D. Nurkse

D. Nurkse and Erin Rodoni

22 MAY 2022 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a reading by D. Nurkse, A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems, and Erin Rodoni, And If the Woods Carry You, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PDT (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual launch reading on Sunday, May 22 at 3:00 pm PDT. We are excited to bring you this event via Zoom. To register for this reading, please click on the link in the calendar listing above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.

This reading is co-sponsored by Moe's Books in Berkeley. Featured books for this reading are available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
D. Nurkse's new collection is A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems, stretching over thirty-five years. In it, one of our most essential poets "casts a clear eye on our politics, our places, and our heart's hidden stories." He is author of eleven previous collections, including Love in the Last Days: After Tristan and Iseult. Ilya Kaminsky says, "What a joy to have this overview of D. Nurske's marvelous poems—he is a master of lyric mode, one in whose hands the lines come immediately come alive, magic breathes, nuance shimmers and becomes the world all its own, see the doors open into the unknown and we see that it is strangely familiar because strangeness is, in fact, our first language, one we mouthed before words." Nurkse's many honors include a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His poems have appeared in periodicals such as The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review; he has taught poetry in prison, and, as Brooklyn Poet Laureate, in local schools and the public library system. He has also worked for human rights organizations. A resident of Brooklyn, he currently teaches in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College.

Erin Rodoni's new book is And If the Woods Carry You, winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize. "On the brink of climate catastrophe, a mother grappling with her choice to bring children into an apocalyptic world sends her daughters into the woods of fairy tale as a rite of initiation. The woods carry her fears of extinction—devastating fires, rising seas, and the predatory dangers of girlhood—but also contain the transformative magic of love, interdependence, and renewal." Her previous collections include Body, in Good Light and A Landscape for Loss, winner of the Stevens Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Sandra Alcosser said of Body, in Good Light, "A reader slips into this delicate and gracious book of poems as if into an estuary, subject to the waxing and waning of its subtle currents. Erin Rodoni's generous spirit flows forward as she creates her vision through exquisite and mysterious poems." Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Blackbird, EcoTheo Review, Colorado Review, and Poetry Northwest. She has been honored with awards from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, The Montreal International Poetry Prize, and Ninth Letter. She teaches at the Writing Salon in San Francisco.