Innovative explorations: five poets

And their investigations in language and concerns of the world.

Monday, October 2, 2023 at 7pm EST. Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012. FREE. Facebook

Desirée Alvarez is a New York City born poet and painter. Among her awards are fellowships from Foundation for Contemporary Art, New York Foundation for the Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and European Capital of Culture. Her second book, Raft of Flame, 2020, received the Lake Merritt Poetry Prize from Omnidawn. Devil’s Paintbrush, her first book, received the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Her poetry is anthologized in Other Musics: New Latina Poets (University of Oklahoma Press), Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press), and What Nature (MIT Press). Her poems are published in Poetry, Lit Hub, Massachusetts Review, Boston Review, Fence, The Iowa Review, and Ecotone. Alvarez exhibits her paintings in galleries widely and teaches at CUNY and The Juilliard School.

Endi Bogue Hartigan’s latest book of poetry oh orchid o’clock, released in spring 2023 from Omnidawn Publishing, explores histories of clock measure, temporal presence in today’s realities, and the impacts of our obsessions with time. She is author of two other full-length poetry books—Pool [5 choruses] (Omnidawn, 2014) which was selected for the Omnidawn Open Prize and One Sun Storm (Center for Literary Publishing, 2008) which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry—as well as the chapbooks the seaweed sd treble clef (Oxeye, 2021) and out of the flowering ribs (2012), a collaboration with the artist Linda Hutchins. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals as well as in collaborative projects with artists and writers. In 2020, she assisted translator Flávia Rocha with the English translation from the Portuguese of the children's book The Invisible (Tapioca Stories), by Brazilian author Alcides Villaça and illustrator Andrés Sandoval. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and more on her work is at endiboguehartigan.com.

Flávia Rocha is a Brazilian writer and journalist, author of four books of poems published in Brazil: Exosfera (Editora Nós, 2021, also available in Portugal), Um País (Confraria do Vento, 2015), Quartos Habitáveis (Confraria do Vento, 2009) and A Casa Azul ao Meio-Dia (Travessa dos Editores, 2005). O Jardim de Erica, a children’s book, is forthcoming in Brazil in November 2023. In 2020, she worked with Endi Bogue Hartigan on the English translation from the Portuguese of the children's book The Invisible (Tapioca Stories), by Brazilian author Alcides Villaça and illustrator Andrés Sandoval. For 13 years, she was the editor-in-chief of the New York-based literary magazine Rattapallax.  

Anna V. Q. Ross’s most recent book, Flutter, Kick (Red Hen Press), won the 2020 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award and the 2023 Julia Ward Howe Award in Poetry. Her other books include If a Storm, winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and the chapbooks Figuring and Hawk Weather. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Mass Cultural Council fellow, and poetry editor for Salamander, and her work appears in The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. Anna teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative and lives with her family in Dorchester, MA, where she raises chickens. Find her at annaVQross.com. 

Born in Shanghai, China, Lynn Xu is the author of And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave, 2022) and Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) and the chapbooks: June (Corollary Press, 2006) and Tournesol (Compline, 2021). She has performed cross-disciplinary works at the MOCA Tucson, Guggenheim Museum, The Renaissance Society, Rising Tide Projects, and 300 S. Kelly Street. She teaches at Columbia University, coedits Canarium Books, and lives with her family in New York City and West Texas. 

This event is funded in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional support from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.