Student Spotlight
Megan Coe
Megan Coe was nominated and received an Honorable Mention for an outstanding Senior Award. At the UofA, she was president of the Creative Writing Club, Program Assistant at the Poetry Center, and an outstanding poet and fiction writer. Before she leaves to work on her M.F.A. in fiction at Cornell University, we wanted some of her friends, teachers, and colleagues to have a chance to share some of their stories and insights about Megan. The photo to the left, by Michael Ignatov, was taken for her UofA Senior Standout feature, linked below.

Read about Megan | Megan's Senior Standout feature

Q&A with Poet Ai
The subject of the latest library exhibition
Ai is an award-winning poet who received her MFA from the University of California, grew up in Tucson and currently teaches at Oklahoma State University. Her work is passionate and colorful, and includes a score of invented personae of compelling interest. Poetry Center staff members came up with a few questions to pose to Ai.

Read the Q&A | Library Exhibition Schedule

From the Poetry Center's Past...
An article of interest from the Center's archived newsletters
The Poetry Center's collection encompasses nearly half a century of literary history. This includes not only signed volumes, recordings, photographs, and correspondence with leading poets, but also brochures, flyers, print newsletters, and other ephemera documenting the history of the Center. Here, we have electronically archived a print article that relates to a prominent poet's visit in Spring of 1996. That year, then-MFA student Ashley Hatcher interviewed Frank Bidart, and the results are phenomenal. Thirteen years later, we've tracked Ashley down. She's thrilled to have the interview re-issued, and remembers nervously interviewing Frank Bidart, who "couldn't have been more gracious."

Ashley Hatcher-Peralta completed her MFA in Poetry at the University of Arizona in 1996 and worked as a graduate assistant at the Poetry Center when it was housed at Cherry Street.  Inspired by the poet Martin Espada, whom she discovered at the PC, she went on to obtain her law degree.  She now applies her training in law and creative writing to narrative advocacy for survivors of gender-based violence who commit homicides in response to their experiences of trauma.  She works in New York City and lives on the uncool side of the Hudson (aka Jersey) with her husband, son, and the same gray tabby who survived Tucson with her. 

Read the inteview with Frank Bidart
Read Treasures from the collection, which features a book by Bidart

Summer Slam
Tucson's Ocotillo Slam brings in a big name for a June event
On June 13, Ocotillo Poetry Slam will feature a performance by Ed Mabrey, the 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam champion and certainly one of the best-known poets currently working in Arizona.  That event will take place at Bentley's House of Coffee and Tea, 1730 E Speedway, at 7 p.m.  It will also include an open poetry slam; Ed will perform between the first and second round of the slam.  The show is free, but a $5 donation is suggested.  Bentley's is an all ages venue and doesn't censor its poets, so parental discretion is advised.

Listen to "Kiss Me Kate," written and performed by Ed Mabrey
Read "Kiss me Kate" in text