Poetry

Poet Laureate

Having a Taos Poet Laureate had been a dream of SOMOS for years. A generous grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation in 2017 made that dream a reality. The purpose of the Poet Laureate is to:

  • Build awareness and appreciation of poetry in the wider community.
  • Undertake projects that will make poetry more accessible to people in their everyday lives.
  • Celebrate poetry and the power of the written word while honoring the cultural diversity of our community. 

Joshua Concha has been selected as the new Taos Poet Laureate. Concha is an Indigenous multi-media artist and writer who has been a tribal resident of the Taos Pueblo for twenty-five years. Concha has worked in a wide range of media (including film and digital storytelling, music, stone, and metal sculpture, silversmithing, and watercolor). His poem, “Rust” was chosen by the previous Poet Laureate, Catherine Strisik, as one of the fifteen poems installed in outdoor venues in Taos. His poems were also selected for “Poetry in Public Places” (2018 & 2019) and have been published in The Notebook: A Progressive Journal About Women and Girls with Rural and Small Town Roots and 200 New Mexico Poems: Celebrating the Centennial and Beyond. His 2022-23 Poet Laureate project is tentatively titled “Taos Poetry in Motion”: a film project, with 9-12 poets reading their work accompanied by visual images.

Dear Fellow Poets,

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude for all of your wonderful poetry submissions.

It was truly heartwarming to know that your works were created with the sincerest of efforts to align with the intent of the ‘Taos Poetry in Motion’ project. While I am not able to include all of them in this Poet Laureate project, I appreciate that you participated in the initial phase. Thank you all very much.

Sincerely,
Joshua K. Concha
Poet Laureate of Taos, NM (2022-23)

The selected poets for the Poet Laureate film project include:

1) Kate O’Neill
2) Charlie Kalogeros-Chattan
3) Catherine Strisik
4) Rose Gordon
5) Anne MacNaughton
6) Iris Keltz
7) Vivian Carroll
8) Annalisa Martinez
9) Whitney Molly Nieman

Join SOMOS in congratulating them for being selected!

A woman holding an open book. SOMOS in Taos, New Mexico.

Poet Laureate:

Joshua Concha

Poetry Month

SOMOS began its month-long celebration of poetry in April 2013 to coincide with National Poetry Month. This annually curated SOMOS celebration highlights poets of local, regional and national/international standing through readings, workshops, projects and collaborations. Some poets who have participated in SOMOS Poetry Month over the years include Catherine Strisik (Taos), Demetria Martinez (Santa Fe), Olivia Romo (Taos/Pojoaque), Veronica Golos (Taos), Max Early (Laguna Pueblo), Pat McCabe (Taos), Hakim Bellamy (Albuquerque), Will Barnes (Santa Fe), Cyrus Cassells (Texas), Aaron A. Abeyta (Colorado), John Biscello (Taos), Sawnie Morris (Taos), Coral Dawn Bernal (Taos Pueblo), Lise Goett (Taos), Juan Morales (Colorado), Carolyn Forché (Maryland), Roberto Tejada (Texas), Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Paris, France) and Ada Limón (Kentucky). Poetry Month has included creative collaborations with musicians, actors, artists and readers in projects ranging from Poetry & Art in Public Places, (a collaboration with Taos Arts Council that paired visual artists with poets to respond to one another’s work through ekphrasis) to a two-day, 12-hour community marathon reading of Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, to a jazz-infused poetry reading with Pulitzer prize-winning Detroit poet Tyehimba Jess and the John Rangel Trio produced in collaboration with the Taos Jazz Bebop Society. 

2021 NMSPS Convention Keynote by Catherine Strisik

Poetry Month Zoom Recordings

April 1, 2022

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections DaughtersBreakingNavigation, and 40 WeeksSolastalgia, a collection of poems about climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2023. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/. 

Corrigan will be presenting work from Daughters, her most recent book from Airlie Press, which is a collection of persona poems that reimagines characters from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, and popular culture from the perspective of their daughters. In addition, she’ll share new work from Solastalgia, a collection of poems exploring issues of climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age, which is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2023.

Jennifer (JP) Perrine is the author of four award-winning books of poetry: Again, The Body Is No MachineIn the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Perrine’s recent poems, stories, and essays appear in The Missouri Review, New Letters, The Seventh Wave MagazineBuckman Journal, and The Gay & Lesbian Review. A resident of Portland, Oregon, Perrine co-hosts the Incite: Queer Writers Read series, teaches creative writing to youth and adults, and serves as a diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice consultant. To learn more, visit www.jenniferperrine.org.

Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of Leaving Tulsa (2013) and Bright Raft in the Afterweather (2018), both published by the University of Arizona Press. She received her PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver, her MFA from the Vermont College of the Fine Arts, and is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). She is the recipient of a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship (2017), a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship (2014), and was a Robert Frost Fellow in Poetry at Breadloaf (2017) and a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford (2008-2010). She has also received fellowships to attend Soul Mountain Retreat, Caldera Arts, the Naropa Summer Writing Program, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and the Mesa Refuge. Jennifer teaches in the IAIA Low Residency MFA Creative Writing Program and at The Rainier Writing Workshop. Foerster is of German, Dutch, and Mvskoke descent, is a member of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. Jennifer grew up living internationally and now lives in San Francisco.

Watch the Zoom recording of this event.

April 2, 2022

Nancy Takacs’ poetry awards include The Juniper Prize, the 2018 and 2016 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry, Weber’s Sherwin W. Howard Award, a 2020 Pushcart Prize, and a runner-up for the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize. She is the author of three other books of poetry and four chapbooks.

Kate O’Neill has an MFA from IAIA. Her studio, Dreaming Dog Books, features a 1909 Chandler and Price platen printing press, with all the accoutrements to publish chapbooks and broadsides from handset letterpress type.

Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including: Written HerePoetry Ireland ReviewTaos International Journal of Poetry and the ArtsInternational Journal of WarLiterature and the Arts, and the Pangolin Review, among others. Her chapbook, Emulsifying Fires, based on Ansel Adams early photographs of New Mexico, is forthcoming in 2022 from Dreaming Dog Books. One of these poems will also be included in the New Mexico Poetry Anthology, vol. 1, Levi Romero and Michelle Otero, Eds. from the Museum of New Mexico Press, 2022. 

Watch the Zoom recording of this event.

April 3, 2022

A reading by Andrea Watson, Joan Ryan, Dale Kushner, Dom Zuccone, & Emily Lutken, hosted by Leslie Ullman.

Host: Leslie Ullman

A resident of Taos since 2009, Joan Ryan is the author of the poetry collection Dark Ladies & Other Avatars (3: A Taos Press, 2017)as well as co-author, with Andrea Watson, of the forthcoming Bloodsecrets from which she will be reading today.  Her poems have appeared in numerous reviews, including the Atlanta Review, Nimrod, The Sow’s Ear Review, Naugatuck River Review, Ekphrasis, Calyx, Cold Mountain Review, Crab Orchard Review and The Taos International Journal of Poetry.  And she is currently working on a potpourri of love poems and related recipes tentatively titled Aphrodisia.

Before moving to Taos in 2009, Joan headed her own direct marketing studio in Philadelphia, creating magalogs, television commercials, and direct mail packages for clients ranging from Dow Jones to Lenox Collections to Rodale Press.

Andrea L. Watson is founding publisher and editor of 3: A Taos Press, a multicultural and ethically voiced publishing house. Andrea’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Rhino, Subtropics, Cream City Review, Ekphrasis, International Poetry Review, and The Dublin Quarterly, among others. She has designed and curated eighteen ekphrasis events of poetry and art across the United States, commencing with Braided Lives: A Collaboration Between Artists and Poets, sponsored by the Taos Institute of Arts. She is co-editor of the poetry anthology, Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined and Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai, the proceeds of which were donated to The Malala Fund for Girls’ Education from FutureCycle Press. 

Dale M. Kushner is a poet and novelist deeply engaged at the intersection of personal and historic trauma and how the search for spirit is foundational to the creative process. Her lifelong study of Jungian psychology informs Transcending the Past her popular monthly online column for Psychology TodayM is Ms. Kushner’s debut collection of poetry. Her first novel The Conditions of Love was published by Grand Central (2013). She recently completed her second novel.

D.E. Zuccone is the author of a volume of poetry Vanishes released by 3A:Taos Press. I have published poems in Ekphrastic ReviewBorderlandsWater StoneInternational Review of PoetrySouthern Indiana ReviewSchuylkill ReviewHurricane ReviewBig RiverApalachee ReviewDeep Water Literary ReviewGarden Box. His work has been in anthologies from Round Top, Taos Artists, Words & Art, Mutabulis Press, Car Bombs & Cookie Tables II, and Big Poetry Review. He has been a reader in Houston, Taos, Los Angeles, and a frequent, grateful guest of Archway Gallery. He is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts.

E. R. Lutken is a retired family physician who worked for many years on the Navajo Nation, then taught math and science in rural Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in Cagibi, Mezzo Cammin, Prime Number, Think, and other journals and anthologies. For more links to poems and information see https://www.erlutkenpoetry.com 

Watch the Zoom recording of this event.

Open Tues-Sat  12pm-4pm  575.758.0081  108 Civic Plaza Drive

Mailing Address: P.O. Box 3225, Taos, NM 87571

THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS

SOMOS programs are made possible in part by these organizations: New Mexico Arts, a Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts • Taos Community Foundation • The McCune Foundation • The National Endowment For The Arts • The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation • Taos County Lodgers Tax • TaosNetLLC for high speed internet service  • LANL (Los Alamos National Labs)  • New Mexico Humanities Council • Nusenda Foundation • Witter Bynner Foundation • Amazon Literary Partnership • Literary Emergency Fund

Flyers at SOMOS detailing upcoming events