Sherwin Bitsui Lunch Poems Reading + Craft Talk

The Arts Research Center is thrilled to partner with the Lunch Poems series to help bring poets to campus and provide a craft talk in conjunction with their reading. The chosen poet for fall 2024 is Sherwin Bitsui.

Sherwin Bitsui is the author of three collections of poetry, Dissolve, Flood Song, and Shapeshift. He is Diné of the Todí­ch’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizí­laaní­ (Many Goats Clan), and earned an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. Bitsui has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Native Arts & Culture Foundation, along with the Whiting Writers’ Award, PEN Open Book Award, American Book Award, a grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and a Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship. His poems have appeared in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere. He teaches at Northern Arizona University.

Following his reading, Bitsui will give a public craft talk on Drawing language from landscape: an immersion in Diné poetic thought and structure. This craft talk will focus on how contemporary Diné poets employ their indigenous language, movement, sacred architecture and worldview in their works. 

This year, ARC and Lunch Poems are collaborating with the CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center, to create a handset, letterpress printed broadside to present both to the poet and the general public, along with a book signing. The reading, craft talk, broadside and book signing are free and open to the public.