The Vacancies We Name: Poetry of Global Perspectives
Petree Hall C, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level 1
When we leave home and move through the world, what vacancies get created inside us? What does it mean to be severed from belonging—and to find it again? And how does poetry give us a mouth with which to tune our empty spaces? In this reading, three celebrated, international poets explore the intersections between distance, home, and spirit, offering a window into the energies we use to make a place in which we can live, whether here, there, or both at once.
Panelist Bios:
Shangyang Fang is the author of Burying the Mountain (Copper Canyon Press, 2021).
Photo Credit: Shilin Sun
Photo Credit: Shilin Sun
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet, novelist, and dancer whose work centers the body as a vehicle to explore gender, sexuality, and power. Her publications include Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, Small Days and Nights, and A God at the Door. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting associate professor at New York University Abu Dhabi.
Photo credit: Adil Hasan
Photo credit: Adil Hasan
Pádraig Ó Tuama is an Irish poet born in 1975. He hosts On Being’s Poetry Unbound and has published the accompanying volume to that podcast. With publications in The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry Ireland, Harvard Review, and other journals, he’s also a seasoned broadcaster, having appeared on national radio stations in Ireland, the UK, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. He has had three volumes of poetry published previously; Kitchen Hymns is his first collection with Copper Canyon Press.
Photo credit: David Pugh II
Photo credit: David Pugh II
Michael Wiegers has been editing books for Copper Canyon Press since 1993 and serves as the press’s artistic director and executive editor. Most recently, he edited two poetry anthologies: A House Called Tomorrow: 50 Years of Poetry and Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press. He is also the poetry editor of Narrative magazine and edited What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Essential W.S. Merwin. He is at work on a book about Merwin and serves as a trustee for the Merwin Conservancy.
Photo credit: Copper Canyon Press
Photo credit: Copper Canyon Press