Join us April 30 from 3-4:30pm for a Feast of Poetry at Book Beat. In honor of National Poetry Month, we will be hosting a poetry reading with five Michigan-based writers. There will be copies of books available to sign and “no choice” coffee available. Read more about the poets and their new books below.
Chris Tysh is a poet, playwright, translator, and teaches creative writing and women’s studies at Wayne State University. She has recieved the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship, and serves as the poetry editor at Three Fold. She is the author of numerous books including Hotel Des Archives: A Trilogy, Derrida’s In/Voice, Night Scales: A Fable for Klara K, and Our Lady of the Flowers, Echoic. Her most recent collection of poems, 26 Tears (BlazeVox, 2022), is a collaboration with George Tysh, “a quiet poetic conversation between two poets […] in slant-stanzaed, short-lined poems that touch mind and heart in all registers.” (Norman Fischer)
George Tysh is a poet and founding member of the Detroit Artist’s Workshop. He served on the faculty at College for Creative Studies in Detroit and has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Kresge Foundation, and an Arts Achievement Award from Wayne State University. His recent books include The Slip, A Thousand Words and Others, and 26 Tears with Chris Tysh.
Andrew Collard currently teaches as a Visiting Professor at Grand Valley State University and is a poetry editor at Third Coast Magazine. His debut poetry collection Sprawl won the 2023 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and was published by Ohio University Press in March.
Other work has recently appeared in Bennington Review, Praire Schooner, and Denver Quarterly. He currently lives in Grand Rapids. Read an interview with Collard about his new book over at The Cincinatti Review.
“These poems zoom into and out from intimate moments, showcasing nuances of public and private topographies. This collection is a superb demonstration of the role of the modern writer as witness to their times.”
—Heather Lang-Cassera, author of Gathering Broken Light
Shayla Hawkins is a Detroit native and winner of The Caribbean Writer Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for Short Fiction and The John Edgar Wideman Microstory Contest. Her new collection of poems, Exquisite by September (EastOver Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize.
She has published in many anthologies, journals, and her previous book is Carambola (David Robert Books, 2012).
“There’s an exotic sensualness threading the poems in Hawkins’ outstanding collection…Hawkins skillfully balances moments of deep pleasure, love, and beauty with harsh societal realities in a truly exquisite collection you will not want to miss.”
-Diane DeCillis, author of When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double
Kim Hunter is a Detroit poet and activist. He is a recipient of the Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship, and has worked with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project and the Woodward Line Poetry Series. Hunter has published two collections of poetry, Borne on Slow Knives (Past Tents Press, 2001) and Edge of the Time Zone (White Print Inc., 2009) and has written a short story collection: The Official Report on Human Activity (Wayne State University Press, 2018),
His writing has been featuring in various magazines, especially Against the Current, a journal promoting discussion among activists, organizers, and scholars on the Left.
“Part Franz Kafka, part Samuel Delaney, and part Percival Everett—discerning readers often seek but rarely find. This collection of short fiction (The Official Report on Human Activity) ushers in a voice new only to audiences outside the Midwest where many of us have been reading kim hunter, one of our best kept secrets, for years.”
– Tyrone Williams