Burial Rituals of the Habitual Tomorrow

The Voice, Art, and Community: UMN Series presents three Minnesota poets in conversation engaging poetry as a process of presence, absence, and coming into being. In this hybrid event, there will be poetry as myth, vengeance, sigil-work, and hex-craft.

Please register here.

This hybrid event will take place in person at the Cowles Auditorium, or via livestream. Those attending in person are invited to a reception following the program at Hubert H. Humphrey Center.

The Voice, Art, and Community: UMN Series features diverse voices through the arts and humanities. Events in this series explore lived experiences and individual perspectives of creators, introducing nuanced conversations that further our understanding of equity, justice, and our public and institutional history. The art goes beyond what we see and hear and allows us to learn about the experiences and circumstances that inspired it. This collaborative initiative features events from across the University of Minnesota system and community partners.

Heid E. Erdrich authored six collections of poetry and a nonfiction Indigenous foods book. Her honors include the recently announced 2022 Library of Congress Bobbitt Poetry Prize, a National Poetry Series award, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship, Loft-McKnight Fellowship, Minnesota State Arts Board grants, and two Minnesota Book Awards. Erdrich edited the anthology New Poets of Native Nations. Her recent poetry collection, Little Big Bully, won the Balcones Prize. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota with a German American father, an Ojibwe-Metis mother, and six siblings. Erdrich is enrolled at Turtle Mountain. She’s an independent scholar and curator. Her forthcoming book is a mixed genre work on collaboration with other artists.

Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is a poet, writer, and cultural worker. Shin is the author of the poetry collections The Wet Hex (2022); Unbearable Splendor (finalist for the 2017 PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry, winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for poetry); Rough, and Savage; and Skirt Full of Black (winner of the 2007 Asian American Literary Award for poetry). She is co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, and author of bilingual illustrated book for children Cooper’s Lesson. She is the editor of What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family (2021) and of A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. She lives in Minneapolis where she co-directs the community organization Poetry Asylum with poet Su Hwang.

Douglas Kearney has published eight books ranging from poetry to essays to libretti. His collection of Bagley Wright Lectures, Optic Subwoof, was published in November 2022. His most recent poetry collection, Sho (Wave Books), is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner, and a National Book Award, Pen America, Hurston/Wright, Kingsley Tufts, and Big Other Book Award finalist. He is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. Kearney is a 2022 McKnight Writing Fellow. A Whiting Writer’s and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee with residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others, he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.

For questions, contact Serena Wright, Director of Special Events and Projects, Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, at menning@umn.edu