Poetry

#ArtLiPhx: First Friday Poetry

Superstition Review

Peter Twal, winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, reads from his debut collection, Our Earliest Tattoos.

These long-lined sonnets, inspired by the LCD Soundsystem song “All My Friends,” celebrate the surreal, embracing the nature of memory as fragmented and inherently bizarre.

Open reading follows.

ABOUT THE POET 
PETER TWAL is a Jordanian-American poet, an electrical engineer, and the author of Our Earliest Tattoos, winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize (University of Arkansas Press). He earned his MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he was awarded the Samuel and Mary Anne Hazo Poetry Prize. Since then, his work has appeared in The Believer, Best New Poets, Kenyon Review Online, West Branch Wired, Ninth Letter Online, Berkeley Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Pleiades, Bat City Review, and elsewhere. Drawing from his professional career, Peter’s poetry seeks a common ground where the seemingly disconnected worlds of writing and engineering learn from each other’s malleability and strength. Our Earliest Tattoos, his debut collection, furthers that pursuit through the use of poetic form, imagistic layering, and more.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Dr., Tempe

Date: Friday, August 2

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

Buy Book

#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.

Contributor Update, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo: ‘When We Were Seeds’

Superstition Review

Join us in congratulating SR poetry interview contributor Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. Xochitl was invited as a guest instructor to teach a class on poetry for current times at Writing Workshops Los Angeles. The course takes place from July 22 to September 16 and allows students to read, analyze and discuss contemporary poetry from women, people of color, and queer poets “cultivating their own poems of resistance, persistence, and celebration.”

To read more about Xochitl and her upcoming workshop, click here. You can find her interview from Issue 19 here.

Congratulations, Xochitl!

#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.

Contributor Update, Joannie Stangeland: Crosswinds Poetry Contest Winner

Superstition Review

Join us in congratulating past poetry contributor Joannie Stangeland. Joannie recently won Crosswind Poetry’s grand prize for her poem, “Air on Air.” The Crosswinds Poetry Journal looks for well-crafted English language poetry on all subjects, supports poetry and outreach efforts, and completes charitable work each year.

More information about Joannie and her award can be found here. You can find her poetry from Issue 10 here.

Congratulations, Joannie!

Authors Talk: Megan J. Arlett

Superstition Review

Authors Talk: Megan J. Arlett

Today we are pleased to feature Megan J. Arlett as our Authors Talk series contributor. In this podcast, she takes the time to discuss her nonfiction piece, “Narrative,” published in SR’s Issue 21. The lyric essay explores the 2008 disappearance of Amy Fitzpatrick as well as language and storytelling.

Megan looks back at her 2017 notebook to discover what she was reading while she drafted “Narrative” and to find out which texts influenced her work. While she struggles to remember an initial spark of inspiration, aside from constantly thinking about the disappearance of her classmate and neighbor, she does notice how certain writers have tapped into her “brain space” to influence what she originally “thought was going to be a poem,” but later became the lyric essay that sits nicely between the nonfiction and poetry genres.

Looking to the musings in her old notebook, Megan discovers that she was obsessing over the poetry of Li-Young Lee at the time. She had written a note to herself about his work that reads, “Long poems need externalities.” In her old notes, she also finds a scribbled question— “Bowman-style meditation for the cyclical obsession with missing people?”—referring to Catherine Bowman’s poem “A Thousand Lines.” Lastly, Megan realizes that the newsprint style of “Narrative” was influenced by Jehanne Debrow’s The Arranged Marriage, which helped give her lyric essay form and made the nonfiction piece feel complete.

It seems that Megan’s creative work was driven by her obsessions at the time: her fascination with poets Li-Young Lee and Catherine Bowman, her admiration for Jehanne Debrow’s literary style, her love for true crime, and her curiosity about Amy Fitzpatrick’s disappearance.

Reflecting on her writing, Megan wants her readers to acknowledge that beauty and horror can exist simultaneously, concluding “There can be voicelessness even amid countless voices.”

You can read Megan’s work in Issue 21 of Superstition Review.

#ArtLitPhx: Our Hearts Go Out to You

Superstition Review

Superstition Review is sad to share that Four Chambers Press is closing. Please join us in thanking this group for their strong support of the local literary community by attending the Four Chambers’ Final Farewell, “Our Hearts Go Out to You.”

A note from Four Chambers Press:

After five years of pumping literary blood through our local community, Four Chambers officially flatlined in January, 2019. But even though we’re gone, our stories and poems live on in you. Please. We don’t want your money. We just want your love. Let us give you a piece of our heart.

Join us on Sunday, May 19th from 4 to 6 pm at Changing Hands Phoenix and help us finally put this thing to rest. We have 1,000 books and artwork that we would like to give away for free. Maybe they’ll find a home on your coffee table, or in your bathroom, or your classroom, or your child’s Christmas stockings. Who knows. Wherever it may be, we hope Four Chambers can occupy a space in your life and the life of Phoenix as we all continue to work, collaborate, and create in the ever-growing Phoenix literary community. (There will also be a short reading at 5:30.) We’re so grateful to have been a part of it. We hope to see you there.

**If you are a local creative writing or literature professor or instructor and would like a specific Four Chambers title in bulk, please email kelsey.fcp@gmail.com for availability and reservation.

Event Information:

Day: Sunday, May 19

Time: 4 to 6 p.m.

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Suite 1, Phoenix

Contributor Update, Todd Fredson, 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry

Superstition Review

We’re proud to announce that our recent Issue 23 contributor Todd Fredson is long-listed for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry.

Todd earned this recognition for his most recent book in translation, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn. The collection is written by poet Tanella Boni.

You can read more about the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry here.

To read Todd Fredson’s recent SR Issue 23 contribution, click here.

Congratulations, Todd!

#ArtLitPhx: Cross-Pollination: Poetry and Science Sustaining Our World

Superstition Review

Date: Saturday, May 11, 2019

Time: 1:30pm – 3:30pm

Location:

Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
1215 E Lowell St, Tucson, AZ 85721

Cost: Free

Event Details:

Under the title of cross-pollination: poetry and science sustaining our world, we will host a series of 3 discussions of eco-poetry, a collaboration of the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and the UA Poetry Center and led by docents from each facility.

Discussions will be held in the Bryant Bannister Building, 1215 E Lowell Street on the following Saturdays: March 9, April 13, and May 11 from 1:30-3:00 pm. Participants will receive a different packet of poems prepared by the docents for each date. No previous experience with poetry is necessary.

Contributor Update, Ruben Quesada: Revelations

Superstition Review

Today we are happy to announce the news of past contributor Ruben Quesada! His interview with Image Journal was just published last month, following the publication of his chapbook of poetry and translations by Sibling Rivalry Press, titled Revelations. Ruben, an LGBT+ author and translator, intertwines his own work with the translated work of Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. The interviewer Cassidy Hall focuses on the relationship between religion, sexuality and poetry, as well as Ruben’s own experiences with the three.

More information on Ruben’s chapbook can be found here, his piece for S[r]’s Issue 13 can be found here.

Congratulations Ruben!