Some poems are songs; some songs are poems. Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. But absent a score, how do poets deploy musicality in their poems, and what is the power of musicality? Each week we’ll study and discuss different sonic techniques as well as experimenting with them in our own work. This is a generative class; expect to leave with drafts that sing. While this course will use poetry as our guiding texts, prose writers looking to hone their musicality are welcome!

TUESDAYS IN JULY AT THE LIGHTHOUSE

Join us on Saturday, May 4, 2024, at 7pm at Counterpath (7935 East 14th Ave. in Denver) for a feature of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy, edited by Lisa Fay Coutley, with Emily Pérez, Lisa Fay Coutley, Jackie K. White, and Wayne Miller. Free and open to the public.

Melissa Coss Aquino, J. Michael Martinez, Emily Perez, and Marissa Tirado reading and in conversation in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Drawing inspiration from A Book of Surrealist Games by Alastair Brotchie, we will dive deep into the silly and the surreal to wake up our poems. Like the surrealists, we will explore generative techniques including question-and-answer, centos, and palindromes, and we will experiment with automatic writing inspired by music. With out-of-the-box approaches, we will break out of our usual habits and re-learn why play is an essential ingredient of creation.

Register at https://lighthousewriters.org/workshops

The physical, emotional, and mental work of caretaking provides a unique lens on the world. Subjects like nature, racism, romance, and illness take on new complexity when one must also consider a dependent. Writers will use their various caretaking roles, past and present, to raise the stakes of a poem. This is a generative workshop taught by Emily Pérez.

Amber Adams Becoming Ribbons, Jenny Molberg The Court of No Record, and Emily Pérez What Flies Want Reading and Conversation at COUNTERPATH Gallery.

Emily Pérez reads from What Flies Want and Jodie Hollander reads from Nocturne.

The CU Denver Creative Writing Program is proud to announce the return of the Jake Adam York Memorial Reading on Tuesday, April 4th at 6pm in Tivoli 640 (Zenith), in the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria Campus.

Our reader will be the award-winning Colorado poet Emily Pérez. The reading is free and open to everyone. A Q & A and book signing will follow.

The Jake Adam York Memorial Reading is held each spring and features a poet or prose writer whose work, like Jake’s, engages with history and/or issues of social importance.

The reading is sponsored by the CU Denver English Department, the CU Denver Creative Writing Program, and Copper Nickel.

Join readers Carrie Fountain, Faylita Hicks, Amanda Johnston, Emmy Pérez and Sasha West

Celebrate THE LONG DEVOTION with Faylita Hicks, Raina León, Jasminne Mendez, Yesenia Montilla, and Sasha West!

Both writing and caregiving require time, energy, and attention. The work of caregiving has often produced what writer Melissa Stephenson calls “confetti time”–fractured moments, rather than the long stretches we sometimes think are necessary for deep creative work. Do writing and caregiving have to be competition, or are there ways that the two can inspire and feed one another? In this generative open genre workshop featuring the essays and poems of contributors to the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, participants will be introduced to several strategies that can help sustain a writing practice while also parenting or doing other caregiving work. We’ll read a selection of poems and essays that engage different aspects of the relationship between writing and caregiving, and we’ll have to discuss how these challenges surface in our own writing lives. Participants will be offered a prompt and time to write. The workshop will include time for participants to share their drafts, compare experiences, and brainstorm directions for future writing. This workshop is open to anyone with an interest; participants need not identify as parents or caregivers.

Register at:

https://www.lighthousewriters.org/workshop/confetti-time-caregiving-zoom?session=5541

Emily Perez reads with John Elizabeth Stintzi. Common Sense Reading Series in Kansas City, MO

https://www.facebook.com/groups/291236854221175/

https://www.jordanstempleman.com/events/emily-perez-john-elizabeth-stintzi?fbclid=IwAR1YsnxiQ6JwZmWUFR_EVrG-ahxITSk3baHn5o9Mz6_jdAjQTGNP4AqLq2E

Emily Pérez reads from WHAT FLIES WANT at Carter Auditorium.

Emily Pérez reads from WHAT FLIES WANT (winner of the IOWA PRIZE) and Nicky Beer reads from REAL PHONIES AND GENUINE FAKES

Emily Pérez reads from WHAT FLIES WANT, winner of the IOWA PRIZE and Craig Beaven reads from TEACHING THE BABY TO SAY I LOVE YOU, winner of the ANHINGA PRIZE

Emily Pérez reads from WHAT FLIES WANT, winner of the IOWA PRIZE and Craig Beaven reads from TEACHING THE BABY TO SAY I LOVE YOU, winner of the ANHINGA PRIZE

Emily Pérez and Jodie Hollander read at BookBar Denver.

Join us for a virtual reading with White Whale! Long Devotion contributors Zeina Hashem Beck, Joy Katz, and Emily Mohn-Slate, will read their work from the anthology + more! Times listed here are Mountain Time; event starts at 7 PM EST.

For the link to this free event, go to whitewhalebookstore.com/events

Julie Carr, Carolina Ebeid, and Ali Stine read selections from The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, plus from their other work, at Denver’s BookBar.