R114. It’s the End of the World as She Knows It: Apocalypse Poetry by Women

Supreme Court, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four
Thursday, February 9, 2017
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

Four poets discuss and read from recent, timely collections of poems focused on doomsday and depictions of disaster in American culture. How are these popular, hyper-masculinized narratives and tropes treated—and twisted—by women? How do feminist, futuristic, and dystopian themes intersect? Employing varied formal and conceptual approaches, these poets engage with the environment, religion, politics, and popular culture.


Participants

Moderator:

Maggie Smith is the author of the forthcoming Weep Up; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, winner of the Dorset Prize; Lamp of the Body, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award; and three chapbooks, the latest of which is Disasterology. A 2011 NEA Fellow, she works as a freelance writer and editor.

Dena Rash Guzman is the author of Life Cycle—Poems. A second book of poems, JOSEPH, is forthcoming this year. She lives in Oregon working as a writer, a civil rights advocate, and a beekeeper.

Meghan Privitello is the author of A New Language for Falling Out of Love. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Best New Poets 2012, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2014 NJ State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.

Leah Umansky is the author of the dystopian-themed poetry chapbook, Straight Away the Emptied World, the Mad Men–inspired chapbook Don Dreams and I Dream, and the full-length collection, Domestic Uncertainties. She is the host and curator of the COUPLET Reading Series in New York City and is #teamkhaleesi.

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center