1455’s Author Series continues with Susan Rich, who will read from Blue Atlas.
EVENT DETAILS
APRIL 9 | 6:00 PM EST | Facebook Live
1455’s Founding Director Sean Murphy will speak with Susan about this book and the craft of poetry, followed by a Q&A.
ABOUT BLUE ATLAS
Blue Atlas is a lyrical abortion narrative unlike any other. This one-of-a-kind collection follows a Jewish woman and her ghosts as they travel from West Africa to Europe, and finally, to the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The speaker searches repeatedly for a new outcome, seeking answers in a myriad of mediums such as an on-line questionnaire, a freshman composition essay, and a curriculum vitae. The raw, often far from idyllic experience of a global love affair which results in an unplanned pregnancy, is examined and meditated upon through a surreal prism. The Blue Atlas, a genus of the common cedar tree first found in the High Atlas of Morocco and known for its beauty and resilience, becomes a metaphor for the hardship and power of a fully engaged life.
The remarkable poems of Blue Atlas chart an expansive life which spins around an epicenter of loss, but loss is too tame a word, really, for what this speaker bears. “I am a woman swollen with the history of my dead,” Rich writes, “a body awash in stories.” She describes an imperiled childhood and a young adulthood that culminates in a coerced midterm abortion, which “stays suspended in resin / like a tiny scorpion, / transforming anger into amber.” Blue Atlas exquisitely performs the way trauma—the utter loss of self-determination, of choice—can turn a life to seawater, to drift, to “somehow, the might still be—” mapping “constellations of in-between,” suspended between deciding and undeciding, from a space outside of the circumference of longing, where poetry lives.
—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
ABOUT Susan Rich
Susan Rich is the author of six books of poetry including Blue Atlas (forthcoming from Red Hen Press, April 2024), Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy (White Pine Press), shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue / Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award.
Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets: Poem-a-Day, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bennington Review, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, New England Review, O Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Slowdown, among other places. Rich’s anthologized poems and essays are included in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy; Best Essays of the Northwest, Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium and Poets of the American West. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net Awards.
Her writing has received fellowships from Artists Trust, Seattle/King County, 4Culture, the Fulbright Foundation, and Peace Corps Writers.
Website: poetsusanrich.com
Twitter: @susanrichpoet
Instagram: @susanrich18
Facebook: facebook.com/Susan.Rich18.writer
ABOUT Sean Murphy
Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts. He has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and been publishing reviews and essays for the last two decades. His third collection of poems, Kinds of Blue, and his first collection of short stories, This Kind of Man, are forthcoming in 2024. He has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, and his book Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone was the winner of Memoir Magazine’s 2022 Memoir Prize.
Website: seanmurphy.net | bullmurph.com
Twitter: @bullmurph
Instagram: @bullmurph
Facebook: facebook.com/AuthorSeanMurphy
ABOUT 1455
At 1455, storytellers are sacred, and we’re dedicated to showcasing the written word and other forms of creative expression. Curating community through year-round free programming, 1455 connects art and audience via intimate conversations and the promotion of diverse voices. Taking our name from the year Gutenberg’s printing press helped democratize content on a global scale, 1455 continues the tradition of using technology to advance an understanding and appreciation of impactful storytelling. 1455 exists to serve anyone who appreciates the arts and is interested in the sort of community commonly found only in academia or online book clubs. Every day, 1455 will augment the passion for the literary and creative arts in adults and young people through programs that sponsor expression, education, and sharing of stories.
Website: 1455litarts.org
Twitter: @1455litarts
Instagram: @1455litarts
Facebook: facebook.com/1455litarts
ABOUT THE POTTER’S HOUSE
1455 is thrilled to partner with The Potter’s House bookshop.
The Potter’s House is a nonprofit café, bookstore, and event space in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC. Since opening our doors in 1960 we have been a key place for deeper conversation, creative expression, and community transformation. After closing in 2013 for major renovations, The Potter’s House re-opened in spring 2015 with a renewed space and revitalized offerings. In our rapidly changing city – one in which development so often means displacement – The Potter’s House is a deeply rooted space where we can build relationships across our differences, envision just alternatives, and grow the movements that will make them possible.
Website: pottershousedc.org
Twitter: @pottershousedc
Instagram: @pottershousedc
Facebook: facebook.com/pottershousedc
Address: 1658 Columbia Rd NW, Washington, DC 20009
