Sara Ellen Fowler’s TWO SIGNATURES
Sunday, July 7
Doors: 5pm
Reading: 5:30pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
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Please join the Poetic Research Bureau as we launch Two Signatures by Sara Ellen Fowler, winner of the 2023 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry from the University of Utah Press. Joining Fowler will be J Jennifer Espinoza and Rocket Caleshu
In Two Signatures, Sara Ellen Fowler initiates her readers into a synesthetic contract of close attention and deep feeling. From the wood floor of an art museum buckling with Lake Michigan moisture, to the mud-packed hooves of the horse of childhood, to an art student's spit on a pane of mirrored glass, the poems' images string together a necklace of exquisite longing. Pleasures and complexities of sensory experience lay the ground for a world where risk is rewarded and candor is sensual. The poet explores registers of desire and power, drawing upon her training as a visual artist to make a studio of language. Temperature and texture gain grammar as the poems reach toward awe via multivalent psychology, sex, and sculptural interventions. These poems invite readers to explore the vulnerability and insistence that mark one's devotion to any creative practice.
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Sara Ellen Fowler is the author of Two Signatures, winner of the 2023 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry (as selected by Joan Naviyuk Kane). A recipient of a 2023 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, she holds a BFA in fine art from Art Center College of Design and an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. Publication credits include: The Offing, X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal, Gigantic Sequins, and Cream City Review, among others.
J Jennifer Espinoza is the author of I'm Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks, 2019), THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (The Accomplices, 2016), and I Don't Want To Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024). Her work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, the American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, The Nation, Poem-a-day, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside. Jennifer lives in California with her wife, poet/essayist Eileen Elizabeth, and their cat and dog.
Rocket Caleshu is a writer based in Los Angeles. He is the coauthor of the film and book The African Desperate, and his poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, New Delta Review, We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, and elsewhere. He holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing/Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts. He is the founder and director of Ashtanga Yoga Glassell.