women

Lucille Clifton reads poems on many subjects, including family and illness, as well as a series of Rastafarian-inspired poems about the life of the Biblical figure Mary. In addition to poems, Clifton reads excerpts from Generations: A Memoir and her children's book Sonora Beautiful.

Li-Young Lee reads widely from his body of work and discusses forms, craft, and chance in poetry.

D.M. Thomas reads from Two Voices (1968) and Logan Stone (1971). This reading was originally given alongside Peter Redgrove and includes two tracks of collaborative reading with Redgrove.

Luci Tapahonso reads from A Radiant Curve (2008). This reading was originally given with Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Amy Hempel reads from her first two short story collections, Reasons to Live (1985) and At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990). She opens by reading Jack Gilbert's poem "Hunger," which she describes as being taped above her typewriter for "years and years."

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.

In this reading, originally given with Beth Alvarado, Aurelie Sheehan shares excerpts from the novel History Lessons for Girls (2006), as well as a work in progress called One Hundred Histories.

Aurelie Sheehan reads a story from the collection Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant (1994), as well as two unpublished works.

Melissa Buckheit reads from Noctilucent (2012), as well as new and uncollected work. This reading was originally given with Karen Rigby and Anne Shaw.

Dolores Kendrick reads poems from Now is the Thing to Praise (1984), The Women of Plums (1989), and Why the Woman is Singing on the Corner (2001), as well as new and uncollected work.

Jack Gilbert reads primarily from The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (1995) and Refusing Heaven (2005).

Toi Derricotte reads from her first three collections: The Empress of the Death House (1978), Natural Birth (1983), and Captivity (1989). She also reads poems and prose that would later be collected in Tender (1997) and The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey (1997), along with two unpublished poems, including one written in Tucson the night before this reading. She closes by singing an original song.

Sawako Nakayasu reads from So We Have Been Given Time Or (2004) and Nothing Fictional but the Accuracy or Arrangement (She (2006), as well as poems which would later be collected in The Ants (2014). This reading was originally given with Catherine Wing and Deborah Bernhardt for the Next Word in Poetry Series.

Stephen Dunn and Dave Smith read from their poems.

Tillie Olsen reads excerpts from Tell Me a Riddle (1961), her collection of short stories; Yonnondio: From the Thirties (1974), an unfinished novel; and the classic work of nonfiction, Silences (1978). Olsen's reading is interspersed with anecdotes and narrative summaries.

In this artists' talk, photographer Seamus Murphy and journalist/poet Eliza Griswold discuss their experiences in Afghanistan and the poems and photographs featured in the exhibition Shame Every Rose: Images from Afghanistan. This exhibition, which traveled to the Poetry Center courtesy of the Poetry Foundation of Chicago, featured photographs presented in pairs to echo the couplet form of the landay, an oral folk poetry created by and for the Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The landays featured in this exhibit also appear in the June 2013 issue of Poetry magazine, as well as in the anthology I Am The Beggar of The World (2014).

Leslie Ullman discusses process and reads poems from her collection Natural Histories (1979), including "Bravado," "Fur," "Last Night They Heard the Woman Upstairs," and "Midwife"; she also reads poems that would go on to be collected in Dreams by No One's Daughter (1987).

Roberta J. Hill opens with two poems from her first collection, Star Quilt (1984), before reading more recent work that would later be collected in Philadelphia Flowers (1996). Both collections were published under the name Roberta Hill Whiteman.

Ofelia Zepeda reads from her poetry collections When It Rains, Papago and Pima Poetry = Mat hekid o ju, 'O'odham Na-cegitodag (1982), Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995), and Jewed 'I-hoi, Earth Movements (1997). She reads the poems first in O'odham, and then in English.

Paul Zimmer reads poems inspired by his troubled youth during the Eisenhower years, as well as several persona poems.

Leonard Michaels reads from short stories written throughout his career, and concludes the reading with an excerpt from his novel The Men's Club (1981). His uncompromising realist sketches catch characters at their darkest and most vulnerable moments, and are colored with absurdist humor. Stories include those published in his collections Going Places (1969) and I Would Have Saved Them If I Could (1975). 

Vivian Gornick reads from Fierce Attachments (1987), a memoir of the author's past and present relationship with her mother. This University of Arizona Creative Writing faculty reading was originally given with Mary Elsie Robertson.

Rachel Zucker reads from an unpublished manuscript tentatively titled "Sound Machine."

In this lecture, Rachel Zucker discusses risk, shame, and questions of gender and privilege in relationship to confessional poetry. 

Johanna Skibsrud reads from The Description of the World (2016) as well as from a manuscript-in-progress titled Medium. This reading was originally given with Cynthia Hogue.

Ofelia Zepeda welcomes the audience to the 2017 Thinking Its Presence conference. She reads poems from Ocean Power (1995) and Where Clouds Are Formed (2008), along with several more recent poems.

Rita Dove reads from her Collected Poems, 1974-2004 (2016) as well as from uncollected poems at the Phoenix Art Museum. This reading was originally given with Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo in partnership with ArchiTEXTS: A Conversation Across Languages with Natalie Diaz.

Sandra Cisneros reads uncollected poems at the Phoenix Art Museum. This reading was originally given with Rita Dove and Joy Harjo in partnership with ArchiTEXTS: A Conversation Across Languages with Natalie Diaz.

Ada Limón reads poems from Bright Dead Things (2015) and The Carrying (2018).

Kiki Petrosino reads poems from Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013), Witch Wife (2017), and Black Genealogy (2017).