R275. Poetry, Myth, and the Natural World: A Reading with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Rajiv Mohabir, and Sherwin Bitsui. Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts

Ballroom B, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Thursday, March 8, 2018
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

 

The layering of cultures; the complex wonder of the natural world; the riddle of faith; the deep resonance of mythology: what better place for these dimensions to wrestle and converse than in the poetic realm? The urgency inside the poems of Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Rajiv Mohabir, and Sherwin Bitsui offer a complicated empathy with the world, one that grapples with loss and is tinged with sorrow: even beauty can hurt. Yet their language, resplendent with song, also sings into being a world of joy.


Participants

Moderator:

Alison Granucci

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of Oceanic, her fourth book of poetry, and a forthcoming book of nature essays. She serves as poetry editor for Orion magazine and is professor of English in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Sherwin Bitsui is the author of Flood Song and Shapeshift. He is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Fellowship, an American Book Award, and a PEN Open Book Award. He teaches at the Low Residency in Creative Writing at IAIA.

Rajiv Mohabir, Winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize at Tupelo Press (The Cowherd's Son), the Four Way Books Intro Prize 2014 (The Taxidermist's Cut), and the AWP Intro Journal Award 2015 is an Assistant Professor of poetry at Auburn University's creative writing program.
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