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Sep
17
Friday
Sep
17
Fri
The Arts :: Poetry
River Poetics: A Conversation With David Axelrod And Noah Davis
5:00 PM (America/Denver)
Online
Description:
5 - 6 pm

Poets David Axelrod and Noah Davis share a stage-screen to celebrate their new collections, Years Beyond the River and Of This River, respectively.

“In the exquisite naturally charged poems of David Axelrod’s ninth collection, Years Beyond the River, an encounter with thorn or wildflower is new life, the rotted heartwood of fir becomes memory, and the delicate brush of a bat wing upon the skin echoes the beloved walking through the dark. Fire-haunted and fire-hunted we exist in a oneness with all things beckoning both death and life. What we know of the soul crosses the span of “Orion's spiral arm” and remembers what it means to be wilderness. There is abundance and loss among the terrible singular notion of rivers and trees passing away. There is beauty, grace, and strength interwoven with the scent of sage in our clothes as we breathe and dream and love.” — Shann Ray

In a stunning and visceral debut, Noah Davis ushers in a new era of poems from the Alleghenyregion of Appalachia. In chronicling the river valley’s human and more-than-human worlds through acts of modern myth making, Davis expands the scope of contemporary American poetry. This soulful meditation on a neglected region of America reveals a legacy of lingering violence to land and animal alike. In striking stories and scenes, Davis portrays the spiritual cost of deep poverty, the necessity to ask for forgiveness, and the joy in praising the beauty still found in the steep hollows. These poems will cling to you like water on the soles of your boots.

This event is proudly sponsored by Arts Missoula, Ink Realty Group, and Brightside Body Art. It will be recorded by Missoula Access Community Television as part of a Media Assistance Grant donated to the Montana Book Festival by MCAT.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David Axelrod is the author of eight previous collections of poetry, most recently The Open Hand (University of Washington Press, 2017), and two collections of nonfiction, The Eclipse I Call Father and Troubled Intimacies. He is the director of the low residency MFA and Wilderness, Ecology, and Community Programs at Eastern Oregon University. He also edits basalt: a journal of fine & literary arts and is a contributing editor for Lynx House Press. He makes his home in Missoula, Montana.

Noah Davis grew up in Tipton, Pennsylvania, and writes about the Allegheny Front. His poems and prose have appeared in Best New Poets, Orion Magazine, North American Review, River Teeth Journal, Sou’wester, and Chautauqua, among others.
Register Now
Age Group: All Ages
Venue: Online
Address: missoula Missoula, MT 59802
Phone: N/A

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