Huge thanks to David G. Pace for an incredible write-up in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine since 2001. You can subscribe to their email newsletter for free here.
We are looking forward to a great night of poetry and community this Tuesday night at Pioneer Book. Don’t miss it!
The Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book announce the launch party of Orogeny, the second collection of poems by local Utah County poets along with an open mic on Tuesday, June 14, 2016 at 6:30 pm.
Orogeny is the 2nd annual printed anthology by Rock Canyon Poets members. Each contributing poet receives a free copy and copies will be available to the public for $10 at the event. Poets will read their work from the anthology, after which, the open mic will begin and audience members are invited to read a poem they have written or a favorite by another poet. Light refreshments will be served.
“In these pages you’ll find starlings and stars, red rocks and coffee shops, turntables and wishing wells, burritos and razorbacks and reruns of The Sound of Music. In short you’ll find poets dreaming their way onto the page. By dreaming, I mean closing their eyes to see better, opening them to grab up any details they missed. Transformation is their state flower. ‘What if?’ their state song.” – Lance Larsen, Poet Laureate of Utah
“While Orogeny gestures to the spectacular Wasatch Mountains that loom above the Provo home of these nineteen poets, it also points back to origins and myths. In this collection we find a myriad of such stories of beginning (and hints at their endings) ‘folded and deformed by lateral compression to form a mountain range’– from fallen angels to exploding stars, from Eve to Eurydice and the spectacles of carnival or war. These poems lay at fault lines, at places of slipping, subverting, and rising above.” – Michael McLane, editor for saltfront and Sugar House Review
“The poets and poetry in this issues of Orogeny bend and deform the the crust of our shared experiences: loss and longing, joy and beauty, fear and grace. Formal sonnets, oblations, odes, elegies, and lyrics—these poems are the layered sediments of our lives here in the semiarid landscape that we call home. Reading these poems, we recognize ourselves, lone prophets wandering and ranting together in a rocky wilderness.” – Laura Hamblin, Author, The Eyes of a Flounder
Rock Canyon Poets boasts diverse membership, ranging from 18 to 70 years in age with many backgrounds–including literary journal founders, editors, ex-military, business professionals, a playwright, and a periodontist. Individually, they have received several awards and been published in magazines, anthologies, journals, chapbooks, and full-length books of poetry. Rock Canyon Poets offer poetry with the tactile clarity of tin-can messages through fuzzy strings to the ears of an audience. These poems are tumbleweeds in semi-truck grills. They get stuck in your teeth, build bridges of spun sugar, and make it possible to mount a camel without a sturdy ladder.
Co-founded by Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen and Trish Hopkinson in January, 2015, Rock Canyon Poets was established to develop camaraderie among Utah Valley poets, provide consistent workshopping and reading opportunities, and promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form. Members meet twice a month at Pioneer Book in historic downtown Provo. The group sponsors poetry readings and an open mic on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. Membership is by invitation or portfolio submission only.
For more information, contact the Rock Canyon Poets, rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com.
We are thrilled to have one of the original Rock Canyon Poets Tacey M. Atsitty back in town to read from her new book of poems Rain Scald, this Monday at 7pm at the Education in Zion Auditorium B192 JFSB (Joseph F Smith Building) on BYU campus in Provo. You can park in the visitor parking near the BYU art museum and the JFSB is west of the library. Don’t miss this amazing event!
You can read more about Atsitty on her web site and read some of her poems published online by Drunken Boat.
Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné, is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii
(Tangle People) from Cove, AZ. She is a recipient of the Truman Capote Creative
Writing Fellowship, the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize, and Morning Star Creative
Writing Award. She holds bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University and the
Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell
University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Kenyon
Review Online, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, New Poets of the American West
Anthology, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (UNM Press, 2017). She
currently teaches at San Juan College.
Rock Canyon Poets 