An Evening of Poetry and Georgia Poetry Prize Book Release

As with our other events for the Poetry@TECH 2020-21 season, this event will be held virtually on BlueJeans. Which means, not only are our readings FREE and open to the public, as always, but you can attend them from anywhere in the world!

To attend the Evening of Poetry reading with Natalie Diaz and Chioma Urama on 11 February 2021, follow the instructions below. The reading will begin at 7 pm Eastern Time, but our (virtual) doors open at 6:45 pm ET. We will use BlueJeans to live broadcast the readings.

Web stream information:

Joining the reading is easy - just choose the platform that works best for you, and follow the instructions below:

Join via your Computer’s Web Browser: Click Here:

https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/live-event/pzzccxyz

Join on your Mobile Device: Click Here

1. Open the link above
2. Download the app if you don’t have it already.
3. Enter event ID : pzzccxyz

Join by Phone:

Dial one of the following numbers, enter the participant PIN followed by # to confirm:

• +1 (415) 466-7000 (US), PIN: 7908015#
• +1 (760) 699-0393 (US), PIN: 1682703883#

Join from outside the US: Click Here

https://www.bluejeans.com/numbers/primetime-attendees/event?id=pzzccxyz

      An Evening of Poetry is also the official book release event for Chioma Urama's breathtaking debut full-length collection of poems, A Body of Water, winner of the 2019 Georgia Poetry Prize. We are proud to host this event in collaboration with our partners, The University of Georgia Press, and especially proud to host the release of Chioma's prize-winning debut collection.

      The Georgia Poetry Prize was established through the generous support of the Georgia and Bruce McEver Fund for the Arts and Environment at the University of Georgia Press. The 2019 Georgia Poetry Prize judge Magdalena Zurawski, says of Chioma's collection:

The poems in Chioma Urama’s collection surprise and delight in their style and daring, in their range of modes, sometimes personal, sometimes historical. The strength of the work is the communication that occurs between poems–a constellation slowly emerges where each poem becomes for the reader a different point on a map, a map that marks the distances, the proximities, between historical trauma and its intergenerational effects.

      Please join us in welcoming Chioma's collection of work. You can purchase copies of the book through our book sales partner, A Cappella Books.

Links

• 'Chioma Urama Wins 2019 Georgia Poetry Prize', Prize Announcement from University of Georgia Press.
• 'A Body of Water' at the UGA Press Website

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her debut poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. Her second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem  (Graywolf Press, 2020) was a finalist for the National Book Award.

She is 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program and is the youngest Chancellor ever elected to the Academy of American Poets.

Poet's Website

Bio Page at Poetry@TECH

Chioma Urama’s work has been published in Pleiades, Blackbird, Paper Darts, the Normal School, Southern Humanities Review, and Prairie Schooner. She received the 2019 Georgia Poetry Prize for her collection A Body of Water (University of Georgia Press, 2021), which is forthcoming this February. She also received the 2015 Fred Shaw Fiction Prize and an honorable mention in the 2017 Lindenwood Review Lyric Essay Contest.

Urama is a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship alum and a graduate of the University of Miami MFA program, where she was a Michener Fellow. She teaches creative writing and composition at the University of New Orleans.

Poet's Website

Bio Page at Poetry@TECH

As always, A Cappella Books, Atlanta’s oldest independent bookstore will be our official book sales partner for this event. We hope you’ll get a copy of Natalie Diaz's and Chioma Urama’s books. You can order at the following links:

• Chioma Urama, A Body of Water (University of Georgia Press, 2021). Winner of the 2019 Georgia Poetry Prize.
• Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). 2020 National Book Award Finalist.
• Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012).
• When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo (W. W. Norton & Company, 2020), featuring Natalie Diaz.

Join with a Room Teleconferencing System:

If you have a teleconferencing system and would like to stream the reading through this system (for a class group, or a watch party, for example), follow the instructions below:

1. Dial: bjn.vc or 199.48.152.152 in the room system.
    
2. If you have a laptop paired with a room system (recommended), go to this room system event link on your laptop browser (https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/live-event/pzzccxyz/room-system/), then enter the pairing code displayed on your room system screen into your browser.
    
3. Alternatively, to directly connect through the room system, without using the laptop, enter the meeting ID: 219959290 and Passcode: 5285