Excerpts and Samples
Listen to David Rothenberg's Soundscape samples here.
I’d like to think we had agreed upon this together, that we had a tradition, that we agreed these things explained us to us but when not really me wakes after drinking the pharmaceuticals and photo chemicals night after night and day after day not really me will sing a song of rebuke, sing the song of not really me, the song that goes like Salutations to brominated fire retardants of Koppers Ind.
goes like Salutations to water/oil repellent paper coating of 3M goes like Salutations to wiper blades of Asahi goes like Salutations to bike chain lubricant of Clariant International goes like Salutations to wire and cable insulation of Daikin goes like Salutations to pharmaceutical packaging of DuPont goes like Salutations to nail polish of Dyneon goes like Salutations to engine oil additive of Agrevo E goes like Salutations to hair curling and straightening of Agsin Ptd. Ltd.
From “the Tradition” by Juliana Spahr
Click here to listen to an excerpt from Underwater Invertebrates by David Dunn.
Click here to view of sample of Lucinda Bliss' artwork.
the lizard aims her golden eyes at the rocks that in time will turn to sand, and
the wind slips through life’s waters; an incident in the brilliance of
hydrangea surprises her, as she winds a hose that like a viper refolds
itself after inciting temptation; in this brutal way, vibrations make
themselves felt, even when age causes bodies to recoil from their
unexpected whims; it is perhaps an uncontrollable desire to attract and
to reject, or rather, sense can be found in the casting of nets, like
sliding on to the water’s surface, grazing the proximate radiance of rocks,
a remote shudder unable to warn against the imminent outlet in which
the sea and the current perform their continuous embrace of rejection-
attraction; to be guided by the senses towards that re-encounter,
without sky to guarantee future arrival or rather to let one be
carried by the amazement of not knowing the exact direction of
the legs or cardinal points; the sun appoints with its sword a certainty,
but nothing indicates that this is the direction of the waves, of the
rocks, of the body gliding towards the celestial abyss of light
Click here for UA Prose Series readings.
Click here for some benefits taking place at the Poetry Center this semester.
“Oh Earth, Wait for Me”: Conversations about Art and Ecology
Co-Sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity
This fall the Poetry Center and the Center for Biological Diversity present a reading and lecture series featuring artists who directly engage with ecological issues. Poets, musicians, and visual artists will share their work and discuss their contributions to a deepening understanding of our contemporary relationships with environment, organisms, and energy. In this series you may expect to encounter sounds of trees, scientist-artists, mauve sea-orchids, poems that translate between the human and non-, and a wide-ranging conversation about how art can instigate the perceptual, moral, and political changes demanded of us now.
All events are free and open to the public, and take place at the Poetry Center.
“Baba Yaga, Demeter, and the Drunken Mother: Myth, Metaphor, and Science at the End of the World”: A Lecture by Alison Hawthorne Deming
Thursday, September 10, 8:00 p.m.
Poet and essayist Alison Hawthorne Deming kicks off the series with an interdisciplinary talk that includes environmental science, literary analysis, and environmental ethics.
Deming is the author of seven books, including Science and Other Poems (LSU Press, 1994), Genius Loci (Penguin, 2005), and Writing the Sacred into the Real
(Milkweed, 2001). Her newest book, a collection of poems entitled Rope, follows the paths of imagination into meditations on salt, love, Hurricane Katrina, Greek myth,
and the search for extraterrestrial life. Rope will be published by Penguin this fall. Deming has received many awards for her writing, including a Walt Whitman Award
from the Academy of American Poets, a Pushcart Prize, two NEA fellowships, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and a Wallace Stegner fellowship. She teaches creative writing
at the University of Arizona.
“Oh Earth, Wait for Me” is made possible in part by the sponsorship of the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center is founded on the belief that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature—to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, the Center works to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. It does so through science, law, and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive. Learn more at www.biologicaldiversity.org.
Spring 2009 Readings
Fall 2008 Readings
Spring 2008 Readings
David Rothenberg is a philosopher, musician, and the author of Why Birds Sing, Sudden Music, Blue Cliff Record, Hand’s End, and Always the Mountains. His articles have appeared in Parabola, Orion, The Nation, Wired, Dwell, Kyoto Journal, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and Sierra. Rothenberg is also a composer and jazz clarinetist, and he has seven CDs out under his own name, including On the Cliffs of the Heart, named one of the top ten CDs by Jazziz Magazine in 1995. His latest book is Thousand Mile Song, about making music with whales. Rothenberg is professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Sandra Alcosser has published seven books of poetry, including A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except by Nature, that have been selected for the National Poetry Series, the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award, Associated Writing Programs Award in Poetry, and many other honors. She has received two NEA fellowships and was NEA’s first Conservation Poet for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Poets House, New York. She was Montana’s first poet laureate and the recipient of the Merriam Award for Distinguished Contribution to Montana Literature. She founded and directs the MFA program in creative writing at San Diego State University and has been a writer-in-residence in Glacier National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Central Park in New York City. 
Skinner’s poetry collections include With Naked Foot (Little Scratchpad Editions, 2009) and Political Cactus Poems (Palm Press, 2005). He founded and edits the journal
ecopoetics, which features creative-critical intersections between writing and ecology. His current project is a hybrid text on the poetics of urban open space,
written in and on the major Olmsted parks. Skinner teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Bates College, in Central Maine, where he makes his home.
Juliana Spahr has described ecopoetics as “a poetics full of systemic analysis and critique that questions the divisions between nature and culture while also acknowledging that humans use up too much of the world.” Her most recent publication is The Transformation (Atelos, 2007), a book of prose which tells the story of three people who move between Hawai‘i and New York in order to talk about cultural geography, ecology, anticolonialism, queer theory, language politics, the academy, and recent wars. Her volumes of poetry include This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (University of California Press, 2005), written from November 30, 2002 to March 30, 2003 chronicling the buildup to the latest U.S. invasion of Iraq. Spahr also co-edited the journal Chain with Jena Osman from 1994 to 2005.
David Dunn is a composer who rarely presents concerts or installations and instead prefers to lecture and engage in site-specific interactions or research-oriented activities. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He was an assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. Presently he is President of both the Art and Science Laboratory and the Acoustic Ecology Institute. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in many international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. Besides his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals. Dunn was the recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award for Music in 2005 and the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center in 2007. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Lucinda Bliss is an artist working primarily in drawing, painting, and mixed media.
Her current work explores ecological content. She has been exhibited at The University of New England, The University of Southern Maine, The Boston Center for the Arts Mills Gallery, The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The Tucson Museum of Art, and Dinnerware Gallery, among many others. Lucinda is Professor of Liberal Studies at Union Institute and University, where she teaches studio art and visual culture and serves as Chair of the Art Department.
Argentinean poet Lila Zemborain has been living in New York since 1985. She is the author of
the poetry collections, Abrete sésamo debajo del agua (1993), Usted (1998), Guardianes del secreto (2002) / Guardians of the Secret (Noemi Press, 2009),
Malvas orquídeas del mar (2004) /Mauve-Sea Orchids (Belladonna Books, 2007), Rasgado (2006) and in collaboration with artist Martin Reyna La couleur de l’eau / El color del agua (Virginie Boissiere, 2008). She has authored the book-length essay
Gabriela Mistral: Una mujer sin rostro. From 2000 to 2006, she was the director and editor of the Rebel Road Series, and since 2003 she has curated the KJCC Poetry Series at New York University, where she teaches at the MFA program in Creative Writing in Spanish. In 2007 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry.
Rosa Alcalá is the author of two chapbooks, Some Maritime Disasters This Century
(Belladonna, 2003) and Undocumentary (Dos Press, 2008). Her poems also appear in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007). Her translations include
Lila Zemborain’s Guardians of the Secret (Noemi Press, 2009), Lourdes Vázquez’s Bestiary (Bilingual Press, 2004), and Cecilia Vicuña’s El Templo (Situations Press, 2001).
Translations of poems by Alfonsina Storni and others appear in The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (2009). Born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, she currently teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Poet Eleni Sikelianos reads from her work, which has been described as “avant-garde pastoral,”
and is often about place as seen from an ecological perspective. She was briefly a biology student in her undergraduate career, drawn to oceanography and microbiology, and the language of wild
oceanaria and cellular activity has continued to inform her writing. Her books include Body Clock (Coffee House Press, 2008), The Book of Jon (City Lights, 2004), and The California
Poem (Coffee House Press, 2004). She has received numerous awards for her work, including a National Poetry Series selection, a Fulbright Writer’s Fellowship in Greece, a National Endowment for
the Arts fellowship, and two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing. She lives in Colorado and works at the University of Denver as the Director of Creative Writing. She also teaches at Naropa, in the Summer Writing Program, and in New England College's low residency program. 
