Harwood

The Word Stream Poetry Series, a mostly quarterly reading series that brings fantastic New Mexico poets to Harwood for free reading events.

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Coming up: Wednesday March 31st, 7 PM, Harwood Cafeteria

In honor of  Women and Creativity Month:

Michelle Otero and Tanesia Hale-Jones

“A Vivid and Continuous Dream”*

More than a reading, this evening of poetic inquiry will tether and gather the works of Michelle Otero and Tanesia Hale-Jones as they join together and pull apart to engage the experiences of the physical body and the soul as they surface from pain, war, hunger and the isolated and communal experience of language, meaning and memory. Read without rests or pauses Michelle and Tanesia will create a kind of (dis)harmony of words that reflects, echoes, picks up and trails each other’s styles and content.
(*From John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction)

Tanesia R. Hale-Jones is a graduate of Loyola University New Orleans where she received her BA in Literature and Creative Writing. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in Transfer, 14 Hills, Sentence 5: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Mirage #14/Period(ical)#137 and Callaloo. A teacher, a crafting mama, a poet and a cook she lives and writes in Albuquerque, NM.

Michelle Otero is the author of Malinche’s Daughter (Momotombo Press, 2006), an essay collection based on her work with women survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work has appeared in Artful Dodge, Brevity, and Puerto del Sol, and she has been a featured presenter and teacher in communities and universities throughout the U.S. and Mexico.

 

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PAST PERFORMERS:

 Hakim Bellamy & Carlos Contreras; Music by Diles (Visceral View Entertainment): Urban Verbs: Hip Hop Conservatory and Theater

This 90 minute excursion will travel the much celebrated and controversial border between poetry and music, namely Spoken Word and Hip Hop. Expect two prolific spoken word performance artists, one producer/DJ and a myriad of topics ranging from individual identity to artistic insurgency.

This performance will explore creative interpretations of the 5 elements of Hip-Hop through blood, sweat, word, music and movement. The prototype of a “two man” (one alien…that’s the DJ) show that Bellamy & Contreras are devising to covertly unleash upon a planet plagued with commercial rap “superficialist” and self-proclaimed poetry purist, to both entertain and educate these warring factions and bring them to a sophisticated middle ground. Urban Verbs is that place, where booties can shake, heads can nod, hands can clap and minds can enlighten by way of experience and execution, passion and practice.
 

Winter 2009 Word Stream Reading Series presents: Carol Moldaw, author of "The Widening."

The Widening is a poetic novel written in self-contained, cut-to-the quick vignettes that add up to an intimate and haunting portrait of a 1970s girl on the cusp of womanhood. While her parents’ generation tabooed sexual exploration, especially for girls, she is eager to embrace it—but whether it is a vehicle for self-knowledge, self-liberation, or self-escape, is the unanswerable question at the heart of the book.

Carol Moldaw is the author of four books of poetry, including "The Lightning Field," which won the 2002 Field Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer’s Residency, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. She lives in Pojoaque, New Mexico with her husband and daughter and teaches at Stonecoast, the University of Southern Maine’s low residency MFA program.

Spring 2008: Word Stream Reading Series presents: Let Me Say This About That

An evening of poetry and film in conjunction with Harwood’s annual National Poetry Month celebration of words and art.  The Main Gallery hosts a video installation of the same name by Bryan Konefsky. Local poets Mitch Rayes, Lisa Gill, Hakim Bellamy, and more will be reading from works that inspired the installation. The evening will be augmented by projection-art by members of Basement Films.

 

 

Richard Vargas (w/ guest poet Erika Sanchez) Fall 2007

Richard Vargas was born and raised in Southern California and held various jobs throughout the years including: fry cook, gas jockey, warehouseman, delivery man, bank clerk, women’s shoe salesman, cashier, bookseller, community relations manager, distribution supervisor, and inbound call center customer service. As community events coordinator for the Rockford Barnes & Noble from 1997-99 he organized and led a monthly poetry workshop and readings. Richard was also the poetry editor for a local weekly newspaper, The Rock River Times, and used the position to generate debate about the banning of books by the Rockford School District.

Recently admitted to MFA/Creative Writing Program at the University of New Mexico, American Jesus is his second book of poetry.

“American Jesus spoke to me with the rawness and the cool of colorful working-class poets Tom McGrath, Charles Bukowski, and Jose Antonio Burciaga. Richard Vargas has a great love for America and it's accomplishments. Vargas knows America's excesses and offers his own tough love to her in each poem.” 

-Carlos Cumpian author of Armadillo Charm

Mitch Rayes, Summer 2007:

Here's Mitch on Mitch: "...born breech in Detroit, to a former Irish nun and a Lebanese chemist. By the age of eight his stated ambition was to become “a bum.” Mitch has since distinguished himself in many fields, including poet, translator, musician, sound designer, arts organizer, outfitter, and construction tradesman. Reading from his new book, Soundings, which will be published soon by someone.