2007 Houston Poetry Fest features Visiting Poet Martha Serpas

(Houston Texas, October 5, 2007)   Join the Houston arts community at the 2007 Houston Poetry Fest, hosted by UH-Downtown in the Willow Street Pump Station Building, 811 North San Jacinto. The restored historic building is the perfect setting for this year's juried and featured poets. Visiting poet, Martha Serpas will be appearing Thursday and Friday. (See the schedule below.)

Serpas is the author of two poetry collections: The Dirty Side of the Storm (Norton) and Côte Blanche (New Issues). A native of Galliano, Louisiana, she has taught at Yale Divinity School, the University of Houston, and the University of Tampa, where she is currently an associate professor of English. Her publications include The New Yorker, The Nation, Southwest Review, and Christian Century. The Dirty Side of the Storm is an evocative meditation on destruction and creation along Louisiana's coast. Her poems venerate and bear witness to the eroding bayou country and its Cajun culture.

Praise for Côte Blanche: "Like Elizabeth Bishop, her strong precursor, Martha Serpas practices a severely chastened art of poetry . . . I am moved to prophesy a considerable poetic development for her." -Harold Bloom

"Lucid, yet luscious; rich, yet modest; full of spiritual insight, yet empty of bossy certainty,  Serpas' book of love and death in a Louisiana landscape is as savory and abundant as the rhythms she employs." -Molly Peacock

Serpas' appearance is sponsored by The UHD Cultural Enrichment Center and Department of English.

Schedule of Events:
UHD Visiting Poet, Martha Serpas
Thursday, October 11, 2007

7 p.m., UH-Downtown, Academic Building, Room A-436

Guests may park in Visitor Parking, Travis and Girard.
 
All other events, Friday through Sunday, will be at the Willow Street Pump Station, 811 North San Jacinto St.
 
Friday, October 12,
8 p.m.
*Reading, Guest Poet Leah Lax and Visiting Poet Martha Serpas

Saturday, October 13
9:30-11:30 a.m.
Poetry Workshop with Marie Brown, workshop leader
$10 donation requested for participation
2-5 p.m.
Open Reading with Guest Poet Sybil Estess*
Hosted by Robert Clark
7:30 p.m.
*Reading, Guest Poet Sybil Estess and Featured Poet Carol Cotton

Sunday, October 14
2 p.m.
*Reading, Guest Poet Eduardo Espina
*Readings also include Juried Poets (to be announced)

Off-campus Open Mic "Poetry Out of Bounds" readings:

Saturday, October 6
4 p.m. Barnes & Noble, 1029 W. Bay Area Blvd., Webster
Texas Poet Laureate Larry D. Thomas, hosted by Brian Swain

Sunday, October 7
8 p.m.
The Artery, 5401 Jackson at Prospect, Houston (enter on Prospect)
Hosted by Marie Brown

Tuesday, October 9
8 p.m.
Borders - River Oaks
3025 Kirby at West Alabama, Houston (across from Whole Foods Market)
Hosted by Ken Jones

Readings Free & Open to the Public.
Additional Contact: Robert Clark at 713.521.3519, or e-mail HPFest@aol.com

Guest Poets include:

Eduardo Espina is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A & M. He's the editor of their Hispanic Poetry Review. His book El Cutis Patrio (Mexico D.F.: Editorial Aldus, 2006) has received the 2007 Latino Literature Prize from the Latin American Writers Institute, housed at the City University of New York (CUNY). This prize is awarded each year to the best book published in Spanish. In the past it has been given to such prestigious writers as Oscar Hijuelos, Eduardo Gonzalez Vianal, Marjorie Agostin, Ilan Stavans, and Oscar Hahn. The judges declared him to be "probably the most imaginative poet of the language."

Leah Lax holds an MFA from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her fiction includes "Berkeh's Story," winner of a national short story contest for Moment Magazine. In collaboration with artist/photographer Janice Rubin, she created The Mikvah Project, which has toured twenty-three cities and has garnered feature articles in numerous newspapers and national periodicals. Leah has received numerous grants and fellowships for her work, including support from the Texas Commission for the Humanities, the Cultural Arts Council of Houston, and Yaddo. Most recently, Leah wrote " The Refuge," her most poetic work, the libretto for a new opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera, to debut on the main stage of Houston's Wortham Center civic opera house in November of 2007. This work is based on the personal stories of new immigrants to Houston. It is a selection from these "voices" that she will read for the Houston Poetry Fest. Leah is represented by Brandt and Hochman Literary Agency. Currently, she is working on her memoir.

Sybil Pittman Estess has published five books, including three volumes of poems: LABYRINTH, Pecan Grove Press, 2007; BLUE, CANDLED IN JANUARY SUN, Word Tech Publications, 2005, and SEEING  THE DESERT GREEN by Latitudes Press, 1987. Sybil's other volumes are a collection of essays on Elizabeth Bishop, entitled ELIZABETH BISHOP AND HER ART, which she co-edited with Lloyd Schwartz, University of Michigan Press, 1983 (still in print!) and IN A FIELD OF WORDS, a creative writing textbook with Janet McCann, 2002, Prentice Hall. She is published in such journals as The Paris Review, Borderlands, The Texas Review, Concho River Review, Shenandoah, i.e., The Southern Poetry Review, Midwest Review, Manhattan Review, Western Humanities Review, and The Iowa Review. Sybil has taught at several colleges in our area, and has lived in Houston for 31 years. She was one of the founders of The Houston Poetry Fest.

Juried poets include:

Carolyn Praetor Boyd, Tina Cardona, Barbara Youngblood Carr, D. B. Cherry, Deed Fox, Lewis Garvin, Rosemarie Goos, Joyce Pounds Hardy, Glynn Monroe Irby, Robert L. Jones, Linda Koffel, Erica Lehrer, Martin W. Levy, Elizabeth Daniel Marquis-Mayorca, Carol Munn, Katie Oxford, Christa Pandey, Laura Pena, Oscar Pena, Sandi Stromberg, Lulynne Streeter, Herman Sutter, Brian Kenneth Swain, Martha Margarita Tamez, Donn Taylor, Nancy Thorliefson, Carolyn Thorman, Marie Delgado Travis, and Gwendolyn Zepeda.

UH-Downtown is a public university of nearly 12,000 students, offering a wide variety of bachelor’s degrees, as well as master’s programs in criminal justice, professional writing, security management and teaching. One of four distinct universities in the UH System, Houston’s Downtown University is nationally recognized for its student diversity, wireless campus, outstanding academic opportunities and productive community partnerships. At UHD, the emphasis is on excellence in teaching and student success.

Please use UH-Downtown, UHD or University of Houston-Downtown when referring to our university.