Chicago is the pulse of poetry, and visitors are invited to see it in action in the&nbsp;Poetry Foundation’s gallery, where the visual impact of poetry is on full display. The gallery is FREE and open to the public during the opening hours of the Poetry Foundation.&nbsp; Recent artists include Constance Jaeggi, Luftwerk, Kara Walker, Alex Katz, Diana Solís, and Bob Faust. Photo by Field Creatives,&nbsp;courtesy of the Poetry&nbsp;Foundation

Poetry Foundation

Victoria Martinez: Frente a la vida / Facing Life Exhibition OpeningReception and artist talk to celebrate the opening of the exhibition Frente a la vida / Facing Life. The event will feature a conversation between writer Nicole Kaack and Chicago artist Victoria Martinez, followed by a reception. Free and open to all.Frente a la vida / Facing Life is an exhibition of murals and ceramic paintings by artist Victoria Martinez that responds to the life and work of Peruvian poet and activist Magda Portal.Washing the wall with a painted panorama and flooding the gallery windows with fields of color, Martinez heightens the permeability of the Poetry Foundation’s architecture, transforming it into an expressive, abstracted terrain.Image Credit: Artwork by Victoria Martinez, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation

Victoria Martinez: Frente a la vida / Facing Life Exhibition Opening 

On April 17 from 6-8pm The Poetry Foundation will host a poetry reading, artist talk, and reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home. Free and open to all. The opening will feature an artist talk by Jaeggi, followed by readings by Sáenz and Silva, and closing with a celebratory reception featuring music by Sones de México Ensemble.&nbsp; A window into the subculture of Mexican American women’s equestrian performance, presented through poetry and photography, Escaramuza is a collaborative work by photographer Constance Jaeggi and poets Angelina Sáenz and ire’ne lara silva. The exhibition explores escaramuza, the team sport of women’s precision horse riding, addressing complex themes of identity, family, and gender with a lush combination of poetry and photography.&nbsp; Escaramuza, translated from Spanish as “skirmish,” is the team sport of women’s precision horse riding within charrería—the Mexican national sport of roping, equestrian activities, and working with cattle. Inspired by the soldaderas (women soldiers) of the Mexican Revolution, teams ride sidesaddle during intricately choreographed dances set to music while wearing vivid, traditional Mexican dresses. Image: Photograph by Constance Jaeggi, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation&nbsp;

Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home

A discussion of&nbsp;Incubation: A Space for Monsters&nbsp;by Bhanu Kapil.<a href=https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&amp;id=13eff39742&amp;e=52509735a4>Learn More and Register to Attend</a>&nbsp;

Library Book Club: Bhanu Kapil (Virtual)

The single word poem “lighght,” by Aram Saroyan, is the inspiration for Luftwerk’s site-specific installation at the Poetry Foundation. Saroyan describes his poem, a seminal work of minimalism, as operating like “electricity,” instant and continuous. Luftwerk’s immersive interpretation brings viewers inside an ever shifting prism of colored light, transforming the Poetry Foundation gallery into a dynamic lightbox. Light and color are the core elements in Luftwerk’s artistic practice. Their interest is in the power of light as a crucial element of vision, whose dynamic relationship to color perception is explored. Through the use of various modalities—such as projection of videos, shadow casting, among others—they integrate light into each project to explore its fleeting and changing nature.“lighght” was written by Saroyan in 1965 and first published in 1966. It became controversial after its inclusion in The American Literary Anthology, an early recipient of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding. The Paris Review issued the poem as part of its “Print Series” of limited edition art prints in 1989. Image Credit: Art by Luftwerk

More Light! Luftwerk x Aram Saroyan

OCT, 15 2024 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM VIRTUALOCT, 16 2024 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM VIRTUALOCT, 21 2024 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM VIRTUALA discussion and creative workshop on necropastoral poetry.<a href=https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&amp;id=c1fcdfc473&amp;e=52509735a4>Learn More and Register to Attend</a>&nbsp;

Forms & Features: Necropastoral Poetry

A poetry reading featuring collaborations by Julie Ezelle-Patton and Ed Roberson, and Duriel E. Harris and Dawn Joseph.<a href=https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&amp;id=9934170909&amp;e=52509735a4>Learn More and Register to Attend</a>&nbsp;

Open Door: Julie Ezelle-Patton, Ed Roberson, Duriel E. Harris, Dawn Joseph

A poetry reading featuring Daniel Borzutzky, Rae Armantrout, and Forrest Gander.&nbsp;<a href=https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&amp;id=4663f1c469&amp;e=52509735a4>Learn More and Register to Attend</a>&nbsp;

The Murmuring Grief of the Americas: Daniel Borzutzy, Rae Armantrout, and Forrest Gander

Celebrate the new exhibition honoring 50 years of the Chicago Poetry Center with a reception in the Poetry Foundation’s courtyard. After the reception, attendees are invited to the premiere of the documentary A Bigger Table, which explores CPC from its roots as a platform for censored writers to its present-day mission as the organization continues to build a bigger table for poets in Chicago and beyond. The film screening will be followed by readings and performances by Layla Abdullah, Helene Achanzar, and Marvin Tate and remarks by CPC’s executive director B. Metzger Sampson.Image Credit: Vintage Chicago Poetry Center posters.

A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center

Reception: Saturday, July 13, 2:00 - 5:00 PMCelebrating CPC’s five historic decades, this exhibition will feature 50 broadsides, 50 iconic vintage poetry event posters, archival materials and ephemera, and the premier of a documentary film A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center.In defiance of literary censorship in the 1950s, a group of Chicago writers and editors organized to create publication and performance spaces that welcomed queer and racially diverse contemporary voices. These organic, community-driven efforts, which included the Big Table literary magazine and reading series, were formalized in 1974 into the nonprofit Chicago Poetry Center (CPC). The title “Big Table” was chosen because a big table has room for everyone and because one of the censored writers found a note he’d written to himself that said, “Get a bigger writing table.”For 50 years, CPC has remained rooted in its history of liberatory artistic practice. The organization’s programs have supported tens of thousands of Chicago Public School students in exploring their powerful voices, offered platforms for nearly a thousand poets to express themselves in writing and aloud, and engaged individuals nationwide in critical conversations around race using poetry as a springboard for transformative dialogue.&nbsp;Image Credit: Vintage Chicago Poetry Center posters.

Join us for the third installment of Letras Latinas’s year-long 20th Anniversary celebration, featuring Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta, Diannely Antigua, Jasminne Mendez, and Yesenia Montilla. The multi-day festivities will include a poetry reading the evening of Thursday, March 21 and a panel on Afro-Latinx Poetry Now the afternoon of Saturday, March 23. Both are hybrid events, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.&nbsp;Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta (she/they) is the author of Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere (Get Fresh Books, 2021), a 2020 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019) and creative writing editor at Chicana/Latina Studies Journal. Select work is featured in Platform Review,Best American Poetry, The Baffler,Acentos Review, Kweli Journal,Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, and forthcoming in Inkwell and the Hopkins Review. They are a full professor at CUNY-BCC, Macondo fellow, VONA alum, and Dodge Foundation Poet, and the recent recipient of a Sundress Academy for the Arts grant and residency.Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. Her second collection Good Monster is forthcoming in 2024 from Copper Canyon Press. She received her MFA at NYU and is the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her poems can be found in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She resides in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where she is the Poet Laureate.Jasminne Mendez is a best-selling Dominican American poet, translator, playwright, and award-winning author of several books for children and adults, including the poetry collection City Without Altar (Noemi Press). Her other books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of Texas, and the International Latino Book Awards. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alum.Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet and a daughter of immigrants. She received her MFA from Drew University in poetry and poetry in translation. She is a CantoMundo graduate fellow and a 2020 NYFA fellow. Her work has been published in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day,Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, and in Best of American Poetry 2021 and 2022. Her first collection The Pink Box was published by Willow Books and was longlisted for a PEN Open Book award. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body was published by Four Way Books and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in 2023. She is an adjunct professor at Juilliard and lives in Harlem, New York.In-Person Attendance Masks are strongly encouraged and available at check-in for those who would like to wear one. The Foundation reserves the right to update this policy if community levels of COVID-19 increase significantly. Read our <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/covid">full COVID-19 Health &amp; Safety Guidelines. </a>Guests are encouraged to <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/letras-latinas-20th-anniversary-afro-latinx-poetry-now-panel-tickets-815908964677?aff=oddtdtcreator">register in advance</a>.&nbsp;Livestream Attendance The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/letras-latinas-20th-anniversary-afro-latinx-poetry-now-panel-tickets-815908964677?aff=oddtdtcreator">please register in advance here.&nbsp;</a>The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility">please visit our Accessibility Guide</a>.Clockwise from top left: Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta by David Flores, Diannely Antigua by Tony Ochoa, Jasminne Mendez by Tasha Gorel, and Yesenia Montilla.

Letras Latinas 20th Anniversary: Afro-Latinx Poetry Now (Panel)

<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/letras-latinas-20th-anniversary-poetry-reading-tickets-815924009677?aff=oddtdtcreator">Please register here</a>Join us for the third installment of Letras Latinas’s year-long 20th Anniversary celebration, featuring Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta, Diannely Antigua, Jasminne Mendez, and Yesenia Montilla. The multi-day festivities will include a poetry reading the evening of Thursday, March 21 and a panel on Afro-Latinx Poetry Now the afternoon of Saturday, March 23. Both are hybrid events, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.&nbsp;Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta (she/they) is the author of Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere (Get Fresh Books, 2021), a 2020 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019) and creative writing editor at Chicana/Latina Studies Journal. Select work is featured in Platform Review,Best American Poetry, The Baffler,Acentos Review, Kweli Journal,Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, and forthcoming in Inkwell and the Hopkins Review. They are a full professor at CUNY-BCC, Macondo fellow, VONA alum, and Dodge Foundation Poet, and the recent recipient of a Sundress Academy for the Arts grant and residency.Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. Her second collection Good Monster is forthcoming in 2024 from Copper Canyon Press. She received her MFA at NYU and is the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her poems can be found in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She resides in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where she is the Poet Laureate.Jasminne Mendez is a best-selling Dominican American poet, translator, playwright, and award-winning author of several books for children and adults, including the poetry collection City Without Altar (Noemi Press). Her other books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of Texas, and the International Latino Book Awards. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alum.Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet and a daughter of immigrants. She received her MFA from Drew University in poetry and poetry in translation. She is a CantoMundo graduate fellow and a 2020 NYFA fellow. Her work has been published in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day,Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, and in Best of American Poetry 2021 and 2022. Her first collection The Pink Box was published by Willow Books and was longlisted for a PEN Open Book award. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body was published by Four Way Books and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in 2023. She is an adjunct professor at Juilliard and lives in Harlem, New York.In-Person Attendance Masks are strongly encouraged and available at check-in for those who would like to wear one. The Foundation reserves the right to update this policy if community levels of COVID-19 increase significantly. Read our <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/covid">full COVID-19 Health &amp; Safety Guidelines. </a>Guests are encouraged to <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/letras-latinas-20th-anniversary-poetry-reading-tickets-815924009677?aff=oddtdtcreator">register in advance</a>.Livestream Attendance The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/letras-latinas-20th-anniversary-poetry-reading-tickets-815924009677?aff=oddtdtcreator">please register in advance here.</a>The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility">please visit our Accessibility Guide</a>.Clockwise from top left: Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta by David Flores, Diannely Antigua by Tony Ochoa, Jasminne Mendez by Tasha Gorel, and Yesenia Montilla.

Letras Latinas 20th Anniversary: Poetry Reading

Online | <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrating-the-visiting-teaching-artists-of-forms-features-tickets-809502793647">Registration Required</a>Join us for a virtual reading featuring 2023 Forms &amp; Features Visiting Teaching Artists Gabriela Denise Frank, Naoko Fujimoto, Nathan Xavier Osorio, and Sarah Ann Winn. Forms &amp; Features is the Poetry Foundation’s series of free online creative writing workshops for adults.Gabriela Denise Frank (she/her) is a transdisciplinary artist, editor, educator, and&nbsp; creative consultant whose work expands from the page into the sonic, visual, and experiential. Her writing and visual art appear in True Story, BOMB, Northwest Review, Bayou, New Delta Review, The Rumpus, the Smart Set, and elsewhere. She serves as a public arts commissioner, youth mentor, and the creative nonfiction editor and managing editor of Crab Creek Review.Naoko Fujimoto (she/her) was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student at Indiana University, where she earned a BA and an MA. Her poetry collections include We Face the Tremendous Meat on the Teppan, winner of the C&amp;R Press Summer Tide Pool Chapbook Award; Where I Was Born, winner of the editor's choice by Willow Books; Glyph: Graphic Poetry=Trans; Sensory; and four chapbooks. She is a RHINO associate and translation editor, a Tupelo Quarterlytranslation editor, and a Bread Loaf Translation Scholarship recipient.Nathan Xavier Osorio’s (he/him) debut full-length poetry collection, Querida, was selected by Shara McCallum as the winner of the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press. He is the author of The Last Town Before the Mojave, selected by Oliver De la Paz for the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Chapbook Fellowship. His poetry, translations, and essays have also appeared in BOMB, The Offing, Boston Review, Public Books, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His writing and teaching have been supported by fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Kenyon Review, and the Poetry Foundation. He is a PhD candidate in literature and creative/critical writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Sarah Ann Winn (she/her) is the author of Alma Almanac , winner of the Barrow Street Book Prize. She has written five chapbooks, including Ever After the End Matter. Her writing has appeared in Five Points, theKenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, Nashville Review, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. In 2015, she founded Poet Camp, a creative community where she hosts online classes and writing retreats. She received a MISA Excellence in Teaching Fellowship from the Loft Literary Center. The Zoom link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. Poetry Foundation events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility">Accessibility Guide</a>.

Celebrating the Visiting Teaching Artists of Forms & Features (Virtual)

Join us for the opening of the exhibition Kara Walker: Back of Hand. Guests are invited to read and contemplate Walker’s work during a reception from 5-7 PM, to be followed by a talk and Q&amp;A by curator Katie Geha and a reading by poet and artist Krista Franklin.The Poetry Foundation’s presentation of Kara Walker: Back of Hand appropriately foregrounds Walker’s long-term engagement with language and text. The exhibition features 2015 Book, a series of 11 typewritten pages with ink and watercolor illustrations, and two large-scale drawings, The Ballad of How We Got Here and Feast of Famine. Completed in 2021, this will be the first time these works are shown in Chicago. The mural-like compositions present a disorienting tableau of inked collaged forms surrounded by swirling forms of handwritten text. Words and sentence fragments jump out from the deluge, appearing like excerpts from a larger, ongoing conversation around power and history. In The Ballad of How We Got Here and Feast of Famine, these torrential narratives unfold as visual poems, yielding a multiplicity of parallel readings. &nbsp;New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence. Her work can be found in museums and public collections throughout the United States and Europe including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt.This exhibition comes to the Poetry Foundation from the Atheneum, part of University of Georgia’s (UGA) Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Georgia. The exhibition is curated by Katie Geha and organized by Katherine Litwin and Fred Sasaki.Image Credit: Kara Walker, BOH, 2021&nbsp;

Kara Walker: Back of Hand  

On view through Saturday, January 13, 2024Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) was a poet, a critic, and the founding editor of Poetry magazine whose steadfast commitment to the art form and its creators altered the course of American literary history.&nbsp;Harriet Monroe &amp; the Open Door maps the evolution of Monroe’s editorial philosophy, locating it within the cultures and structures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This exhibition includes original artwork by Lilli Carré alongside archival photographs, letters, and other documents from Monroe’s life.Serving as Poetry’s editor for twenty-four years, Monroe remains Poetry’s longest tenured editor and the first and only woman editor in the magazine’s history. Her early establishment of the “Open Door Policy,” which advocated editorial openness to contemporary poems without allegiance to “any single class or school,” led to the publication of some of the most influential English-language poets of the modern era. Over a century later, Monroe’s vision of the Open Door is still the aspiration of Poetry, a project serving poets and readers that is continually evolving.&nbsp;This exhibition was organized by Meera Alagaraja, Zada Ballew, Melissa Bradshaw, Katherine Litwin, Liesl Olson, Srikanth Reddy, Fred Sasaki, Robert Eric Shoemaker, and Kelly Wisecup.Image Credit:&nbsp;Sarah Joyce of Glitter Guts, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation

Harriet Monroe & the Open Door

Alex Katz: Collaborations with Poets takes&nbsp;an intimate look at the artist's long-time collaborative engagement with poets. The exhibition is the first to highlight Katz’s deep interest in poetry and his connection to the poets of the New York School. In the early 1950s, as Alex Katz entered the art world and a new style of American poetry emerged, the painter found natural affinities to the poets in their shared interest in expressing contemporary living. As scholar Debra Bricker Balken states in her essay for the forthcoming exhibition publication, “Not only did he feel that its community was vibrant but also its denizens more attuned to the present, to the impulses of American life, and to articulating new languages that brazenly defied tradition by flaunting style over meaning. What Katz found so compelling about this scene was its complete disregard for aesthetic precedent, irreverence for an academy of poetry, and gravitation toward vernacular expression, where words were less pondered and possessed an immediacy that spoke of nowness.” The exhibition brings together works created over the past 60 years, including prints, portfolios, special-edition books, paintings, and unique cutouts, all of which center on Katz’s communion and intersection with poets throughout his career.Organized by the Poetry Foundation with guidance from the artist and his son, the poet Vincent Katz, the exhibition offers an opportunity to experience Alex Katz’s deep passion for an art form whose tactics he considers to be “more stimulating than painting.” The exhibition opens at the Poetry Foundation on February 18, with a public reception from 2 PM CST–3 PM CST, featuring the premiere of a video dialogue between Alex and Vincent Katz.GRAY is also pleased to announce the release of the forthcoming publication, Alex Katz: Collaborations with Poets. This volume features an in-depth essay written by art historian and curator Debra Bricker Balken and comprehensive illustrations of Alex Katz’s book covers, print portfolios, and unique artworks that center on his work with poets such as John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, and Ron Padgett.Image: Alex Katz,&nbsp;Boy with Branch 1, 1975&nbsp;

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