New Media Poetics: a collaboration of poetry and sound arts in two parts

Part one: Reading

Featuring readings by Bill Allegrezza, Ray Bianchi, Justin Cabrillos, Steve Halle, Philip Jenks, Simone Muench, and Lina Ramona Vitkauskas

Mark Nowak reads from his recent book, Coal Mountain Elementary. Introduction by Ray Bianchi. A reception at the gallery will follow the reading.

A singular, genre-defying treatise from one of America's most innovative political poets, Coal Mountain Elementary remixes verbatim testimony from the surviving Sago, West Virginia miners and rescue teams, the American Coal Foundation's curriculum for schoolchildren, and newspaper accounts of mining disasters in China with photographs of Chinese miners taken by renowned photojournalist Ian Teh.

New Media Poetics: a collaboration of poetry and sound arts in two parts

Part two: Sound installation (opening reception), Nov. 5, 4:30 - 6 p.m.

Poets from all over the Midwest have been selected as finalists for the Poetry Center of Chicago's 15th Annual Juried Reading Competition, judged by award-winning poet Brenda Hillman. Winners will receive awards and read from their work at this annual celebratory event.

Online Box office Closed!

Remaining tickets will be sold on site -  Rubloff Auditorium
Door open 6 pm.

A celebration of the poetry created throughout the academic year by Chicago public schoolchildren, this annual Citywide Reading marks the culmination of the Hands on stanzas academic year and an opportunity for participants' families and Poetry Center friends to experience the work of these unfettered and remarkable voices. Students will read their poetry written in response to the work of Robinson Jeffers

Poets from all over the Midwest will be selected as finalists for the Poetry Center of Chicago's 16th Annual Juried Reading Competition, judged by poet and labor activist Mark Nowak. Winners will receive awards and read from their work at this annual celebratory event.

Simone Muench was raised in Louisiana and Arkansas and now lives in Chicago, IL. She is the author of The Air Lost in Breathing (Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry; Helicon Nine, 2000), Lampblack & Ash (Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry; Sarabande, 2005), and Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010). Her latest chapbooks are Orange Girl (dancing girl press, 2007) and Sonoluminescence written with Bill Allegrezza (Dusie Press, 2007).

In partnership with the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation, The Poetry Center presents an evening featuring Sharon Fain, the 2009 winner of the Tor House Poetry Prize, reading from the works of Robinson Jeffers and her own poetry. The annual Tor House Prize for Poetry is a living memorial to American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962).