Poetry of Insects and Interconnection

Join us on Saturday, May 25, at 7:00 PM as poets Brenda Cardenas, Nickole Brown, Catherine Jagoe, and Heather Swan read poems celebrating some of the smallest creatures in our ecosystem and illuminating how we are all deeply interconnected...humans, frogs, birds, and fungi. Cardenas, Brown (who will be joining through Zoom), and Jagoe are featured in Swan's new nonfiction book Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection. The reading will be followed by special musical guests The Stolen Sea performing "Blanket Songs."

In the Project Space, enjoy the insect artworks by John Hitchcock, Jenny Angus, Tilly Woodward, and Lea Bradovich.

Heather Swan

Heather Swan's poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, The Hopper, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain, and in many anthologies. She is the author of the poetry collections A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin), which was a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and Dandelion (Terrapin). She is also a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the Maud Weinshenk Award, the August Derleth Prize for Poetry, and an honorable mention for the Lorine Niedecker Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. A companion book, Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection, will be published in spring 2024. She teaches environmental literature... Read More

Brenda Cárdenas

Brenda Cárdenas authored Trace (Red Hen Press), Boomerang (Bilingual Press) and three chapbooks. She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary journals and anthologies, such as Poetry; Prairie Schooner, Braving the Body; Latinx Poetics: The Art of Poetry; TAB: Journal of Poetry and Poetics; Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing; and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Anthology. She has enjoyed collaborating with musicians, composers, visual artists, and choreographers, and her poem “Para los Tin-Tun-Teros” set to choral music by Daniel Afonso was published by Hal Leonard Music and will be performed at Carnegie Hall in March 2024.... Read More

Nickole Brown

Nickole Brown is the author of Sister, first published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, Fanny Says (BOA Editions), won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. Currently, she teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program and lives in Asheville, NC, where she volunteers at several different animal sanctuaries. Since 2016, she’s been writing about these animals. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of these first nine poems, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. She spends every summer teaching as part of the low-residency MFA program in Sewanee and is the President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, an annual environmental literary festival set to launch in Black Mountain, NC, in October of 2025.

Catherine Jagoe

Catherine Jagoe is a writer and translator based in Madison. Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Poetry Daily and she is a semi-regular contributor to Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life series. Her previous poetry collections include Bloodroot, News from the North, and Casting Off, as well as three collections of Uruguayan poetry in translation. She is currently completing a memoir in essays. Her new volume of poems about the environment, Praying to the God of Small Things, is due out with Kelsay Books this summer.

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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

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