3607 Pennsylvania Avenue Kansas City, MO 64111
Friday, Dec. 7, 7 PM – 9 PM http://writersplaceorg.squarespace.com/calendar/ $3 members; $5 nonmembers; no one turned away for lack of funds
Piper Abernathy is a poet and educator. She has a M.Ed. in
Literacy from Rockhurst University and a MFA in Poetry from UMKC, and she
taught high school locally for nine years. Piper is currently a regional
coordinator for Poetry Out Loud and an adjunct instructor for Penn Valley. Her
poetry can be found in Pleiades, Mid-American Review, Memorious, and the I-70 Review.
Denise (Dotson) Low is former Kansas Poet Laureate, with 20
published books of poetry, personal essays, and scholarship. She is a member of
the national board of the Associated Writers & Writing Programs and was
immediate past president. For 25 years she taught at Haskell Indian Nations
University, and she has been visiting professor at the University of Kansas and
University of Richmond. Currently she teaches courses for Baker University. She
has awards from the NEH, the Lannan Foundation, The Newberry Library, the
Academy of American Poets, and the Kansas Arts Commission. Her academic books
include prose about Native and settler literatures of the middle plains region.
She is on the national board of AWP as past president.
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This is
the first reading by Minnesota poet Richard Robbins in this area. Here’s a poem
by him and more information. He is an original voice, with exquisite craft.
by Richard Robbins
The other one has tried to reach it
across the ocean of the shoulder,
tried to stop it from hitting, from sending
a man to death with a scribbled word.
The body wishes it would listen
more to the body, refuse for once
this urge to travel an alley without
eye, tongue, or the two versatile feet.
The heart, tomorrow, will have her way
with it. Like the bones of the rib cage,
so birds of the air. The river will turn
in its path, the blue ground angle up,
every millionth part of God conspire
to bring the right to answer for itself,
for all the hands that closed or waved away
the weak untouchable things, come now
to throne, to town, his own driveway on
their knees to be healed.
across the ocean of the shoulder,
tried to stop it from hitting, from sending
a man to death with a scribbled word.
The body wishes it would listen
more to the body, refuse for once
this urge to travel an alley without
eye, tongue, or the two versatile feet.
The heart, tomorrow, will have her way
with it. Like the bones of the rib cage,
so birds of the air. The river will turn
in its path, the blue ground angle up,
every millionth part of God conspire
to bring the right to answer for itself,
for all the hands that closed or waved away
the weak untouchable things, come now
to throne, to town, his own driveway on
their knees to be healed.
Richard Robbins is director of
the Good
Thunder Reading Series and Univ. of Minn.-Mankato M.F.A.
Program in Creative Writing. His publications include:
Other
Americas, Blueroad
Press, 2010
Radioactive City, Bellday Books, 2009, Bellday Poetry Prize.
The Untested Hand, Backwaters P, 2008
Famous Persons We Have Known, Eastern Washington UP, 2000
The Invisible Wedding, U of Missouri P, 1984
Toward New Weather [chapbook], Frontier Award Committee, 1978
Where We Are: The Montana Poets Anthology [co-editor], SmokeRoot P, 1978
Radioactive City, Bellday Books, 2009, Bellday Poetry Prize.
The Untested Hand, Backwaters P, 2008
Famous Persons We Have Known, Eastern Washington UP, 2000
The Invisible Wedding, U of Missouri P, 1984
Toward New Weather [chapbook], Frontier Award Committee, 1978
Where We Are: The Montana Poets Anthology [co-editor], SmokeRoot P, 1978
LINKS
