University of Arizona Poetry Center

A black and white photo of Richard Shelton

Celebration for Richard Shelton

Superstition Review
A black and white photo of Richard Shelton
Richard Shelton, 1970 | Photo credit: LaVerne Harrell Clark

On Saturday, March 4th, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm, the University of Arizona Poetry Center will be celebrating the life of Richard Shelton, renowned poet, memoirist, and activist. He wrote 11 books of poetry and established a writers workshop in the Arizona State Prison at Florence. He was also an emeritus Regents Professor of Creative Writing and a founding faculty member of the University of Arizona MFA Program in Creative Writing.

This event is free, open to the public, and available online. To learn more, go here.

An interview with Richard Shelton appeared in Issue 10 of Superstition Review.

#ArtLitPhx: Engagement in Poetry

Superstition Review

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 – 6:00PM TO 8:00PM

What keeps us engaged? What drives us down the page to the end of the poem? We will explore “speed” or “momentum,” by analyzing poems that keep our attention. But also, we will explore how as writers, we can be engaged with our surrounding world, to the point that we must do something about it. We will look at poems that have been a “call to arms” of sorts. To inspire our creativity, we will look at the current headlines to draw poetry from the media. This workshop will be half generative and half revision.

COST: 

$60

PEOPLE: 

Javier Zamora

Location:

University of Arizona: Poetry Center, Room 205, 1508 E. Helen St., Tucson

For more information, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Come to the Table

Superstition Review

Come to the Table Opening Reception: August 31 at 2:00 PM

Curated by Leela Denver in collaboration with Wren Awry, with additional curation by Dr. Laura Vázquez Blázquez.

Come to the Table presents work about, inspired by, and in conversation with food. This exhibit explores the many forms of food poems that exist while also asking “what can a food poem be?” Organized by four fundamental stages of a food experience—growing, sourcing, cooking, and eating, with a highlight of food culture along the US-Mexican border—this exhibit explores the various ways poetry uses food and food uses poetry. Come to the table and join us for an interactive exhibit where you can explore the world of food poetry and share your own with us.  

Exhibitions are displayed in the Jeremy Ingalls Gallery of the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona, 1508 E. Helen St., Tucson.

#ArtLitPhx: Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading

Superstition Review

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2019 – 7:00PM

The Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading features emerging and innovative poets. This event is presented annually as part of the Poetry Center’s Reading and Lecture Series, and is named after poet and publisher Morgan Lucas Schuldt (2/11/1978–1/30/2012).

This year, the University of Arizona Poetry Center is proud to present Erika L. Sánchez and sam sax, who will read from their work. After the reading, there will be a short Q&A and a book signing.

Erika L. Sánchez’s debut poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion, was published by Graywolf in July 2017, and was a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award. Her debut young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, published in October 2017 by Knopf Books for Young Readers, is a New York Times Bestseller and a National Book Awards finalist. She is currently a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellow.

sam sax is a queer, Jewish, writer and educator. He is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017) winner of The National Poetry Series selected by Terrance Hayes & ‘Bury It’ (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. sam has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Lambda Literary, & the MacDowell Colony.

Location: University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 E. Helen St., Tucson

For more information, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Whitman Summer Social

Superstition Review

Poetry selections from the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2019 – 5:30PM

This event takes place at the Copper Room at Hotel Congress (311 Congress St., Tucson AZ).

Join the University of Arizona Poetry Center for a short reading of poems that the Poetry Center library staff has selected for the programs of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (AFCM) Programs over the past two years.  Supporting AFCM’s diverse and excellent programming, the featured poems speak to the pleasures of music and the transformative experience of excellent art.  Poems will be read by Library Director Sarah Kortemeier and Senior Library Specialist Julie Swarstad Johnson. The band Young MacDonald will play before and after the event.

There will be a short 20 minute reading of curated poems.  Event will feature complimentary snacks and a cash bar; doors at 5:30, program at 6 p.m.

Click here for more information.

#ArtLitPhx: Lehua Taitano and Bojan Louis Poetry Reading

Superstition Review

The University of Arizona Poetry Center is proud to present our summer resident Lehua Taitano and Bojan Louis (new poetry faculty in the Creative Writing program and in American Indian Studies), who will read from their work. After the reading, there will be a short Q&A and a book signing.

Lehua M. Taitano is a queer CHamoru writer and interdisciplinary artist from Yigo, Guåhan (Guam) and co-founder of Art 25. She is the author of two volumes of poetry—Inside Me an Island (WordTech Editions) and A Bell Made of Stones (TinFish Press). Her chapbook, appalachiapacific, won the 2010 Merriam-Frontier Award for short fiction. She has two recent chapbooks of poetry and visual art: Sonoma(Dropleaf Press) and Capacity (a Hawai’i Review e-chap). Her poetry, essays, and Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction have appeared in Fence, Kartika Review, Red Ink International Journal, Poetry Magazine, and numerous others. She has served as an APAture Featured Literary Artist via Kearny Street Workshop, a Kuwentuhan poet via The Poetry Center at SFSU, and as a Culture Lab visual artist and digital exhibit advisor for the Smithsonian Institute’s Asian Pacific American Center. Taitano’s work investigates modern indigeneity, decolonization, and cultural identity in the context of diaspora.

Bojan Louis (Diné) is the author of the poetry collection Currents (BkMk Press 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona (The Guillotine Series 2012). His fiction has appeared in Ecotone, Numéro Cinq Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review; nonfiction in MudCity Journal and AS/US. Former poetry editor at RED INK and former poetry editor and co-founder of Waxwing, Louis has been a resident at The MacDowell Colony and is the inaugural Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence at Arizona State University. He will be joining the MFA and AIS faculty at the University of Arizona in the fall 2019.

EVENT INFORMATION:

Date: Thursday, July 25

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 E. Helen St., Tucson

Cost: Free

For more information, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: 2019 CBAA’s Biennial Meeting

Superstition Review

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Event Description:

The 2019 College Book Art Association’s Biennial Meeting will be held January 4–5 at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Themed The Photographic Artist’s Book, this meeting is an interdisciplinary landmark for CBAA—keynote speaker Cristina de Middel will discuss the ways her work blends documentary and conceptual photographic practices, and discussion sessions will explore topics ranging from The Historical Photobook: Examples, Conventions, and Extensions to The Rise of the Risograph. In addition to these exciting features, CBAA is planning a large exhibit of photo-based artists’ books. Co-hosted by the Joseph Gross Gallery in the University of Arizona School of Art and the internationally known University of Arizona Poetry Center, the exhibit will include books by Massin, Michael Snow, Bern Porter, Alec Findlay, Paul Graham, Ken Ohara, Bill Burke, and many others.

More Info

#ArtLitPhx: Layli Long Soldier and Timothy Yu at the Phoenix Art Museum

Superstition Review

Layli Long Soldier and Timothy YuThe University of Arizona Poetry Center is proud to present poets Layli Long Soldier and Timothy Yu at the Phoenix Art Museum (1625 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004) on Friday, November 3 at 7pm. Both poets will read from their works, and then there will be a short Q&A and a book signing.

The local opener is Bojan Louis, who is a member of the Navajo Nation. His first collection of poems, Currents, published in 2017 from BkMk Press. He is also the author of a nonfiction chapbook, Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona, released by Guillotine Series in 2012. Louis is currently Poetry Editor at RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, and Humanities.

Layli Long Soldier is Oglala Lakota; her family is from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and northwestern Idaho. Her first chapbook of poetry, Chromosomory, released in 2009 from Q Ave Press. She received a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and she is a two-time recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship. She is also a recipient of the 2009 Naropa University Poetry Scholarship. She has served as editor-in-chief for “Native Language Network” and other publications for the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Timothy Yu’s debut poetry collection, 100 Chinese Silences (2016), was the Editor’s Selection in the NOS Book Contest from Les Figues Press. He is also the author of three chapbooks: 15 Chinese Silences (Tinfish); Journey to the West (Barrow Street), winner of the Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize from Kundiman; and, with Kristy Odelius, Kiss the Stranger (Corollary). He is also the author of Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Literature since 1965 (Stanford) and the editor of Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets (Kelsey Street).

For this event, the Poetry Center is proud to partner with the Phoenix Art Museum with support from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing as a lead sponsor, as well as additional support from the ASU Creative Writing Program, the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the Literary & Prologue Society, and Superstition Review.

For more information, check out the event’s Facebook page.

#ArtLitPhx: Brenda Hillman & Robert Hass at the Phoenix Art Museum

Superstition Review

Robert-Hass-Brenda-Hillman-Oct7

The University of Arizona Poetry Center presents distinguished poets Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass at the Phoenix Art Museum. The event takes place on Friday, October 7th at 7:00 p.m. After the reading, there will be a short Q&A and a book signing. The Poetry Center is proud to partner with the Phoenix Art Museum with additional support from ASU’s Creative Writing Program, Superstition Review, Four Chambers Press, and the Literary & Prologue Society of the Southwest.

Brenda Hillman is the author of nine collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. Among the awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2016 she was named Academy of American Poets Chancellor.

Robert Hass has published many books of poetry including Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, and Sun Under Wood, as well as a book of essays on poetry, Twentieth Century Pleasures. Hass translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and he edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986 by Tomas Transtromer, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa; Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life; and Modernist Women Poets: An Anthology (with Paul Ebenkamp). He was the guest editor of the 2001 edition of Best American Poetry. His essay collection Now & Then, which includes his Washington Post articles, was published in April 2007. As US Poet Laureate (1995-1997), his deep commitment to environmental issues led him to found River of Words (ROW), an organization that promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

Leah Marché will be opening the reading. Leah Marché is an arts entrepreneur, performance poet and journalist/writer. In 2005, she co-founded BlackPoet Ventures, a Valley-based performance arts company that produces spoken word theatrical performances.

For more information and updates, please visit the Facebook event.

U of A Poetry Center Fall 2016 Phoenix Reading Series

Superstition Review

U of A Poetry CenterSuperstition Review is thrilled to co-sponsor the University of Arizona Poetry Center Phoenix Reading Series at the Phoenix Art Museum.

On September 2, 2016, Solmaz Sharif and Danniel Schoonebeek will read. Solmaz Sharif’s work has been recognized with a “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, and multiple fellowships. Danniel Schoonebeek was awarded a Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and his second book of poems was a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series.

On October 7, 2016, Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass will read. Brenda Hillman authored nine collections of poetry and received the William Carlos Williams Prize for Poetry and several fellowships.  Robert Hass is a former U.S. Poet Laureate, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and National Book Critics’ Circle Award winner.