Dear Festival Friends, 

It’s National Poetry Month, and we hope you’re spending a few moments each day marinating in the quiet beauty of verse. You forgot it’s Poetry Month? Understandable. But no worries: In our opinion, every month is Poetry Month, and we have suggestions!

Poets are an integral part of our Festival, and this year we have an especially impressive lineup. Though best known for her novels and her Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Cristina Rivera Garza is also a world-class poet whose work can be enjoyed in the original Spanish as well as English. Renowned Zen teacher and memoirist Henry Shukman came to Buddhism thanks to his love of Chinese poetry, and his own poems are like mini meditations. Our tribute to the life and work of our late friend N. Scott Momaday (more on that in an upcoming newsletter) will feature several acclaimed poets, and one of our favorite Festival moderators, Hakim Bellamy, was the first poet laureate of Albuquerque. We encourage you to visit our website for a complete list of Festival poets, and to support their work.

For a fully immersive poetry experience, we’re offering a free program featuring one of today’s finest poets, Victoria Chang, along with fellow award winners Dana Levin, Tommy Archuleta, and Elizabeth Jacobson. The New York Times had this to say about Chang: “She matches her tenacious wordplay to the many bizarre yet mundane circumstances of living in the world — especially America, especially as an Asian American wife and mother.” Her poetry collection Obit, published during the Covid lockdown, chronicles the grief she felt after the 2015 death of her mother and mirrors the confusion and loss that flattened everyone during the pandemic. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent poem collection, With My Back to the World, was named one of the best books of 2024 by NPR and is a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.

Levin’s poems have been described by The New Yorker as “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, won the 2003 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and was called “astonishing” by the late U.S. poet laureate Louise Glück. Her 2016 collection Banana Palace was a finalist for the Rilke Prize, and her latest book, Now Do You Know Where You Are, was a New York Times Notable Book and an NPR Books We Love selection.

Archuleta and Jacobson, being present and former Santa Fe poet laureates, hold a special place in our hearts. Archuleta is the author of Susto, a poetry collection that pays tribute to his late mother and her work as a healer practicing the ancient art of curanderismo. A type of healer himself, Archuleta is a therapist on the clinical team at The Life Link, a community health organization that serves the homeless population of Santa Fe. Jacobson was poet laureate from 2019 to 2021 and is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her collection Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air won the New Measure Poetry Prize and the New Mexico–Arizona Book Award.

Our poetry event, Coming Into Form, featuring Chang, Levin, Archuleta, and Jacobson will be held in two sessions on Sunday, May 18: a poetry reading in the morning, followed by a panel discussion in the afternoon. Though both sessions are currently full, we encourage you to add your name to our waiting lists. Please email us here to sign up.

While you wait, why not enjoy some poetry? Here’s a tiny gem by Victoria Chang:

Thanks

Some days I can’t see

beyond the two small lemons

as they pull down the branches.

Spots are still open to see Rivera Garza, Shukman, and other inspiring authors of prose and poetry. But hark! Tickets are going fast.

IN OTHER NEWS

Our literary film series continues apace! Please join us at Violet Crown next Wednesday, April 30, at 6:30 p.m. for Stephen Daldry’s award-winning adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, featuring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore.

Board of Directors
Edward Gale, Chair

Janet Bailey | Mark Bryant | Clare Hertel

Jenny Kimball | James McGrath Morris

Carmella Padilla | Jenna Scanlan

Mary Sloane | Maria Gale, Ex Officio

Founders
Clare Hertel | Carmella Padilla | Mark Bryant