Nothing Begins with Us: An Evening with Lansing's Poets Laureate Laura Apol and Dennis Hinrichsen
Wed, November 10, 2021 7:00 PM - Wed, November 10, 2021 8:30 PM at Online
Presented in partnership with the Lansing Poetry Club and Lansing Economic Area Partnership (LEAP)
To view a recording of this event, click here.
The Lansing Poet Laureate program was established in 2017 through a partnership between the Lansing Economic Area Partnership (LEAP), the Lansing Poetry Club, and the RCAH Center for Poetry, and serves Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham Counties in order to promote poetry as an art form, to expand access to the literary arts, and to showcase poetry as a literary voice that contributes to a greater sense of place.
Dennis Hinrichsen served as Lansing Poet Laureate from 2017-2019 and Laura Apol served from 2019-2021.
Please join us as they talk about their terms and offer readings of their work.
Laura Apol is the author of several chapbooks and full-length collections of poetry, including Falling into Grace; Crossing the Ladder of Sun (winner of the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry); Requiem, Rwanda (finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Poetry; drawn from her work using writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi); and Nothing but the Blood (winner of the Oklahoma Book Award and the silver medal for the Independent Publisher Award for poetry). She has conducted writing-for-healing workshops in a number of national and international contexts, and her recent publication, Poetry, Poetic Inquiry, and Rwanda: Engaging with the Lives of Others (Springer International, 2021) focuses on arts-based inquiry, international collaboration, and the therapeutic uses of writing in response to trauma. Her newest poetry collection, A Fine Yellow Dust, was released in August 2021. From 2019-2021, she served as Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing area in Michigan.
Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent work is schema geometrica, winner of the Wishing Jewel Prize from Green Linden Press. His previous work includes [q / lear], a chapbook from Green Linden Press and This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else To Go, winner of the 2020 Grid Poetry Prize. His other awards include the 2015 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Prize from Map Literary for Electrocution, A Partial History, the 2014 Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press for Skin Music, the 2010 Tampa Poetry Prize for Rip-tooth, the 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize for Kurosawa’s Dog and the 1999 Akron Poetry Prize for Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights as well as the 2016 Third Coast Poetry Prize and a 2014 Best of the Net Award. Work of his also can be found in two anthologies from Michigan State University Press, Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice, and RESPECT: An Anthology of Poems on Detroit Music. He lives in Lansing, Michigan, where from May 2017 - April 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing area.