Breaking the Silence II (2017), Kazuki Takizawa
Join us for an evening of poetry hosted by Brendan Constantine and welcoming poets Kaveh Akbar, Paige Lewis, and Los Angeles' newly minted Poet Laureate, Lynne Thompson. This program marks the return of a special series where poets are invited to create new and original works in response to Craft Contemporary's exhibitions. This evening we celebrate the work of glass artist Kazuki Takizawa. The poets will read original work inspired by Takizawa’s art. This event is made possible thanks to generous support from the Ruskin Art Club and Denenberg Fine Arts.
Kazuki Takizawa is a Japanese glass artist based in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a BFA in glass art in 2010 and currently owns and runs KT Glassworks.
Brendan Constantine, an ardent supporter of Southern California’s poetry communities and one of its most recognized poets, has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe. He currently teaches creative writing at the Windward School in LA.
Poet Elena Karina Byrne, longtime Literary Programs Director for the Ruskin Art Club, will release her fourth book If This Makes You Nervous with Omnidawn in October 2021 and a separate chapbook entitled No, Don’t with What Books Press in 2020. She is currently enrolled in Antioch University Santa Barbara's MFA program in Writing & Contemporary Media.
Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran. He holds an MFA from Butler University and a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University. He is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017) and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). Akbar is the recipient of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Pushcart Prize, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He is the founder of the poetry interview website Divedapper. He currently teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College.
Paige Lewis
Paige Lewis is the author of Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, and elsewhere. Paige curates the video series Ours Poetica, produced in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and Complexly. Paige teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College.
Lynne Thompson
A native Angeleno, Thompson is the author of Fretwork, Start With a Small Guitar, and Beg No Pardon, and received an Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles in 2015. Her other awards include the 2016 Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize and the 2017 Tucson Literary Award (Poetry). One of Thompson’s poems was included in the 2020 Best American Poetry anthology. Her most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, New England Review, Nelle, Pleiades, and Colorado Review, among others. Widely anthologized, her poems also appear in Coiled Serpent, Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles and Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. She was appointed LA Poet Laureate by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on February 24, 2021.