A resource for the PDX literary community. Produced by Old Pal.
LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.
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The ladies are meeting at Two Rivers on Tuesday at 7pm to discuss the life and work of US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, the first Native American to be chosen Poet Laureate.
Literary Arts is pleased to announce the author line-up for the 2020/21 Season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscriptions start at just $90 for the series. Subscribe today! At this time, all lectures through the end of the 2020/21 season are scheduled to take place online through a virtual platform. Please contact our Box Office at la@literary-arts.org, if you have questions. OCTOBER 13, 2020, 6 p.m. Pacific Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, naturalist, and historian of science. Her best-selling memoir H is for Hawk won the Samuel Johnson Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her forthcoming essay collection, Vesper Flights, explores the human relationship to the natural world. JANUARY 28, 2021, 6 p.m. Pacific Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018).…
…we still want justice. We are still America. We know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die soon. -Joy Harjo,“American Sunrise” Our current poet laureate Joy Harjo describes her work as writing that both “tells the truth and creates the truth”, providing a “memory on which to build.” Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is the author of nine books of poetry, one memoir, several plays, children’s books, and most recently, the editor of the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology. She is also an accomplished saxophonist and vocalist who has released four albums of original music. In this seminar, we will read her latest poetry collection American Sunrise and her 2012 memoir Crazy Brave. Participants need not be…
A Delve for BIPOC participants only A survey of five contemporary poets and their volumes of selected poems. We will focus on each poet’s body of work, starting with Lucille Clifton, then moving through the works of Joy Harjo, Yusef Komunyaaka, Arthur Sze, and Tracy K. Smith. By reading books that collect poems over decades, we will access each poet’s progressions in content, form, and style, as well as comprehensively approach the historical and cultural contexts reflected. Spending significant time with each poet will bring both breadth and depth to our discussions, and over the course of the seminar we will build a larger and more cohesive understanding of the work of poetry. Reading List: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, Lucille Clifton…
Joy Harjo is a renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019. Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry—most recently An American Sunrise—several plays and children’s books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave. She has received numerous prominent awards, including the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and 2015 Wallace Stevens Award. The Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, says: “Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are.” Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo earned her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught English, Creative Writing, and American Indian Studies at numerous universities, while performing music and poetry…