A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director It is an honor to welcome Naomi Shihab Nye back to the Poetry Series, ten years after her last appearance. In the last year alone, she added a new title to her bio: the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, and a new title to her shelf, […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from SAL’s 2019/20 Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, Naomi Shihab Nye will read in celebration of her new collection The Tiny Journalist at Town Hall Seattle, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha will […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from our 2018/19 Poetry Series. Francisco Aragón and Kimiko Hahn will read to celebrate the release of HERE: Poems for the Planet at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 25, at Broadway Performance Hall. Tickets are […]
It was an immense honor to welcome the fabulous fabulist Ilya Kaminsky to Seattle Arts & Lectures as part of our Poetry Series on April 1, 2019. Kaminsky is the author of the bestseller, Dancing in Odessa, a co-editor of “The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry,” and, as of three months ago, Deaf Republic. By […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from our 2018/19 Poetry Series. Ilya Kaminsky reads at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, April 1, at Broadway Performance Hall. Tickets are still available here! By Kristen Millares Young I read Deaf Republic in one swoop, felled. […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Once upon a time, we might have thought of ourselves as a series that featured mid-to-late career poets. But, when a poet like Danez Smith comes along, two books into their career, well, you change the rules. This is a poet we’ve been waiting for, and we didn’t want […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from SAL’s Poetry Series. Danez Smith reads at 7:30 pm tonight, November 26 at Broadway Performance Hall. Tickets will be sold at the door! By Luther Hughes 1. I used to own a plant, or […]
By Danielle Palmer-Friedman, SAL Volunteer When I asked Seattle Civic Poet Anastacia-Reneé (she/they) why I should go see Danez Smith (they/them) speak on November 26, she had this to say: “Get your life together and get to the reading.” She shared with me Danez’s poem “alternate names for black boys” and added: “If you still […]
This year, SAL moved its Poetry Series to the Broadway Performance Hall in Capitol Hill, arguably Seattle’s most poetic neighborhood. There’s emotion in the streets, a tempo to the crosswalks, and a poetic logic to the way we stop and start drift along Broadway. There’s poetry in the flood lights shining on the thick grass […]
I’m Planting Waterfalls: A Letter To America America, where have your white stars flown? Why do the stripes on your flag look like crossbones? Gravestone pathways you say… America, why do I see my own blood river bathing In war badges run between my fingers. America, I’ve grown with my hand on my heart, north […]