Poetry
Poet Laureate
Miguel Santistevan has a Bachelors of Science in biology from the University of New Mexico and a Masters of Science in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. His research interests are food systems of the upper Rio Grande and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Santistevan is certified in permaculture and xeriscape design and has directed youth in agriculture programs. He has dozens of publications in local papers like Green Fire Times and has delivered professional presentations to meetings of the Bioneers, the Green Festival, and the International Ethno-Biology Congress. He produced a public radio program called “Que vivan las acequias!” with the NM Acequia Association and KCEI-FM Radio, Taos County. He is a parciante and has served both as a mayordomo and president. Santistevan is a teacher, storyteller, musician and an amazing poet. For the 2024-25 theme of “Poetry with Youth,” he will use his position as a guest lecturer in the public schools and other venues to recruit young people to submit poetry, artwork, and photographs for a project called “Home: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly.” This project will result in a DIY publication of a zine that will be something that can be shared in print or digitally. When the zine is completed, there will be a reception with reading and projection of the featured poems, art, and photos of the young people who are willing to perform their pieces.
Poet Laureate:
Miguel Santistevan
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 Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, and 40 Weeks. Solastalgia, 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 Machine, In 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 Magazine, Buckman 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.
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 Here, Poetry Ireland Review, Taos International Journal of Poetry and the Arts, International Journal of War, Literature 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.
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 Today. M 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 Review, Borderlands, Water Stone, International Review of Poetry, Southern Indiana Review, Schuylkill Review, Hurricane Review, Big River, Apalachee Review, Deep Water Literary Review, Garden 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
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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
