Wyatt Welch, Angela Trudell Vasquez

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courtesy Wyatt Welch

A close-up of Wyatt Welch.

Wyatt Welch

Wyatt Welch’s poetry grows out of a youth kidnapped by a disturbed father, and living queer and trans. In the new collection Capitalism Calls Poetry Lazy, Welch explores various ways capitalism divides us from our empathy and humanness. Poetry is the opposite: “Poetry isn't lazy — it never rests,” Welch attests. Madison’s poet laureate, Angela Trudell Vasquez, will also read.

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Wyatt Welch and Angie Trudell Vasquez for an evening of poetry and conversation! 

This is an in person event at A Room of One's Own

About the featured books

In Capitalism Calls Poetry Lazy, Welch engages with the edges of the United States in biographic poems about their kidnapping, their difficulties as a gay/trans individual, and their alliance with Witchcraft. Among unstable poems and juxtaposition, Welch searches for the poetic body just beyond the physical one, "That I am challenged to embody my own Nature, othered by forces outside myself, to reassert a peace, my peace, that was dirtied for the benefit of privileging males is an undertaking I revisit and resent daily. This act of returning to myself, by rejecting the world, is dark and is the source of my power as a Witch. These practices speak throughout my poetry."

As the title nails down, Welch also impugns upon the intentions that capitalism harbors against us, the living. "For Capitalism to work, it teaches us, on many levels, to disconnect from our natural empathy, from the homeless, from the countries we're calmly bombing, and from the other beings sharing our world. The narrative of laziness turns connection to cruelty, and poetry exposes such fictions. Poetry furthers our empathy with one another, including our empathy with everyday objects. Poetry isn't lazy--it never rests."

Wyatt Welch grew up on the Interstates after being kidnapped by their father, a troubled veteran of the Vietnam War. Welch is a radical queer poet and a self-described Evil Witch, whose poetry examines the interplay between the Individual and the State. Their debut book of poetry, Capitalism Calls Poetry Lazy, was recently published by FlowerSong Press and was enthusiastically praised by CAConrad and Alice Notley.

Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez is the current city of Madison Poet Laureate (2020-2024) and the first Latina to hold the position. Angie received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. Recently, her poems have appeared in The Slow Down, Yellow Medicine Review, Poem-a-Day, About Place Journal and in several anthologies. In 2018 she was a finalist for the New Women’s Voices series and her collection, In Light, Always Light, was published by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. Finishing Line Press also published her fourth collection of poetry, My People Redux, in January 2022. In the summer of 2021 she became a Macondo Fellow or a Macondista. She is the current chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. (angietrudellvasquez.com & artnightbooks.com)