Buffalo Area Poetry & Literature Calendar (March 30 to April 5)
Joy Harjo at SUNY Fredonia , a Ross Gay recording listening session at Fitz Books, and Jennifer Campbell at the Center for Inquiry are among this week’s events.
Tuesday, March 31, 7 p.m. to 8:45 pm: Burning Books presents its monthly heARTBurn Civic Arts meet-up, curated and hosted by poet, teaching artist, and activist Robin Jordan.
Location: Burning Books, 420 Connecticut St., Buffalo, NY. Free and open to the public.
Wednesday, April 1, 7 p.m.: Fitz Books and Just Buffalo Literary Center present listening party and discussion session for “Dilate your Heart,” the 2021 Jagjaguwar vinyl release by poet and essayist Ross Gay.
Part listening party and part critical inquiry, the evening invites participants to engage with Gay’s collaborative project—an album that “uncovers soaring joys hiding amid the shadows of sorrow.” (Indiana Public Media) Following a listening of the record, we will transition into an audience panel discussion.
This SALON is inspired by Just Buffalo Literary Center’s city-wide In Gratitude project.
SALON is a series of Performances / Presentations / Screenings at Fitz Books dedicated to elevating the cultural discourse in Buffalo, New York. Free and open to the public.
Fitz Books and Waffles, 1462 Main St., Buffalo, NY.
Wednesday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.: CFI Literary Café Series reading hosted by poet Ryki Zuckerman and featuring poet Jennifer Campbell. Ten additional reading slots available. Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd., Amherst. Free and open to the public.
About the poet:
Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor at ECC North, where she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities. She was a long-time curator of the Center for Inquiry Literary Café series and volunteered as a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters for 19 years.
Jennifer has two full-length poetry collections, Supposed to Love (Saddle Road Press, 2013) and Driving Straight Through (FootHills, 2008), along with a chapbook of reconstituted fairytale poems called What Came First (Dancing Girl Press, 2021). Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Freshwater, Clockhouse, Literary Heist, and Blood Tree Literature, and is forthcoming in Slipstream, The Healing Muse, and The TONIC.
Thursday, April 2, 5 p.m.: SUNY Fredonia will welcome 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo as its Williams Distinguished Visiting Professor.
State University of New York at Fredonia, 280 Central Ave., Fredonia, NY 14063.
Ms. Harjo will give a talk in the Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall at 5 p.m. and then attend a reception at the Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery in Rockefeller Arts Center, where her portrait and poem are included in B.A. Van Sise’s exhibit, “Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry,” that features many of the most renowned poets working today.
Both events are free and open to the public. Tickets are required for the talk, and a 2-ticket limit per person has been set. They are available at the Fredonia Ticket Office in the Williams Center, online, and by phone at (716) 673-3501. Please note there is a $6 service fee per order for online and phone sales only, and a 2-ticket limit per order.
About Joy Harjo:
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1951, Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of eleven collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years (W.W. Norton, 2022) and An American Sunrise (W.W. Norton, 2019), as well as several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 2012) and Poet Warrior (W.W. Norton, 2021). Harjo is also the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry ( W.W. Norton), a volume assembled from poems she collected as poet laureate.
Harjo was appointed the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019 and served through 2022, becoming just the second poet to serve three consecutive terms. Among Harjo’s many honors and awards are Yale University’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, the Poets & Writers Jackson Poetry Prize, two NEA fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal and the National Humanities Medal.
She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is the first artist-in-residence at the Bob Dylan Center.
Saturday, April 4, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Intermediate Stab Bookbinding Class led by Kate Stapleton Parzych at the Western New York Book Arts Center.
Learn to make your own journals and hand-bound soft cover books – Part 2 of an ongoing series. Stab Binding is a simple and beautiful bookbinding technique, with a variety of stitches ranging from simple to more advanced. Intermediate stitching techniques will include Kikko Toji (Tortoise Shell) and Asa-No-Ha Toji (Hemp Leaf), participants will cover stitches of Japanese origin. They will leave class with up to 3 hand-bound books of varying stitches. This class is intended to build upon our “Stab Bookbinding Basics Class” as a prerequisite for this class, though interested participants with former bookbinding experience are also welcome in this workshop.
Things to note:
• Makers of all skill levels are welcome. This class is suitable for ages teen+.
• All necessary tools and materials to participate are provided.
• Please read our ‘Plan Your Visit’ page to review our health & safety procedures.
Any questions about the class please email curious@wnybookarts.org
$50 to $60 to attend. Pre-registration required.
Western New York Book Arts Center, 468 Washington St., Buffalo, NY 14203.
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