Upcoming Events

Come have a ball with Cave Canem Foundation and Lambda Literary for a free speech, free verse, free groove function. Dance your constraints away and enjoy pop-up readings from a dynamic lineup of poets, including Victoria Newton Ford, Donika Kelly, Omotara James, Danez Smith and other artists addressing themes of democracy.  This event is presented as part of the Poetry Coalition's thematic initiative, “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy.” Music provided by DJ Rivera. Free and open to the public.      …

Experience our annual Off-Site Reading at AWP Portland, hosted by Literary Arts! This year’s reading is headlined by Portland and Seattle-based Cave Canem fellows Quenton Baker, Ashaki M. Jackson, Bettina Judd, Anastacia-Renee and Christopher Rose, who will open the night before an additional 15+ fellows share their work in four-minute, rapid-fire intervals. Fellow and Portland resident Samiya Bashir emcees. Free and open to the public, this event is co-presented with Literary Arts.

Enjoy an afternoon of phenomenal poetry and stimulating conversation! Award-winning poets Dawn Lundy Martin, Morgan Parker and Evie Shockley give brief readings of their original work, followed by a discussion about poetry as a space for complex negotiations and radical reimaginings. While the meaning of diversity is being debated, these poets' unique voices and varied strategies expand the discourse beyond considerations of race and ethnicity. Their views of the poet as artist and social being disrupt familiar tropes assigned to…

Enjoy a display of exceptional poetry featuring new collections by Cave Canem fellows Mitchell L.H. Douglas, Alison C. Rollins and Cave Canem faculty Amber Flora Thomas. Author of three poetry collections, Mitchell L.H.Douglas' most recent, dying in the scarecrow's arms (Persea Books, 2018), holds "masterful poems" that "serve as questions and facts, protests and affirmations," as said by Adrian Matejka. A recipient of a 2018 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award and 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, Alison C. Rollins is the author of Library of Small Catastrophes  (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).  Amber Flora Thomas is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Red Channel in the Rupture (Red Hen Press, 2018), described by Camille T. Dungy as exhibiting a voice that is "fresh, fierce and wildly alive." 

Join participants in Tiphanie Yanique‘s workshop “Un/Formed” as they share new work exploring the limits of form. Free and open to the public. Potluck refreshments served.

Come celebrate the recent publications of new work by three brilliant Cave Canem poets. Winner of an American Book Award for Poetry, Jericho Brown is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), of which Claudia Rankine says "To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius." Marwa Helal is the author of Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), praised by Solmaz Sharif for being "gorgeous and gutting, rising to its own invocation." Of Kwoya Fagin Maples's debut collection MEND (University Press of Kentucky, 2018), finalist for the AWP Prize, Abraham Smith notes, "MEND is a startling, stomping debut...