Poetry in Denver!

Poet Martín Espada at the University of Denver

The DU Center for Community Engagement and Scholarship (DULCCES) presents award-winning Latino poet Martín Espada for a reading and discussion of his recent poetic work to take place on the DU campus on April 8, 2010.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 7:00pm in the Craig Hall Community Room, 2148 South High Street in Denver.

The reading is part of the DULCCES cultural events agenda for the academic year, as it highlights the Center’s mission to promote the intellectual, creative and political empowerment of Latino communities.

Espada will read a selection of his recent poetry and will answer questions from the audience.

Flexible Bones by Poet María Meléndez

Recently published by the University of Arizona Press, Flexible Bones is getting lots of critical attention and well-deserved praise as witty, insightful and unapologetic in its political stance. This is what Alicia Ostriker says about it:

Flexible Bones is a wicked book, flexibly manipulating languages with a satiric tingle, touching the way we live (and are killing ourselves with contaminants) now. And as to race: How does it feel to be a problem? Melendez bites down hard on that one. And on the savage need to protect what she loves.

And read a recent review by Rigoberto González: "¡Wáchale!: Bilingual poet takes on war itself in fierce new collection."

Poet Maria Melendez has published two collections of poetry: the chapbook Base Pairs (Swan Scythe Press, 2001) and How Long She'll Last in This World (University of Arizona Press, 2006), which received Honorable Mention at the 2007 International Latino Book Awards and was named a finalist for the 2007 PEN Center USA Literary Awards. Flexible Bones, her third collection of poetry, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press in 2010. Her essays and features appear in Altar, Orion Afield, and Isotope, and several of her essays on arts and activism have been broadcast as part of NPR's American Democracy Project.

She will be in Denver for AWP and will read at Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century to take place at Wyncoop Brewery, 1634 18th St. Denver, CO: Book release party / reading for White Pine Press anthology with Sherwin Bitsui, Kevin Goodan, Ilya Kaminsky, Maria Melendez, Malena Mörling, and Joshua Poteat.

Visual Poetry at Museo de las Américas

April 2, 2010 from 5-9 pm

Featuring a handmade alfombra,
a traditional Latin American sawdust carpet
made to celebrate Semana Santa.

Come see Museo's contemporary take on this folk art piece!