SOMOS Poet Laureate Reading

Mary Oishi was named Albuquerque Poet Laureate on July 1, 2020. A familiar figure in New Mexico’s thriving poetry scene, Oishi is the author of Spirit Birds They Told Me (West End Press, 2011), and co-author with her daughter, Aja Oishi, of Rock Paper Scissors (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2018), finalist for the New Mexico Arizona Book Award. She is one of twelve U.S. poets in translation in 12 Poetas: Antologia De Nuevos Poetas Estadounidenses (La Herrata Feliz and MarEsCierto, 2017), a project of the Mexican Ministry of Culture. Her poems have appeared in Mas Tequila Review, Malpais Review, Harwood Anthology, and numerous other print and digital publications.

Catherine Strisik, Taos, New Mexico’s Poet Laureate 2020-2022; recipient of 2020 Taoseña Award as Woman of Impact  based on literary contribution; is author of Insectum Gravitis, finalist for the 2020 New Mexico Book Award in Poetry; The Mistress, New Mexico/AZ Book Award for Poetry 2017; Thousand-Cricket Song; and manuscript-in-progress, Aikaterina. She’s co-founder/consulting editor of Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, advisory board member of Pocket Samovar, offers editorial services, and facilitates poetry workshops in Taos. www.cathystrisik.com

Elizabeth Jacobson is the Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow.  Her most recent book, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, won the New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019), and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Her other books include Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books, 2012) and two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? (2017) and A Brown Stone (2015). She is the founding director of the WingSpan Poetry Project, a not-for-profit which from 2013-2020 conducted weekly poetry classes in battered family and homeless shelters in New Mexico. WingSpan has received four grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Elizabeth is the Reviews Editor for the on-line literary journal Terrain.org and she teaches poetry workshops regularly in the Santa Fe community.

Levi Romero was selected as the Inaugural New Mexico Poet Laureate in 2020 and New Mexico Centennial Poet in 2012. His most recent book is the co-edited anthology, Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland. His two collections of poetry are A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works and In the Gathering of Silence. He is co-author of Sagrado: A Photopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland. Romero is from the Embudo Valley of northern New Mexico. He is an Assistant Professor in the Chicana and Chicano Studies department at the University of New Mexico.

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/5757580081