City of Santa Fe Poet Laureate Jon Davis to Host Poetry Reading at the Institute of American Indian Arts on Sunday, June 29, 2014, at 3:00 pm

Poster by Tom Leech & James Bourland, The Press at the Palace of the Governors

SANTA FE, NM — On Sunday, June 29, 2014, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m., City of Santa Fe Poet Laureate Jon Davis will host “Santa Fe Poets 6,” the sixth and last of six group readings. Each reading has featured a different group of five poets reading with the poet laureate. The June reading will take place in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Lloyd Kiva New Welcome Center. The event is free.

At this reading, Davis will read new work and work from his most recent published book, Preliminary Report, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2010. In addition to being Santa Fe’s fourth poet laureate, Davis is Director of the Low Residency MFA Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he has taught for 24 years.

The other poets reading in Santa Fe Poets 6:

Britta Andersson received her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and her MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared in the International Poetry Review, Oregon Literary Review, and Salt Hill.

Amy Beeder is the author of Burn the Field and Now Make An Altar (Carnegie Mellon, 2012). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, AGNI, and other journals. She has taught poetry at the University of New Mexico and Taos Summer Writers Conference. She has received the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, a Bread Loaf Scholarship, a Witness Emerging Writers Award, and a James Merrill Residency. She has worked as a freelance reporter, a political asylum specialist, a high-school teacher in West Africa, and an election and human rights observer in Haiti and Suriname.

Hakim Bellamy is the author of Swear (West End Press, 2013). He became the inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque in 2012. He has been on two national champion poetry slam teams, won collegiate and city poetry slam championships (in Albuquerque and Silver City, NM), and has been published in numerous anthologies and on inner-city buses. A musician, actor, journalist, playwright and community organizer, Bellamy has also received an honorable mention for the Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize at the University of New Mexico.

Donald Levering was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship  in poetry and winner of the Quest for Peace Writing Contest in rhetoric. He was also an Academy of American Poets’ Featured Poet in the Online Forum.  Recent collections include The Number of Names, Sweeping the Skylight, and Algonquins Planted Salmon. His latest book is The Water Leveling With Us (Red Mountain Press, 2014). He lives in Santa Fe with the artist Jane Shoenfeld.

Luci Tapahonso is the Navajo Nation’s first Poet Laureate. She has taught at the University of Kansas, the University of Arizona, and ast the University of New Mexico. She is the author of five books of poetry and stories, and one children’s book. In 1999, she was named Storyteller of the Year by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, a year after being recognized with the Regional Book Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association.

The Institute of American Indian Arts’ Lloyd Kiva New Welcome Center is located at 83 Avan Nu Po Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For more information, call Jon Davis at 424.2365 or e-mail him at jdavissimo52@gmail.com.

Established in 2005, the Poet Laureate program actively promotes poetry and the spoken word as integral parts of our civic life.