We are delighted to host Terry Blackhawk with special guest Dennis Hinrichsen for a night of poetry.
About the Book
One Less River An “elegantly conceived collection…(of) refined, learned, and liberating poetry” according to Kirkus Reviews, One Less River is nominated for the 2019 Kirkus Prize and was named one of The 13 Best Environmental Books of July 2019 by The Revelator. Through a variety of formal moves, Blackhawk follows Hafiz’s injunction to ‘Greet yourself/In your thousand other forms/As you mount the hidden tide and travel/Home.’ Hafiz serves her well, as do Dickinson and Whitman who inspire, or are sampled in, many of the poems. In the search for home, Blackhawk journeys through alternate selves, shape-shifting, crossing boundaries, inhabiting myriad beings. The poems meander through the environs of Detroit and its river, following currents of separation, love, and loss, and, ultimately, celebration of poetry’s power to rename and redeem our world.
[q / lear] Of these poems Sue William Silverman says, “[q / lear] concerns itself with the big issues of mortality and madness—like the play it uses as a backdrop. While some of these poems refer to bodies in decay, the poems themselves build, accrete, and pulse with Hinrichsen’s trademark restlessness and energy. As a great poet of the soul as well as the flesh, Hinrichsen explores the primordial dance between the human spirit and our vulnerable bodies while making us experience it anew.”
About the Author
Terry Blackhawk’s most recent book is One Less River (Mayapple Press, 2019). Other books include Escape Artist (winner of the John Ciardi Prize) and The Light Between (Wayne State University Press). A Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellow and Founding Director Emerita (1995-2015) of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts Project, Blackhawk now divides her time between Michigan and her family in Connecticut.
Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent work is [q / lear], a chapbook from Green Linden Press, and Skin Music, winner of the 2014 Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press. New work of his can be found in two anthologies from MSU Press, Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice, and RESPECT: The poetry of Detroit Music. From May 2017 – April 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing [MI] area.
The stuff of nightmares in both their looks and the wounds inflicted on their victims, sea lampreys are perhaps the deadliest invasive species to ever enter the Great Lakes. At the invasion’s apex in the mid-20th century, harvests of lake trout, the lampreys’ preferred host fish in the Great Lakes, plummeted from peak annual catches of 15 million pounds to just a few hundred thousand pounds per year—a drop of 98% in only a few decades.
In his new book, Great Lakes Sea Lamprey,author Cory Brant explores the incredible story of the lamprey invasion—what started it, how it was halted, and what this history can teach us about the response to biological invaders in the present and future. In addition to discussing the book, Brant will showcase an aquarium of live sea lamprey at this event and talk about the otherworldly anatomy that made the species such a terror in the Great Lakes. This event is in partnership with The University of Michigan Press. It includes a signing with books for sale.
Cory Brant is a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For over a decade, his work has focused on sea lampreys, particularly the species’ use of chemical communication, and how to exploit that biology as a method of control.
Michelle Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Her work can be found in River Styx, Prairie Schooner, upstreet, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the University of Oregon, Kundiman, and Hugo House as well as the 2019 Scotti Merrill Emerging Writer Award for Poetry from The Key West Literary Seminar. Michelle has also received support from Artist Trust, Lemon Tree House, Caldera, 4Culture, Vermont Studio Center, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives, farms, and writes in rural Northern California.
Bill Carty lives in Seattle and is the author of HUGE CLOUDY (Octopus Books, 2019) and the chapbook Refugium(Alice Blue Books). He has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, and the Richard Hugo House. His poems have recently appeared (or will soon) in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Willow Springs, Conduit, Oversound, and other journals.
Literati is pleased to partner with the Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalists at the University of Michigan in welcoming Anne Nelson in support of her latest book, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.
About the book: The chilling story of the covert group that masterminds the Radical Right’s ongoing assault on America’s airwaves, schools, environment, and, ultimately, its democracy.
In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan’s election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council’s early days to Mike Pence, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos family today.
In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition’s key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy’s information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data – outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided.
In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Networkis essential reading.
Anne Nelson has received a Livingston Award for her journalism, a Guggenheim Fellowship for her historical research, and a Bellagio Fellowship for her research on the social impact of digital media. A graduate of Yale University, she began her career as a journalist in the U.S and abroad. She won an Associated Church Press Award for her writing on the conflict in Central America, which she covered for the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and the BBC. She has taught at Columbia University for over two decades, first at the School of Journalism and then at the School of International and Public Affairs. Her previous books include Red Orchestra: The Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; andSuzanne’s Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. A native of Oklahoma, she lives in New York City.
Matthew Riemer, co-author of We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation, uses imagery and narrative culled from years of research to examine how the struggles and triumphs of the queer past can inform the present with an eye toward a more liberated future.
Matthew Riemer co-wrote We Are Everywhere with his husband Leighton Brown. They are also the creators of Instagram’s @lgbt_history, and live in Washington, D.C., where Leighton is an attorney and Matthew, a former attorney, is a writer and lecturer. With their meticulous and visually engaging approach to documenting the radical fight for queer liberation, Matthew and Leighton are respected members of a new generation of queer historians. We Are Everywhere is the couple’s first book.
This event includes a signing with books for sale.
ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.
We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.
Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.
Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!
$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
We welcome college All-American and NFL wide receiver Braylon Edwards in support of his book with Tom VanHaaren, Doing It My Way: My Outspoken Life as a Michigan Wolverine, NFL Receiver, and Beyond.
About the book: Braylon Edwards has heard all the talk–that he’s only out for himself, only about the money; he’s a bust, a bad guy, a troublemaker, a typical wide receiver who doesn’t get it. He’s also heard the cheering fans, heard them singing “The Victors” after wins in the Big House, and cherished the smiles he saw in the crowd. All of it leaves an impression, just as Edwards has left his mark in return. In this frank, unflinching autobiography, Edwards reveals the heartbeat behind the padded armor and shares how football helped him find his place and gave him a voice. He details his transformative time in Ann Arbor, how he felt when he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, what was going through his head when he got traded to the Jets, and lays bare all the bumps, bruises, and unexpected turns along the way.
Braylon Edwards played college football at the University of Michigan, where he received unanimous All-American honors and became the first receiver in Big Ten Conference history to record three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. He played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle Seahawks. Tom VanHaaren has covered college football and recruiting for ESPN since 2011. A Michigan native, Tom started his career in 2009, focusing on Michigan Wolverines football and recruiting. Tom, his wife, Laura, and their three children currently reside in southeast Michigan.
Jasmine An comes from the Midwest. Her first chapbook, Naming the No-Name Woman, won the 2015 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and her second, Monkey Was Here, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. Her work has been supported by residencies at Hedgebrook and Willapa Bay AiR and can be found in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Nat. Brut and Waxwing, among others. Currently, she is an Editor at Agape Editions and pursuing a PhD in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.
The event begins with an Open Mic session when area poets can read their own work or share a favorite poem by another author in a welcoming atmosphere. This is part of a monthly series on the 2nd Thursday of most months in partnership with Les Go Social Media Marketing and Training. Signing to follow.
“In clear and luxurious language, Jasmine An navigates the slippery worlds of identity politics, botany, and desire—and pulls us toward an elegant horizon. I’m grateful for such a sumptuous and (not-so) safe passage of fine poems and the fragrant world that she’s created in such a small space, one where “…even the saplings wear crabs as crowns.”” — Aimee Nezhukumatathil
We are delighted to host local poets Doug Smith with Jane Bridges for a night of poetry.
About the Book
Selections from This Iris and Ransom Note Poems There are 8 poems that center around life with her husband of 40 years, his sudden death, and her response to it. There are 8 poems that are made with cut-out words from magazines, which she calls ransom note poems. These poems are inspired by classic Japanese haiku, and while they aren’t haiku, they are zen-like.
Social Work and Other Myths These poems emerge from the writer’s long experience as a social worker and community organizer. Doug Smith has worked with low income households, the afflicted, and the homeless for more than forty years. His carefully crafted work reflects that experience and conveys his hard-won insights. Writers, critics, and others have already taken notice of Social Work and Other Myths. Keith Taylor, author of The Bird While (from the Wayne State Press) says: “The poems are right. They sing beautifully, and they remember.” Carol McCabe, founding Director of Avalon Housing, says: (Smith’s) “eye for detail and his heart for the struggle come through with a rare combination of grit and warmth.” Brian Cox, an award-winning Michigan playwright, observes that “Smith is a poet who creates an awareness that burrows into you and changes how you see.” Jill Dearman, editor of Mudfish Anthology, says simply: “Smith has a great collection here. I was truly moved.”
About the Author
Jane Bridges spent her early years were in Texas, New Hampshire and India and all of her adult years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She studied biology and taught science and English in both public and private schools. Her husband of 40 years died suddenly in 2002 and their two children were adults at that time. Her love of nature has taken her to wild places in the tropics. Crows and butterflies that come to her backyard are of particular interest to her.
She is grateful to many poetry teachers, including Richard Tillinghast, Marge Piercy, Gerry LaFemina, Matthew Lippman, and Zilka Joseph. Members of Paper Kite and Tornado Wine have helped take her poems to wild places. She has won and placed in several national contests, and has been published in The MacGuffin, Paterson Literary Review, Margie, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, Mudfish, and elsewhere.
Local poet Douglas Smith is co-editor of Mayapple Press’s In Drought Times: Scenes from Rural and Small Town Life. He was a finalist in the 2016 Mudfish Magazine and the 2017 New Guard Knightville Poetry contests. His poetry has been published in numerous journals and publications. Smith’s latest collection of poems is Social Work and Other Myths. Award-winning Michigan playwright Brian Cox calls this work a “poignant expression of compassion. These poems beseech us to identify with the humanity in the desperate, the afflicted, the abandoned, the evicted and the exiled.. Smith is a poet who creates an awareness that burrows into you and changes how you see.”
We welcome art historian Andrei Pop in support of his latest, A Forest of Symbols: Art, Science, and Truth in the Long Nineteenth Century. A book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public.
About the book: A groundbreaking reassessment of Symbolist artists and writers that investigates the concerns they shared with scientists of the period–the problem of subjectivity in particular.
In A Forest of Symbols, Andrei Pop presents a groundbreaking reassessment of those writers and artists in the late nineteenth century associated with the Symbolist movement. For Pop, “symbolist” denotes an art that is self-conscious about its modes of making meaning, and he argues that these symbolist practices, which sought to provide more direct access to viewers and readers by constant revision of its material means of meaning-making (brushstrokes on a canvas, words on a page), are crucial to understanding the genesis of modern art. The symbolists saw art not as a social revolution, but as a revolution in sense and how to conceptualize the world. The concerns of symbolist painters and poets were shared to a remarkable degree by theoretical scientists of the period, who were dissatisfied with the strict empiricism dominant in their disciplines, which made shared knowledge seem unattainable.
The problem of subjectivity in particular, of what in one’s experience can and cannot be shared, was crucial to the possibility of collaboration within science and to the communication of artistic innovation. Pop offers close readings of the literary and visual practices of Manet and Mallarmé, of drawings by Ernst Mach, William James and Wittgenstein, of experiments with color by Bracquemond and Van Gogh, and of the philosophical systems of Frege and Russell–filling in a startling but coherent picture of the symbolist heritage of modernity and its consequences.
Andrei Pop is a member of the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago.
