our Way (1989), The Colors of Desire (1995), and Angels for the Burning (2004). Mura also engages the audience with several performance pieces.

Cecilia Vicuña presents an improvisatory oral performance in response to space and time as part of the Poetry Center's 2012 Poetry Off the Page Symposium. This recording includes a question and answer session with Claudia Rankine and Christine Hume, who performed along with Vicuña at the Poetry Off the Page Sonic Lens night.

At the 2012 Poetry Off the Page Symposium, Douglas Kearney discusses and performs poems from several collections that engage typography, image, sampling, and physical power.

At the 2012 Poetry Off the Page Symposium, Black Took Collective presents a multimedia performance exploring interrogations of a Black unconscious, using written and aural language, sound, video, and image.

Regie Gibson and Reginald Gibbons read together in a spontaneous poetic conversation. Both read widely from their work; this performance includes both published and unpublished poems.

Joyelle McSweeney reads primarily from Percussion Grenade (2012) as well as several unpublished pieces. This reading was originally given with Zachary Schomburg.

Special guest Logan Phillips performs his poetry for the Southern Arizona Poetry Out Loud Regional Finals Competition.

Tracie Morris reads from Chap-T-Her Won (1993) and Intermission (1998). This reading/performance was originally given with DJ Renegade at an event titled Mondo Hip-Hop.

Stella Pope Duarte performs The Day I Was Born and There is a Place for You in a powerful reading given as part of a Noche de Cultura held at Tucson's El Casino Ballroom.

Linda Gregerson reads primarily from Waterborne (2002).

Spoken word artist Teré Fowler-Chapman performs selections from their work. This reading was originally given with Clark Coolidge.

Terry Tempest Williams reads primarily from Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape (1995); she opens this reading with a performance of a poem by May Swenson.

Lawson Fusao Inada performs poems that speak to the Asian American experience, particularly around Japanese American internment during World War II and life in mid-century Fresno, California. He reads a selection of poems from Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971), along with with other poems from the 1970s, including "I Told You So."

Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig read for the Writers At Work Series. Wittig and Zeig team to play the parts of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in a play written by Wittig and translated by Zeig, Le Voyage sans fin (The Constant Journey, 1985), based on Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel. Before performing the play, Wittig gives a brief talk explaining the role of transposition and gender roles in her adaption of Cervantes's work.

Jim Simmerman reads from a manuscript that would become his collection Kingdom Come (1999), a series of persona poems written in the voices of various Biblical characters. Jewell Parker Rhodes reads from her first novel, Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau (1993), inspired by the life of the famed 19th century Voodoo Queen. She reads two scenes from the novel, the first set just before Marie Laveau's tenth birthday, and the second during the performance of one of Laveau's greatest miracles.

Poet and playwright Denise Chávez reads from her poems and short stories, and also performs some scenes from her stories, drawing from her work in the theater arts. She reads first from Descansos: An Interrupted Journey (a 1995 collaboration with Rudolfo A. Anaya and Juan Estevan Arellano, combining photography and creative writing), which explores the cultural and personal histories surrounding roadside crosses. She also reads from Face of an Angel (1994), a novel about a career waitress, exploring themes of divorce, race, and childbirth.

Juan Felipe Herrera warmly engages the audience with work that would be collected in books such as Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America (1997), Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler (2002), and Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008), as well as uncollected pieces. Standout performances include "Notes on Other Chicana and Chicano Inventions" and "Suicide in Hollywood / Lupe Velez (Circ. 1923) Serigrafía de una actriz Mexicana," read in Spanish and English. Opening his reading with an invocation to sky, earth, wind, and fire, Herrera encourages audience laughter and participation throughout the evening.

In this performance for the Writers at Work Series, Katherine Toy Miller and Vance Bourjaily read from their fiction. Katherine Toy Miller reads six short stories from a collection titled Eleanor, along with a short story titled "The Critical Session." Vance Bourjaily reads segments from a novel-in-progress called The Great Fake Book. Bourjaily ends his reading by performing a short solo on the cornet.

Jerome Rothenberg performs a retrospective survey of his prolific body of work, beginning with poems written in the 1960s and continuing in chronological order. Most of the poems read here are collected in Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader (2013). 

Rodrigo Toscano performs poems from Explosion Rocks Springfield (2016). 

Elena Passarello reads essays from Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017). This reading was originally given with David Shields.

Giancarlo Huapaya gives a gallery performance related to the exhibit BirúPirúPerú: Collective Projects of Peruvian Visual Poetry, on display at the Poetry Center from August 21 to November 22, 2017. His performance makes use of the inaugural addresses of nine United States Presidents, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. 

Urayoán Noel presents a talk titled "Is Queer Afro-Latin@ Poetics a Thing?" as part of the 2017 Thinking Its Presence conference. He also performs an improvised poem with smartphone accompaniment.

Poet Douglas Kearney and percussionist/electronic musican Val Jeanty present a collaborative performance titled "Fodder," which combines poetry and music at the 2017 Thinking Its Presence Conference. The poems primarily come from Kearney's Buck Studies (2016).

At the 2017 Thinking Its Presence Conference, members of the MT+NYC Collaborative (Ciara Rose Griffin, William F. Hubbard, Kendra Mylnechuk, Aja M. Sherrard, and Brooke Swaney) perform an early draft of The Buffalo Play, a play written by Ciara Rose Griffin and Kendra Mylnechuk. 

Sawako Nakayasu mixes her poetry and her translations, crafting a reading that she describes as a translation of the innovative form of her book Mouth: Eats Color (2011). She reads her own poems from The Ants (2014) and Some Girls Walk Into the Country They Are From (2020), a manuscript in progress that would be published two years after this reading. She also reads translations of poems by Japanese modernist Chika Sagawa from Mouth: Eats Color and Korean modernist Yi Sang, later published in Yi Sang: Selected Works (2020). 

Tommy Pico reads from his book-length poems Junk (2018), published the year of this reading, and Feed (2019), published the year after this reading. He also reads one poem from Morgan Parker's There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (2017). This reading was originally given with Morgan Parker as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Shayla Lawz reads from her book speculation, n. (2021), which revolves around survival and Black life amidst police violence within the age of social media and the 24/7 news cycle. Lawz creates a unique performed version of her book through repetition and distortions not present on the page. This reading was originally given alongside Aria Aber as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.