Living Poetry at the Library

Hudson Area Library presents Living Poetry at the Library on Tuesday, July 30, 7-9pm. This annual poetry reading is an ongoing collaboration with Fence, a 20 year old, nationally renowned literary journal published in Hudson and The Home School, a poetry conference that takes place in Hudson every summer and which brings more than 60 poets to town to meet, study, read, and write. This year’s featured poets are Tess Brown-Lavoie, Edgar Garcia, and Ariana Reines. Tess Brown-Lavoie writes and farms in Providence, RI. Lite Year, her first book, won the Fence Modern Poets Series prize. Tess co-founded Sidewalk Ends Farm with her sisters in 2011, works on land access at Land For Good, and is President of the National Young Farmers Coalition. Edgar Garcia was born in California to a family of Central American extraction. He is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, and works in the fields of indigenous and Latinx studies, American literature, poetry and poetics, and environmental criticism. His collection of poems and anthropological essays, Skins of Columbus: A Dream Ethnography, won the 2018 Fence Modern Poets Series award. Ariana Reines is an American poet, playwright, performance artist, and translator. Her books of poetry include The Cow, which won the Alberta Prize from Fence Books; Coeur de Lion; Mercury; and A Sand Book. She has taught at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, The New School, and Tufts University. This event is free and open to the public. It will take place in the community room, which is wheelchair accessible. For more information email programs@hudsonarealibrary.org, call 518-828-1792 x101, or visit the main desk in the library. In continuous publication since 1998, Fence is a biannual print journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism that redefines the terms of accessibility by publishing challenging writing distinguished by idiosyncrasy and intelligence rather than by allegiance with camps, schools, or cliques. Fence is committed to publishing from the outside and the inside of established communities of writing, seeking always to interrogate, collaborate with, and bedevil all the systems that bring new writing to light. The Home School organizes week long conferences for poets and artists, bringing together the most diverse poets and artists of our time to explore poetry’s relationship to dance, film, music, painting, theater and other theories of thinking. By championing a system of knowledge outside the traditional academic paradigm, The Home School facilitates a community of creative recklessness that celebrates writers and artists who break the rules, ignore traditional artistic boundaries and question the very nature of their practice. The Hudson Area Library is located at 51 North Fifth Street in Hudson, NY. The mission of the library is to enrich the quality of life by providing free and equal access to programs, services and resources, and by creating opportunities for all members of our community to connect, create, learn and grow. For more information visit hudsonarealibrary.org.