I’m looking forward to the virtual panel I participated in and will be around to answer questions during the session. It was such a fun and informative conversation with fellow poets and literary advocates Hannah Rousselot, Kai Coggin, Marion Gomez, and Karen Paul Holmes. I hope you will join us!
Event Title: Fostering a Virtual Poetic Community
Scheduled Day: Saturday, March 26, 2022
Scheduled Time: 3:20 PM–4:20 PM ET
Location: #AWP22 Virtual Conference Platform
My picks for Virtual AWP 2022
- Beyond Representation: Intersections of Poetry & Mental Illness
- 1:20 PM – 2:22 PM MDT on Thursday, March 24
- Rachel Mennies, Aricka Foreman, Sara Eliza Johnson, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Daniella Toosie-Watson
- The intersection of poetry and mental illness has a problematic history in the cultural imagination, from Blake’s mythologized “madness” to Plath’s romanticized suicide. In recent years this connection has been demystified, illuminating that the lived reality of writing with these disabilities is complex—as is the relationship between one’s conditions and their art. How do mental illnesses consciously and subconsciously impact poetics? This panel convenes five poets to discuss their experiences.
- Poetry Garden: Cultivating Poetry Community Beyond the Page & Stage
- 7:00 AM – 7:58 AM MDT on Friday, March 25
- Tamara J Madison, Kai Coggin, Jimmy Pappas, sandra yannone
- This panel will focus on innovative ways to create poetry programming beyond the traditional poetry reading and slam/poetry performance stage. The panelists will discuss what makes their poetry programming and community unique, what nurtures that programming and community, and what sustains that programming and community long-term. The panel will consist of four curators with forty-plus years’ experience combined and significantly diverse followings varying in age, skill, nationality, craft, and culture.
- No F*cks to Give: Women on the Poetics of Sex & Raunch
- 8:35 AM – 9:40 AM MDT on Friday, March 25
Kendra DeColo, Dorothy Chan, Tiana Clark, Erika Meitner, Diane Seuss
Women artists have long used raunch as a tool of empowerment and comedic relief to claim space and assert identity in healing and transgressive modes. In this joyful and bawdy reading, five women poets will celebrate sex, profanity, and raunch, asserting what Audre Lorde writes: “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.”
- 8:35 AM – 9:40 AM MDT on Friday, March 25
- Milkweed Presents: Landscape and Literary Culture
- 10:10 AM – 11:25 AM MDT on Friday, March 25
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Elena Passarello, Kazim Ali
- Milkweed authors discuss the intersections of literary culture and the natural world: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders; Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light; and Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places. Deep attentiveness to the environment—with its diverse landscapes, wild creatures, and shifting climates—provides these writers with dynamic pathways to explore regeneration, identity, and wonder in their work. Moderated by Animals Strike Curious Poses author Elena Passarello. This event will be livestreamed. ASL interpretation and live captioning will be provided.
- Support the #AWP22 featured presenters by purchasing their recent published titles on our Bookshop list: https://bookshop.org/lists/awp22-featured-presenter-books
- A Reading by Arthur Sze, Meg Day, and Kemi Alabi, Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets
- Jen Benka, Arthur Sze, Meg Day, Kemi Alabi
- 11:45 AM – 1:00 PM MDT on Friday, March 25
- Join the Academy of American Poets for a reading by Academy Chancellor Emeritus Arthur Sze and award-winning poets Meg Day and Kemi Alabi. Executive Director Jennifer Benka will introduce the event. ASL interpretation will be provided. Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is the nation’s leading champion of poets and poetry, with supporters in all fifty states. This event will be prerecorded and available on the virtual conference platform, in addition to being screened onsite. ASL interpretation and live captioning will be provided. ASL interpretation and live captioning will be provided.
- Support the #AWP22 featured presenters by purchasing their recent published titles on our Bookshop list: https://bookshop.org/lists/awp22-featured-presenter-books. Find Meg Day’s Last Psalm at Sea Level at https://barrowstreet.org/press/book/last-psalm-at-sea-level/.
- The World Split Open: Four Women Poets on Memoir
- 1:20 PM – 2:21 PM MDT on Friday, March 25
- Sharon Dolin, Natasha Trethewey, Jennifer Militello, Natasha Saje
- “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/ The world would split open,” wrote Muriel Rukeyser in the poem “Käthe Kollwitz.” How does truth-telling and the construction of a voice differ in the genres of poetry and memoir? How do gender, class, and race figure into what is told? What world—if any—is split open? These poet/memoirists discuss the urgency of their turn to prose, also reading briefly from their memoirs.
- Poetry of Witness: Racial Dehumanization & Genocide
- 11:45 AM – 12:46 PM MDT on Saturday, March 26
- Gail Newman, Dean Rader, Roger Reeves, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Cristina Deptula
- What can a poet do in the face of dehumanization and brutality towards groups of people? How can we avoid sentimentality or reducing victims to statistics? How do we communicate the victimization of a people while still conveying their agency and humanity? Do the details of craft matter in the face of mass murder, and how can poetry honor the dead and urge society towards justice and humanity? And what do poets do when we see the attitudes that led to genocide resurfacing today?
- Fostering a Virtual Poetic Community
- 1:20 PM – 2:20 PM MDT on Saturday, March 26
- Trish Hopkinson, Hannah Rousselot, Kai Coggin, Marion Gomez, Karen Paul Holmes
- Panelists will explain how they adapted to the new virtual world of poetry during the pandemic. The panelists will share insights into how they found ways to forge an inclusive online poetry community that encompasses virtual readings, podcasts, reviews, and newsletters to provide a poetic voice and connection throughout the country. Then the panelists will host a Q&A to provide tips on how to authentically market your own work and support other poets through the internet.
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