Most of the leaves had fallen, and the sky was already dark Thursday evening as people began to fill the Gore School of Business Auditorium at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. An associate from The King’s English was doing a brisk business at a table in the foyer – eleven different books by the two talented poets featured for the Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series. The audience was an interesting mix of well-known poets and writers, members of The Salt Lake City Arts Council, students, and local residents. The curator for the poetry series, Natasha Saje, graciously introduced each of the poets using language that was poetry all on its own. Natasha Saje, a poet herself, is a Professor of English and the of author two books on poetry and many essays.

The always elegant Lisa Bickmore, Professor of English at Salt Lake Community College, read first. With a full thirty minutes, she was able to read from two of her collections, flicker and Ephemerist, as well as new poems. Her work in flicker is spare and tight with nothing unnecessary. She carefully chooses just the right word to convey intense feelings of introspection, something all the listeners could relate to deep in their core. She explained that her poems in Ephemerist were inspired by music. For people who have heard her read before, there were a few familiar favorites like Sakura as well as others from this, her newest collection. She concluded with a new poem, a reflection on the tragic death of Hank Williams.

Lia Purpura, Writer in Residence at University of Maryland in Baltimore County, has eight collections of poems, essays, and translations. She read primarily from her collection, It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful. Lia Purpura’s poems are short, punchy, and sharp. They pierce your imagination and conclude almost before you can register the intrusion. She spoke briefly between poems on the joys of her first ISBN, when her work was used as the epigraph at the beginning of a math text book, and opening the City Paper to find that her poem “Time” was mentioned in her own horoscope in the Free Will Astrology column. She finished her thirty minutes with her essay, “On Photographing Children in Trees,” which was less an essay and more of a long prose poem, packed with imagery and emotion.

The poets retired to the Foster Faculty Lounge for a reception and to sign their work, though it took them some time to get there. People stopped to congratulate them and pose for photos every few steps.

Anne Newman Sutton Weeks, a Westminster College alumnus, published her collection, Poems from Anne: the verses in 1994. She passed away in 1997 at the age of 99, but her love for poetry lives on in The Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series, an ongoing program of regular free poetry readings by major poets from around the world. The series is funded by an endowment from the founder.

It was standing room only at the 15^th Street Gallery in Salt Lake City Saturday, September 30^th. Everyone wore new fall outfits or old favorites brought out of storage for, even though the sounds of children trying to wring a few more evenings outside out of summer 2017 could be heard through the open doors, the night was definitely chilly. Perfectly crisp. Perfect for an evening with two wonderful poets. The King’s English bookstore sponsored the event which, due to its appeal, had to be moved to the larger venue down the block. Dana Levin and Paisley Rekdal each read from their latest works to the packed house.

Dana Levin traveled all of the way from New Mexico to read from Banana Palace. She said the book evolved out of her growing anxiety for the future, which she described as technological change and an appetite (as in all sorts of greed.) She captivated the audience with four longer poems from Banana Palace. Her first poem, the title poem to the collection, attempted to explain Facebook to someone from an apocalyptic future. Incorporating modern technology into literature is often difficult, but this poem was charming. Her second poem was about her actual cat’s actual appetite, and she took a relatable subject for many and turned it into a clever metaphor about desire for the simple things in life. Her third poem explored how she and her bi-polar father bonded over food. It was an interesting look at how children react to a parent’s mental illness, as was her fourth poem, which chronicled her father’s melancholia using pop culture references like Krakatoa. She concluded her reading with a brand-new poem, “You Will Never Get Death Out of Your System.”

Paisley Rekdal, the Utah Poet Laureate, began her reading by explaining the terror of reading to people you know and will see again. Her new book, The Broken Country explores the trauma of war – the genetic components, new scientific studies, and the effects it has on families. She was inspired to write about this topic by her time spent in Vietnam. She read the first chapter which details a crime in Salt Lake City where a Vietnamese man went on a stabbing rampage. Her narrative describes the victims’ and witnesses’ experiences with compassion, but also instills a desire to understand the perpetrator’s circumstances and point of view. Most of the audience seemed enthusiastic about reading the rest of the book. As Poet Laureate, she couldn’t just read from a work of non-fiction, so she concluded her reading with a poem, inspired by a sculpture, an assemblage of plane parts, which she saw in a Vietnamese military museum in Hanoi.

The reading closed on that somber note. It was dark outside and the children had all gone home when the assembly adjourned to The King’s English down the street for the book signing and a meet and greet with the two poets.