Bookworks Announces National Poetry Month Features

Poetry now abounds every month in Albuquerque, but April brings with it an even plumper basket of opportunities to hear poetry in public. Bookworks hosts or is co-sponsor of nine readings this month from popular Albuquerque performance poets, several Native American features, and touring poets of note. To kick off the month, Albuquerque poet and public radio personality, Mary Oishi, collaborates with the New Mexico Jazz Workshop players for a poetry-music combo April 2.

The rest of the month reads like a Who's-Who list of Albuquerque favorites: the first city poet laureate, Hakim Bellamy, reads from his debut collection, Swear, new from local indie house, West End Press. Beloved Albuquerque activist and poet, Margaret Randall, reads from her new Wings Press book, The Rhizome as a Field of BroKen Bones. CNM Professor Felecia Caton Garcia reads from UNM Press's latest release in the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series, Say That. April 12, Jimmy Baca is in conversation with Poetry Slam Champion Jessica Helen Lopez at the KiMo Theater in downtown Albuquerque, where Bookworks will be sponsoring a signing with the award-winning poet. Santa Fe poet Barbara Rockman, author of Sting and Nest, is part of the store's second poetry and jazz combo of the month on April 29, when Bookworks and Flying Star host fundraisers for the New Mexico Jazz Workshop.

Visiting poets of note in April include Laura Tohe, a Navajo poet and author of No Parole Today and Code Talker Stories. Fjords Review editor Jon Gosslee visits the store with 12: Sonnets for the Zodiac. Bookworks also welcomes University of Arizona Press authors and Institute of American Indian Arts alumna dg okpik and Jennifer Foerster who read from their debut collections April 6. At the end of the month, UNM alumna Tanaya Winder and Casandra Lopez celebrate the launch of their second issue of their indigenous women's literary journal, As/Us.

April 18 is Poem in Your Pocket day nationwide. Bring a poem into Bookworks in your pocket--whatever interpretation that might take--for a 15% discount.