Poems from Far and Wide: Ilya Kaminsky, Dominic Luxford, and Jesse Nathan
Churchill’s The Office, 194 Church Street (at Market), San Francisco, California
Founding editors of McSweeney’s Poetry Series, Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan, join Ilya Kaminsky and special guests Katie Ford and Atsuro Riley to serve up a sharp collection of poems from around the globe and across generations in celebration of their curated poetry anthology In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide.
This event is supported in part by grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and San Francisco Grants for the Arts.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and currently lives in San Diego. He’s the author of Dancing In Odessa, and the co-editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. With Jean Valentine, he has co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva.
Dominic Luxford was raised on a sheep farm in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, and currently lives in San Francisco. He edited The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, has been the Believer magazine’s poetry editor since 2007, and co-founded the McSweeney’s Poetry Series.
Jesse Nathan was born in Berkeley, grew up on a farm in Kansas, and lives now in San Francisco. He’s the author of several chapbooks, including Cloud 9, and is a co-founding editor of the McSweeney’s Poetry Series. He’s completing a PhD in poetry and poetics at Stanford.
Katie Ford is the author of Deposition (2002), Colosseum (2008), and Blood Lyrics (2014), all published by Graywolf Press. She teaches at the University of California, Riverside.
Atsuro Riley is the author of Heard-Hoard (University of Chicago Press, 2021), winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010), winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress.
His work has been honored with the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Wood Prize given by Poetry magazine. His poems have been anthologized in The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall, The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine, The Oxford Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Poems of the American South, The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, Poems from Far and Wide, Vinegar and Char, and Gracious.
Brought up in the South Carolina lowcountry, Riley lives in San Francisco. (Photo credit: Sven Wiederholt)