S139. CANCELLED: Beyond the Brady Bunch: Reinventing the Poem of the American Family

Status: Not Accepted

Room 217C, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Saturday, March 7, 2020
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

While poets have long delved into the complications of rendering family on the page, it can be challenging to navigate poems in the vein of parental devotion or childhood trauma when our families break the traditional mold. Whether caring for aging parents or raising kids, these narratives remain utterly familiar while their specifics—queer parents, neurodiverse children, transracial adoption—have never felt so varied. How do we find new ways to write the new families so many of us belong to?


Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: Reinventing_the_Poem_of_the_American_Family_EVENT_HANDOUT.pdf

Participants

Moderator:

Keetje Kuipers is a former Stegner Fellow and the author of three collections of poetry. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, her poetry and prose have appeared widely, including The Best American Poetry anthology. Keetje teaches at Hugo House in Seattle and is senior editor at Poetry Northwest.

Geffrey Davis is the author of Night Angler, winner of the James Laughlin Award, and Revising the Storm, winner of the A. Poulin Prize. His honors also include fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Whiting Foundation.

Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Holy Moly Carry Me, which won the 2018 National Jewish Book award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. She is an associate professor of English and creative writing program director at Virginia Tech.

Oliver de la Paz is the author of five books of poetry. His most recent book, The Boy in the Labyrinth, is published by the University of Akron Press. He is a founding member of Kundiman and teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the low-res MFA Program at PLU.

Blas Falconer is poetry editor for the Los Angeles Review and teaches in the MFA at San Diego State University. His third poetry collection is Forgive the Body This Failure. Awards include an NEA Fellowship and the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center