Monsters of Poetry

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Nicholas Nicholas

American Nigerian poet and journalist I.S. Jones.

Monsters of Poetry has been making poetry readings hip since 2009, and it's back live with a roster of I.S. Jones, Kabel Mishka Ligot, Jennifer Nelson and Barrett Swanson. Jones directs the Watershed Reading Series with Art + Lit Lab; Ligot earned his master of fine arts degree at UW-Madison; Nelson teaches art history at UW-Madison; and Swanson teaches creative writing at UW-Whitewater. The free reading is supported via a raffle featuring literary ephemera, signed books, handmade notecards, and curated mix CDs, with all raffle donations going to the evening's readers. Proof of vaccination required.

media release: Monsters of Poetry is a literary reading series in Madison, Wisconsin, founded in 2009. We host public readings featuring poets and writers from across the country and throughout the Midwest. While the readings are free, we hold a raffle featuring a treasure trove of literary ephemera, signed books, handmade notecards and carefully curated mix CDs, with all raffle donations going to the evening's readers.

March 19, 2022, 7:00-8:30p, North Street Cabaret, 610 North St.

Proof of vaccination required

https://www.facebook.com/events/504266727747691/

Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/monstersofpoetry

BIOS & RECENT PUBLICATIONS

I.S. JONES

• https://www.isjones.com/
• I.S. Jones is an American Nigerian poet and former music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole, holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets, along with widespread publications. Her honors include the 2021 Kemper K. Knapp Fellowship at UW Madison, as well as the Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship. She is currently the Director of The Watershed Reading Series with Art Lit Lab. She also runs the month-long poetry writing workshop The Singing Bullet each April. Her chapbook “Spells Of My Name” was published in 2021 with Newfound. Fatimah Asgar writes that Jones’ writing “charts a course to translate the untranslatable—which is to say, to translate oneself…These poems press forward in exploring, with refined skill. Jones holds a magnifying glass up to every part of themselves, attempting to name, then rename, then name again. In so doing, we’re left with poems complicated and vast.” 
• I.S. Jones, Spells of My Name (Newfound), https://newfound.org/shop/i-s-jones-spells-of-my-name-print-e-book/ 
• “Epithalamion in the Field”, https://www.guernicamag.com/epithalamion-in-the-field/

KABEL MISHKA LIGOT

• https://www.kabelmishka.com
• Kabel Mishka Ligot is a writer from the Philippines. He grew up in Pasig but claims Quezon City. He earned his MFA at UW Madison and his work has appeared in publications such as Waxwing and Cordite. His collaborative poem “The root of our shared word for ‘home’ is ‘to be consoled,’ along with a discussion of the process with Jan Dennis Destajo appeared in Poetry. Mishka currently lives in Teejop, where he teaches language and studies information. During the 2020-2021 academic year, he hosted the reading and conversation series Wisconsin Wednesdays for the Wisconsin Book Festival, with the support of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Program in Creative Writing.
• Mishka Ligot, “The root of our shared word for ‘home’ is ‘to be consoled’”, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156551/the-root-of-our-shared-word-for-home-is-to-be-consoled

JENNIFER NELSON

• https://arthistory.wisc.edu/staff/nelson-jennifer/
• Jennifer Nelson is the author of three books of poems, most recently 2021's Harm Eden (Ugly Duckling Presse), as well as Civilization Makes Me Lonely (Ahsahta, winner of the Sawtooth Prize) and Aim at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife (UDP). A co-founder of Selva: A Journal of the History of Art, she is also an art historian teaching at UW-Madison and the author of Disharmony of the Spheres: The Europe of Holbein's Ambassadors (Penn State UP). Her work explores not only art history, but also the history of science and technology, theology, disability studies, and literary studies.
• Jennifer Nelson, Harm Eden (Ugly Duckling Presse), https://uglyducklingpresse.org/publications/harm-eden/

BARRETT SWANSON

• https://www.barrettswanson.com/
• Barrett Swanson is a professor of Creative Writing at Whitewater and a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. He earned his MFA at UW Madison and was a Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Halls Emerging Artist Fellow. His work has earned him a Pushcart Prize and has been anthologized in many annual editions of Best American Short Stories, Nonrequired Reading, and Essays. His debut essay collection, Lost in Summerland was published by Counterpoint Press in May of 2021. Of the collection, Lauren Groff says, “Lost in Summerland is an essay collection of the very highest order: a book that poses more questions than it seeks to answer, a book that has wrestled my empathy for the fucked-up citizens of our tragicomic era and country into new, uncomfortable, gorgeously fruitful places.” 
• Barrett Swanson, Lost in Summerland (Counterpoint)
• https://bookshop.org/books/lost-in-summerland-essays/9781640094185 
• https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/
• https://harpers.org/2021/05/the-anxiety-of-influencers-tiktok-collab-house/