Juliana Spahr reads "Ars Poeticas"

During the time of an increasingly powerful alt-right which was also the time when species extinction was ever increasing, Juliana Spahr sat down to read Brecht. She was looking for an answer to Brecht’s question about the dark times, about whether there will also be singing during the dark times. The answer that Brecht provides is that yes, that poets will sing of the dark times. In the six ars poeticas that Spahr writes, she sings of the dark times but also of coral, the pop song’s possible liberation, and the love of comrades. She writes not only of the rich history of what politics and poetry have done with each other, but what they might yet do together.

This event is open to the general public and does not require registration (but please note that our seating is limited). Tea and coffee will be served before the event in the Piano Lounge, Graham House.

Co-organized with UBC Creative Writing. Series Conveners: Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Poet Laureate of Vancouver; and Bronwen Tate, Creative Writing, UBC

Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, Juliana Spahr is a poet and scholar interested in questions of transformation, language, and ecology. Spahr’s work crosses a variety of American landscapes, from the disappearing beaches of Hawaii to the small town of her Appalachian childhood. Her books of criticism and theory include Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment (2018) and Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (2001). Spahr’s poems have focused on reading as a “communal, democratic, and open process.” Her books of poetry include Ars Poeticas (2025), winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; That Winter the Wolf Came (2015); Well Then There Now (2011); The Transformation (2007); This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (2005); Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You (2001); and Response (1996), which won a National Poetry Series Award.

She has edited several volumes of essays and poetry, including Writing from the New Coast: Technique (1993); A Poetics of Criticism (1994); American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language (2002), with Claudia Rankine; and Poetry and Pedagogy: the Challenge of the Contemporary (2006). Spahr has also written two loosely autofictional novels, An Army of Lovers (2013) and The Transformation (2007). She has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and is currently on the faculty at Mills College at Northeastern University.