A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
At our 2017/18 Poetry Series event with A.E. Stallings, folk songwriter Jaspar Lepak dazzled our ears with an original song as part of the Bushwick Book Club program — it’s on repeat at the SAL offices right now! Below, listen to Jaspar’s song, which asks, “Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?” and read the […]
You Do Not Have To Be The Moon You do not have to be the moon. You do not have to follow the sun always in its footsteps you do not have to take fleeting breaths of cold clear nothing through deep craters like gills you do not have to shed a light on those […]
On Monday, October 9, at McCaw Hall, the electrifying Stephanie Burt read us poems from her latest, Advice from the Lights, schooled us on indie rock, and gave us some stellar new reading recommendations to stack our shelves with. SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced and interviewed Stephanie for this event, which opened SAL’s 2017/18 […]
We can think of many reasons why you should join SAL to hear A.E. Stallings – formalist poet and translator who’s joining us all the way from Greece – as part of our Poetry Series on November 13, but here are our top five . . . By SAL Intern, Lucienne Aggarwal 1. She lives among […]
This season, our friends over at Poetry Northwest are partnering with us to present reflections on visiting writers from the SAL Poetry Series. Below, read an excerpt of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s review of Advice from the Lights, Steph Burt’s latest collection. Steph will open SAL’s Poetry Series at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, October 9 at McCaw Hall, Nesholm Family Lecture […]
Our Parents Are a Lost Cause I told you to take our mother into your timeless hands. It takes effort for her to move her lips, so let her tell you that she loves you, let her ask you how school was, and hide your leathered palms, as you will your calloused fingers. Take her […]
On Tuesday, May 2nd at McCaw Hall, cerebral poet of the flesh, Carl Phillips, read us a stunning array of poems old and new. SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced and interviewed Carl for this event, which brought SAL’s 2016/17 Poetry Series to a beautiful, breathless close. By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director It is […]
Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle’s beloved poetry-only bookstore, has been celebrating National Poetry Month like mad all April. If you’ve missed the first three weeks of contests, prompts, parties, and displays, you have one more week – and so many ways – to celebrate National Poetry Month alongside them and to support this local, independent treasure. […]
By Sierra Nelson, WITS Writer-in-Residence I first encountered Alice Notley’s work seeing her read in Seattle for the Rendezvous Reading Series cosponsored by Subtext. It was 1999. It was Hugo House, which had just barely hatched. I was in my mid-20’s, not even hatched, in my first larval year of an MFA, second year performing […]
By Gabrielle Bates I feel like a different type of tenderness might be emerging.—Ross Gay When Ross Gay read for the SAL Poetry Series last week, it was exactly what I needed. I dare say it was exactly what we all needed. All of us streaming into that auditorium from the cold—carrying our bodies quickly, […]