Public Practice: A Reading & Conversation with the US Poet Laureate and Copper Canyon Press
Friday, March 19, 2027, 3:20 p.m. to 4:35 p.m. CT
US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze delivers an expansive reading of his poetry, which spans decades of restless poetic evolution. Following that, Sze joins his longtime editor, Michael Wiegers, to reflect on his innovative laureateship—the first to center global poetry in translation—and poetry’s enduring role in civic and cultural life. This event highlights literature as a connective force, bringing us closer to our domestic and global neighbors—and back to ourselves in a distractible world.
Panelist Bios:
Arthur Sze is the 25th poet laureate of the United States and the author of numerous books, most recently Into the Hush, which was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Jean Stein Book Award. Other notable poetry collections include The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems, selected for a National Book Foundation Science + Literature Prize; Sight Lines, which won the National Book Award; and Compass Rose, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Sze is also a translator and editor, with the recent translation projects Transient Worlds (his signature US Poet Laureate project) and The Silk Dragon II, and he has published a book of prose, The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems. Sze has been recognized with several lifetime achievement awards and fellowships, including the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Photo credit: Shawn Miller
Michael Wiegers has been editing books for Copper Canyon Press since 1993 and serves as the press’s artistic director and executive editor. Most recently, he edited two poetry anthologies: A House Called Tomorrow: 50 Years of Poetry and Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press. He is also the poetry editor of Narrative magazine and edited What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Essential W.S. Merwin. He is at work on a book about Merwin and serves as a trustee for the Merwin Conservancy.
Photo credit: Copper Canyon Press