The Muse Times Two Poetry Reading Series with Cyrus Cassells and Kate Braid

Event Description

Collected Works Bookstore proudly features poets Cyrus Cassells and Kate Braid for a reading from their latest work.

Cyrus Cassells is the author of the poetry collections The Mud Actor, which was a National Poetry Series Selection; Soul Make a Path Through Shouting, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won a William Carlos Williams Award; Beautiful Signor, which was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award; More Peace Than Cypresses; and The Crosssed-Out Swastika. He is the recipient of the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  He teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University - San Marcos.

Cyrus Cassells' fifth book,  The Crossed-Out Swastika, commemorates the blazing integrity of young people caught in the vise of World War II.  Cassells follows the lives of historical and semi-fictional characters to amplify moments of almost impossible music, bravery, beauty, and redemption, illuminating the human spirit against unspeakable tyranny.  Reviewing the book, poet Li-Young Li noted, "In The Crossed-Out Swastika, Cyrus Cassells sets out to accomplish a genuine synthesis, to know the nature of the powers which thwart our human evolution, and to create a voice which can account for them and comprehend them."

Kate Braid is a former construction worker whose career as a poet grew out of the journals she kept while on the job.  She has taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and Vancouver Island University.  She is the author of the poetry collections Turning Left to the Ladies, A Well-Mannered Storm: The Glenn Gould Poems, To This Cedar Fountain, Inward to the Bones: Georgia O'Keefe's Journey with Emily Carr, and Covering Rough Ground.  She has also edited a number of collections, including In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry.  She was honored by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation as one of the Remarkable Women in 2012, and from May 17 - June 2, 2012, she will serve as Writer-in-Residence at Mabel Dodge Lujan House in Taos.

Kate Braid's latest book, Turning Left to the Ladies, catalogues some of the poet's experiences during her fifteen years of working in construction.  Of the collection, Our Times said, "Always clear and accessible, Braid's poetry is rich with vivid descriptive details, mini-narratives, character, and truths of every day experience, making Turning Left to the Ladies a compelling collection for women or men, whether they are blue-collar or white-collar, as well as for the poetry-averse and for the poetry fan alike."  Inward to the Bones: Georgia O'Keefe's Journey with Emily Carr is an imaginary journal that painter Georgia O'Keefe might have kept if she and Canadian painter Emily Carr had ever taken a trip together throughout New Mexico and British Columbia.  It was nominated one of the Literary Network's Top Ten Canadian Poetry Books for 1999, and won the Vancity Book Award.