The 37th Spring Poetry Series, sponsored by Salina Arts & Humanities, opens on Tuesday with online readings by poets Joe McKenzie and Lori Brack.
The readings will begin at 7 p.m. via Zoom web-based video conferencing. To sign up for the reading, visit Salina Arts & Humanities on Facebook, call the office at 785-309-5770, or visit the web page salinaarts.com/poetry_series.cfm. Viewers will be invited to ask the poet questions after the reading.
McKenzie says, “Stuff happens constantly and I try to have a poetic response to it.” He calls his poems “observational free verse narratives of the world, everyday life and people, and their dogs.” He will read from his 2019 book At the Mercy of Ourselves, as well as newer work that emerged from the confluence of the theme of the book and the COVID-19 pandemic.
McKenzie will be joined by poet Lori Brack, who will read from her new book A Case for the Dead Letter Detective that features poems about an imagined and simultaneously real character, along with newer and older work. “Being outside in the back yard, down the street in a wheat field, sitting in the grass, and reading are what I am made of. I wish I was drawn to write more politically, but really, I’d rather remember and imagine,” Brack says.
Three other local poets – Ruth Moritz, Harley Elliott, and series founder Patricia Traxler will read from their work via Zoom and YouTube on remaining Tuesdays in April.
“This year’s format for the Spring Poetry Series needed to adapt due to the pandemic and its impact on the community,” says Brad Anderson, executive director of Salina Arts & Humanities. “Shifting to a virtual event will allow the poets and audience to safely engage as they experience recent work by an exceptional group of poets.”
Joe McKenzie is a writer who retired after a long career as a public librarian in Salina. He does freelance reporting and a column for The Salina Journal, and also writes children’s stories. McKenzie grew up in Philadelphia and went to colleges in Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Colorado. His connection with the Spring Poetry Series goes back to his work as director of the Salina Public Library, which used to co-sponsor the series. McKenzie is a 2006 New Voice award winner and has been a Poetry Series reader. His active community involvement informs everything he writes. McKenzie is married to Mary Lou and has two sons and two granddaughters.
Brack is a freelance arts worker and the author of Museum Made of Breath, published in 2018, and A Fine Place to See the Sky, a poetic script for a work of performance art by Ernesto Pujol, presented in 2010 at the Salina Art Center.
Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies including Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction, Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, Atlas and Alice, North American Review, South Dakota Review, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has worked for art centers, libraries, newspapers, and universities, and for independent artistic projects including as a teaching artist in secondary schools. She is coordinating this year’s poetry Spring Poetry Series.
Books by the poets are available for purchase at Ad Astra Books & Coffee House, 141 N. Santa Fe Avenue.