Join the Rock Canyon Poets for an evening of poetry. Not just any poetry—we want poetry that aches to be published, poetry that pushes the boundaries of the page, poetry that doesn’t need a performance, poetry that simply needs to be read. Bring your words in all of poetry’s traditional forms (from the sonnet to free verse) or just bring your ears for listening.
Where: Pioneer Book – 450 West Center Street, Provo
When: Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Poetry Reading
Sign up in advance or just come and read!
These events are very casual and social. If you’d like to RSVP, add your name in a comment below, or email rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com. Each poet may read for up to 5 minutes.
Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book are please to present award winning Utah poet and Rock Canyon Poets member Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen!
Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen is a poly-artist and humanitarian residing in Utah. Her poetic work has been featured in Quarterly West, Rust+Moth, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the anthologies “Broken Atoms in Our Hands” and “Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry,” CrabFat, and Peculiar. She blogs sporadically at secondsetofwings.com and provides regular taxi service for her four children.
Shiffler-Olsen is also co-founder of the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets along with Trish Hopkinson, founded 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.
Shiffler-Olsen visits Pioneer Book as a guest of the Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book. The reading and open mic are open to the general public.
For more information, contact the Rock Canyon Poets, rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com.
Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book are please to present Utah poet and Lara Candland!
Lara Candland’s new book, The Lapidary’s Nosegay, has been recently released as part of the Mountain West Poetry Series at the Center for Literary Publishing, Colorado State University. Candland has been writing and performing poetry, violin, and voice since the age of four, and has evolved a practice around a multi-disciplinary poetics that attempts to account for all five of senses. She was a founding member of the experimental opera collective, Seattle Experimental Opera, founded in Seattle in 1993, and has recorded and performed with her electronic duo Lalage. Her recent work includes collaborations with Utah-based opera company Deseret Experimental Opera. Candland’s first book, Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree was published by BlazeVox Books in 2010, and her performance with Lalage—poetry and live electronic looping and manipulations, appears on the CD Lalage: Live on Sornarchy. Her opera Sunset with Pink Pastoral was a finalist in the Genesis Prizes for New Opera and was presented at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. Candland lives in Provo, Utah. She is the mother of five children, and teaches language arts and coordinates the International Baccalaureate program at the Walden School of Liberal Arts.
Candland visits Pioneer Book as a guest of the Rock Canyon Poets. The reading and open mic are open to the general public.
Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book are please to present award winning San Francisco Beat poet Neeli Cherkovski!
Neeli Cherkovski was raised into a bohemian Los Angeles family, where his father ran a bookstore. At age 16 he created the literary journal, Black Cat Review. From 1969-1971 he and life-long friend Charles Bukowski created and edited the literary magazine, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. Throughout his career he has been a prolific poet, and literary chronicler. Cherkovski moved to San Francisco in 1974 where he has been a fixture in the North Beach, PostBeat literary scene. His most recent collection of poems, Elegy For My Beat Generation, pays homage to his aging and gone friends, with poems dedicated to Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Mueller, and many others. In these poems he reminisces on the great heyday of all their lives, contemplates his own dwindling days, celebrates each moment passing by, and attempts to come to grips with ultimate ends.
Elegy For My Beat Generation is a masterful river of lyricism, spilling from one perception into the next. In these odes and elegies Cherkovski pays homage to his aging and gone friends from the heyday of all their lives, contemplates his own dwindling days, and attempts to come to grips with ultimate ends.
Praise for Cherkovski:
“From Lithic Press a brave and poignant new book of poems by my friend Neeli Cherkovski. Here are tributes to Corso, Ginsberg, Kerouac, DiPrima and even yours truly. He’s a skilled lyricist, a portraitist of mood, where the personal meets the historical.” –Alan Kaufman, author of Jew Boy and editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
“…in the end, what stamps Cherkovski’s poetry as unique is its unbounded lyricism, a lyrical gift easily greater than that of any other poet of his generation.” –Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe and Home To War
Cherkovski visits Pioneer Book as a guest of the Rock Canyon Poets. The reading and open mic are open to the general public.
Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book are please to present award winning Utah poet and Rock Canyon Poets member Tacey Atsitty!
Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). She is a recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize, Morning Star Creative Writing Award, and the Philip Freund Prize. 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 POETRY Magazine, Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, Literary Hub, New Poets of Native Nations, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018).
Atsitty visits Pioneer Book as a guest of the Rock Canyon Poets. The reading and open mic are open to the general public.
Join the Rock Canyon Poets for an evening of poetry. Not just any poetry—we want poetry that aches to be published, poetry that pushes the boundaries of the page, poetry that doesn’t need a performance, poetry that simply needs to be read. Bring your words in all of poetry’s traditional forms (from the sonnet to free verse) or just bring your ears for listening.
Where: Pioneer Book – 450 West Center Street, Provo
When: January 9, 2018
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Poetry Reading
Sign up in advance or just come and read!
These events are very casual and social. If you’d like to RSVP, add your name in a comment below, or email rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com. Each poet may read for up to 5 minutes. Maximum of 9 poets per reading. If there is time remaining, poets in the audience will have an opportunity to read.
Join the Rock Canyon Poets for an evening of poetry. Not just any poetry—we want poetry that aches to be published, poetry that pushes the boundaries of the page, poetry that doesn’t need a performance, poetry that simply needs to be read. Bring your words in all of poetry’s traditional forms (from the sonnet to free verse) or just bring your ears for listening.
Where: Pioneer Book – 450 West Center Street, Provo
When: December 12, 2017
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Poetry Reading
Sign up in advance or just come and read!
These events are very casual and social. If you’d like to RSVP, add your name in a comment below, or email rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com. Each poet may read for up to 5 minutes. Maximum of 9 poets per reading. If there is time remaining, poets in the audience will have an opportunity to read.
Rock Canyon Poets Inspired anthology release party and open mic was featured in SLUG Magazine’s special local literary issue! You can pick up your own print copy of December’s special issue across Utah at news stands. Special thanks to reporter Tyson Call and Kathy Zhou for covering our event and to our sponsors who made the workshops and poetry book possible: Pioneer Book and the Utah Humanities Council in conjunction with their Book Festival.
Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book are please to present local favorite & emeritus UVU professor Laura Hamblin!
Laura Hamblin is a professor emeritus from Utah Valley University. She received her PhD from the University of Denver, and has taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the University of Jordan in Amman. She taught creative writing, composition, women’s literature, the history and theory of the genre of poetry, and seminars including topics on Martin Buber. William Blake, and women poets. Laura’s awards include The Faculty Excellence Award from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculty Ethics Award, and the Service Learning Award. Her book, The Eyes of a Flounder, was published by Signature Press. In 2007-8 she lived in Amman where she gathered oral histories of Iraqi women refugees, see http://www.iraqiwomenrefugees.com/. Laura is recognized in “Utah Women’s Walk” which highlights women who have made a significant contribution to the state of Utah. (The presentation opened September 2017 at Thanksgiving Point.) In addition to poetry, Laura’s interests include beekeeping, gardening, quilting (a number of her quilts have been shown in museums), and traveling.
Hamblin visits Pioneer Book as a guest of the Rock Canyon Poets. The reading and open mic are open to the general public.
Join the Rock Canyon Poets for an evening of poetry. Not just any poetry—we want poetry that aches to be published, poetry that pushes the boundaries of the page, poetry that doesn’t need a performance, poetry that simply needs to be read. Bring your words in all of poetry’s traditional forms (from the sonnet to free verse) or just bring your ears for listening.
Where: Pioneer Book – 450 West Center Street, Provo
When: September 12, 2017
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Poetry Reading
Sign up in advance or just come and read!
These events are very casual and social. If you’d like to RSVP, add your name in a comment below, or email rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com. Each poet may read for up to 5 minutes. Maximum of 9 poets per reading. If there is time remaining, poets in the audience will have an opportunity to read.
Join the Rock Canyon Poets for an evening of poetry. Not just any poetry—we want poetry that aches to be published, poetry that pushes the boundaries of the page, poetry that doesn’t need a performance, poetry that simply needs to be read. Bring your words in all of poetry’s traditional forms (from the sonnet to free verse) or just bring your ears for listening.
Rock Canyon Poets and Pioneer Book are please to present local favorite & emeritus UVU professor Laura Hamblin!
Rock Canyon Poets 