On Wednesday,
April 16, 2014, from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m., City of Santa Fe Poet Laureate Jon
Davis will host “Santa Fe Poets 4,” the fourth of six readings, the remainder
of which will take place over the next three months at various venues in and
around Santa Fe. Each reading will feature a different group of five poets
reading with the poet laureate. The April reading will take place in the Santa
Fe Community Gallery. The event is free.
At this
reading, Davis will read from his new manuscript and from his most recent book,
Preliminary Report, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2010. In
addition to being Santa Fe’s fourth poet laureate, Davis is Director of the Low
Residency MFA Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he has
taught for 23 years.
Joining Davis
for Santa Fe Poets 4 will be:
Mei-mei
Berssenbrugge, who
was born in Beijing and grew up in Massachusetts and is the author of thirteen
books of poetry, including, most recently, Hello, the Roses (New
Directions, 2013) and I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems (U. of
California, 2006). She lives in New York City and northern New Mexico.
Valerie
Martinez, former
Santa Fe Poet Laureate, who is the author of four books of poetry, including,
most recently, Each and Her (University of Arizona Press, 2010), which
won the 2011 Arizona Book Award. Her first book of poetry, Absence,
Luminescent won the Larry Levis Prize.
James
Thomas Stevens, who
was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and is a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk
Nation. Stevens has published seven books of poetry, including Combing
the Snakes from His Hair, for which he was awarded a 2000 Whiting Writer’s
Award. He teaches creative writing and literature at the Institute of American
Indian Arts.
Elaine
Upton is an educator
and translator and the author of a collection of poems, Children of
Apartness (Washington Writers’ Publishing House).
(Carol
Moldaw, the scheduled fifth reader, has had to cancel and will participate,
instead, in Santa Fe Poets 6 in June.)
The Santa Fe
Community Gallery is located in the Santa Fe Community Convention Center on 201
West Marcy Street. For more information, call Jon Davis at 505-424-2365 or
e-mail him at jdavissimo52@gmail.com.
Established
in 2005, the Poet Laureate program actively promotes poetry and the spoken word
as integral parts of our civic life.
