Even with pandemic restrictions loosening, I’m still inclined to take precautions regarding large events. Most of the poets I know are still hosting readings online, and I’m not about to be the first one to push the status quo. But now that the spring semester is over, I’m getting that usual burst of creative energy, and I wanted to host an event. It’s definitely been a while.
I also wanted to collaborate with Zoe Fay-Stindt again. We edited the 2020 Texas Poetry Calendar together, and since then she’s spent time in Europe, and then returned to the USA to pursue her MFA at Iowa State University. When the idea for a virtual poetry road trip between Texas and Iowa popped into my head, I immediately messaged her, and then, it was on!
The Virtual Poetry Road Trip takes place on Friday, May 21st from 6:00-7:30 pm CST. This event is by donation, and you can still join even if you can’t contribute financially. We’re asking all attendees to register via Eventbrite. If you are unable to make a donation and have trouble registering, please contact me directly! We will work it out!
If you want to know more about our featured poets, read on! Otherwise, head over to our Eventbrite page to attend. And bring your own road trip snacks! (I’ll have two kinds of potato chips.)
Featured Poets
Cindy Huyser’s (TX) poems have received Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations, and appear in many journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems, was co-winner of the 2014 Blue Horse Press Poetry Chapbook Contest, and her first full-length collection, Cartography, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. She has edited or co-edited a number of anthologies, including Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems (Dos Gatos Press, 2016) and several editions of the Texas Poetry Calendar. Cindy has been a juried performer for the Houston Poetry Fest, Houston’s Public Poetry series, and the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, and lives in Austin, Texas, where she hosts the monthly BookWoman 2nd Thursday Poetry Reading and Open Mic series.
Ken Hada (OK) lives in rural Pottawatomie County in Oklahoma. He has published eight volumes of poetry, including his latest, Sunlight & Cedar (VACPoetry, 2020). Ken’s poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, and his work has been awarded by The Western Writers of America, The National Western Heritage Museum, SCMLA and The Oklahoma Center for the Book. Information available at kenhada.org.
Dottie Joslyn (MO) is a writer and poet living in Southwest Missouri. She is a retired Certified Applied Poetry Facilitator in the field of Poetry Therapy, Certified Journal Facilitator, and Journal to the Self® Instructor. Her poems have appeared in: American Tanka, Buffalo Bones, Poetry from the Trail Ridge Writers, Wellness & Writing Connections Newsletter, Beginning Again: Creative Responses to Poetry of Presence, and Gyroscope Review. She also has a poetry book, Just Show Up, published in late 2018. Her website, http://www.joslynpoems.com has more information and includes an interactive blog.
Jennifer L. Knox’s (IA) sixth book of poems, Crushing It, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Publisher’s Weekly’s review called Crushing It, “Darkly inventive…This is a careful, thoughtful book about the complexities of identity and the difficulty of words.” Knox’s poems have been published in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Granta, McSweeney’s,five times in the Best American Poetry series, and the 2022 Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses anthology. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She received an Iowa Arts Council Fellowship for her crowdsourced poetry project, Iowa Bird of Mouth. Over 750 people from around the world contributed to the project; the code is open source and free to use in noncommercial projects.