Monday
February 27, 2012
7:30 pm

Neuhaus Stage, Alley Theatre
615 Texas Avenue
Directions & parking

Tickets: $5 general admission BUY HERE!

Reading followed by an on-stage interview, book sale and signing. To order books by Rae Armantrout and Christian Wiman, click here.
Submit questions for Rae Armantrout & Christian Wiman here.

Please note that Rae Armantrout & Christian Wiman will give a craft talk/Q&A session on the University of Houston Central Campus in the Honors College Commons at 4 pm on February 27, free and open to the public.

About Rae Armantrout & Christian Wiman

RAE ARMANTROUT, the author of 11 poetry collections and one of the founding members of the West Coast group of “language” poets, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, as well as the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, for her book Versed. The Pulitzer Prize committee describes the collection as “striking for its wit and linguistic inventiveness, offering poems that are often little thought-bombs detonating in the mind.” One critic writes, “Trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What's inside is all so shiny and clear and even tiny that it appears perfectly do-able. But the stones are so hard and their edges so chiseled that the instant you begin they'll start to rip your insides apart.”

Armantrout’s other major collections include Next Life, Veil: New and Selected Poems, and her most recent, Money Shot, which explores how deeply our everyday experiences are embedded in capitalism. Publishers Weekly says of the book, “Armantrout is only getting better: these new poems are among her best, and among the most relevant poems now being written.” She currently serves as director of the New Writing Series and professor of writing in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego.

CHRISTIAN WIMAN, since 2003, has been the sometimes controversial editor of Poetry, the oldest and most prestigious American poetry magazine. Born and raised in West Texas, Wiman has lived in England, Mexico, Guatemala and the Czech Republic. His first collection, The Long Home, received the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and he has won Ruth Lilly and Wallace Stegner Fellowships. Booklist writes of his second book, Hard Night, “His enticing poems glint with mischievous humor, a keen sensitivity to the weather of landscapes and mindscapes, and a frank fascination with age, death, and the struggle to convince oneself that life has meaning.”

Publishers Weekly says of his latest collection, Every Riven Thing, “Grave and thoughtful, careful in its acoustic effects, and at times breathtaking in its achievement, this third set of verse is by far his best.” Wiman is also a noted essayist and critic, and has written a book of essays, Ambition and Survival, which James Clive says “deals fascinatingly with the subject of Becoming a Poet.” His poems, criticism, and personal essays have appeared in such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker.

Links:

PBS conversation with Rae Armantrout

Interview and audio of a reading from Versed on KPBS

National Book Award page showcases Rae Armantrout (includes video)

Artsbeat (New York Times blog) on Versed

Woman's Voices for Change profiles Rae Armantrout

PBS interview with Christian Wiman and a reading from Every Riven Thing

A review of Every Riven Thing from Slate

Top ten poetry collections of 2010 listed by New Yorker includes Every Riven Thing

Christian Wiman Interviewed in Poets and Writers

Essay by Christian Wiman in American Scholar