Poetic Witness

A Voice for Peace, A Voice for Justice

Thursday, November 8, 7:00-9:00pm

Whether you are a fan of poetry or are simply hungry for a good word after a long election season, this program offers nourishment for the heart, the mind, and the soul ...

After a long election seaons in which words have too often been enlisted to divide us, you are invited to an evening celebrating the power of words to bring us together. Five outstanding Minnesota poets will share poems that give witness to the world as we experience it and as we long for it to be. Together we'll talk about how poetry can help us keep our eyes and hearts open in a world both beatuiful and broken.

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Poet Panelists:

	Carol Connolly, St. Paul Poet Laureate, was honored with the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award in 2011. She curates a monthly reading series, now in its 14th year, which benefits Public Art Saint Paul. Her third book of poems is All This and More, and her earlier book, Payments Due, has been produced for the stage in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. A lifelong St. Paul resident and longtime activist, Carol has eight children, eleven grandchildren and one great grandchild.
	Heid Erdrich writes poetry, prose, and drama and is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems. She has degrees from Dartmouth College and The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the 2009 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry for her book National Monuments. She is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain and directs Wiigwaas Press, an Ojibwe language publisher.
	Ed Bok Lee is the author of two books of poetry, Real Karaoke People, winner of a PEN/Open Book Award, and Whorled, winner of the 2011 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. He also writes plays, prose and fiction and has worked as a journalist, physical education instructor, bartender, and translator. He holds an MFA from Brown University and has shared his work in journals and anthologies, on stages across North America, Europe and Asia, and on radio and television. His mother is from what is now North Korea; his father was from South Korea.
	Mary Rose O'Reilley is the author of five essay collections, including The Barn at the End of the World and The Love of Impermanent Things, and a book of poetry, Half Wild, which won the 2005 Walt Whitman prize.  A second book of poetry, Earth, Mercy, is forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press in the spring. Retired from university teaching, she works as a gardener, potter, spiritual director and one-half of the violin duo, Listen in the Kitchen.
	Sun Yung Shin is the author of two books of poetry Skirt Full of Black and Rough, and Savage, a co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, and the author of Cooper’s Lesson, a bilingual Korean/English illustrated book for children. Sun Yung’s poems, essays, and fiction can be found in anthologies, literary journals and magazines. She has received grants from the Bush Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Loft Literary Center, and is the founding editor of the literary journal This Spectral Evidence.
	Facilitator: Karen Hering, Wisdom Ways writer in residence, leads programs on writing as a spiritual practice and communications workshops for social activists. She has led a Nicaraguan literary tour convening North American and Nicaraguan writers to explore the role of poetry in supporting social change. Her book Writing to Wake the Soul will be published in 2013.

WHEN: Thursday, November 8, 7:00-9:00pm

COST: $20.00