Michael Wiegers - "A House Called Tomorrow" - Chris Abani, Tishani Doshi, Alison C. Rollins, Arthur Sze

Michael Wiegers will discuss A House Called Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Poetry with Chris Abani, Tishani Doshi, Alison C. Rollins, Arthur Sze.

This is a hybrid in-person and virtual event presented in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. Masks and vaccination cards required for in-person admission. 

This is one of two events for A House Called Tomorrow. See details for Thursday's event here

Register HERE.

About the book: Poetry is vital to language and living. This anthology celebrates 50 years of Copper Canyon Press publications, one extraordinary poem at a time. Since its founding in 1972, Copper Canyon has been entirely dedicated to publishing poetry books; here Executive Editor Michael Wiegers invites press staff and board—past and present—to help curate a retrospective. The result is a collection of beloved poems from books spanning half a century: representing Pulitzer Prize-winning books, debut collections, works in translation, and rare books from Copper Canyon’s early days. This book is a tribute to Copper Canyon poets and readers everywhere, because, as Gregory Orr writes, “Certain poems / In an uncertain world— / The ones we cling to: // They bring us back.”

About the editor: Michael Wiegers has been editing poetry at Copper Canyon Press for 30 years, advocating for poets at every stage of their writing lives. He is the editor of A House Called Tomorrow as well as What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford. 

About the interlocutors:

Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, received a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in English, Gender and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He has resided in the United States since 2001.

Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, essays and fiction. Recent books include the poetry collection Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and a novel, Small Days and Nights, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and a New York Times Bestsellers Editor’s Choice. For fifteen years Tishani worked as a dancer with the Chandralekha group in Madras, India. A God at the Door, her fourth full-length collection, is published by Copper Canyon Press and was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Poetry Prize.

Alison C. Rollins was named a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow in 2019. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. A Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, she was a 2016 recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. In 2018, she was a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, and in 2020, the winner of a Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Library of Small Catastrophes was a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award nominee.

Arthur Sze has published eleven books of poetry, including The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems; Sight Lines, which won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry; and Compass Rose, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Sze is the recipient of many honors, including a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts.