Join us in person or remotely for a hybrid poetry reading and exhibit launch featuring contributors to the new anthology The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders. The exhibit of poetry and images at Poets House explores how nature shapes our lives, and how we can shape nature’s future.

In-person readers include Kimberly Blaeser, Vina Orden, Joanna Solfrian, Leah Umansky, and anthology coeditor David Hassler. Online readers include anthology coeditors Luisa A. Igloria and Aileen Cassinetto, as well Ching-In Chen, Kinsale Drake, Jane Hirshfield, Philip Metres, Dorsía Smith Silva, and Arthur Sze.

Published by Paloma Press in collaboration with the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and Poets for Science, The Nature of Our Times is a companion to the United By Nature Initiative, a first-of-its-kind, national assessment of U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife.

Presented in collaboration with the Wick Poetry Center and the Poetry Coalition.

7-8:30pm Poetry Readings in Kray Hall and streamed on zoom. 

About the Poets:

Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts, and Professor Emerita at UW-Milwaukee.

Vina Orden’s work has appeared in CUNY Forum, hella pinay, Hyperallergic, and The Margins. A senior poetry editor at Slant’d magazine, she has received fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kweli, Roots. Wounds. Words., Tin House, and VONA. 

Joanna Solfrian’s first book, Visible Heavens, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2009 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. She is also the author of the collections The Mud Room, The Second Perfect Number, and Temporary Beast. www.joannasolfrian.com 

Leah Umansky’s newest collection, Of Tyrant is out now with The Word Works. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has run The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work can be found on PBS, The Slowdown Podcast, and in such places as The New York Times, Rhino, Plume, and Poetry magazine. www.leahumansky.com

David Hassler is the Bob and Walt Wick Executive Director at Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center. With Poets for Science founder Jane Hirshfield, he and the Wick Poetry Center have led the Poets for Science initiative since 2017. He is the author or editor of ten books of poetry and nonfiction. His awards include Ohio Poet of the Year, the Ohioana Book Award, and the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award. 

Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press, 2024), fourteen other books, and four chapbooks. Originally from Baguio City, she makes her home in Norfolk, VA where she is the Louis I. Jaffe and University Professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. She also leads workshops for and is a member of the board of The Muse Writers Center. Luisa is the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita. During her term, the Academy of American Poets awarded her a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship. www.luisaigloria.com 

Aileen Cassinetto is the co-founder of Paloma Press and a co-editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023). Her work has been honored by the Academy of American Poets, America Media, Brilliant Poetry, Metro Film and Arts Foundation, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. A former poet laureate of San Mateo County, California, she serves as Commissioner on the Status of Women for San Mateo County. www.aileencassinetto.com 

Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart’s Traffic, recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry), and the forthcoming Shiny City. Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They are a Kelsey Street Press collective member and Airlie Press editor. www.chinginchen.com 

Kinsale Drake (Diné) is winner of the 2023 National Poetry Series for her debut poetry collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poets.org, The Atlantic, Best New Poets, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She directs programming for NDN Girls Book Club, which distributes free books to Indigenous youth and communities. 

Jane Hirshfield’s most recent book is The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023). Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American, Poetry, and ten editions of Best American Poems. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the founder of Poets for Science, she was elected in 2019 into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 

Philip Metres has written twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge (2024). Winner of three Arab  American Book Awards, a Guggenheim, two NEA fellowships, and a Pushcart Prize, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. 

Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), a finalist for the Whirling Prize. She is Lead Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Literary Hub, Poets.org, The Los Angeles Review, and the Beloit Poetry Journal have published her work. 

Arthur Sze is the 25th, and first Asian American, United State Poet Laureate. Arthur Sze’s latest books are Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025) and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2025). He received the 2025 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from Yale University and also the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.