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Spring Forward Series: Amie Whittemore & Travis Mossotti
A Poetry in the Woods Event
April 8 @ 4:00 pm
Join us for an evening of springing forward with a literary walk through Old Orchard in Webster Groves!
In conjunction with Poetry in the Woods, acclaimed poets Amie Whittemore & Travis Mossotti present a craft talk, literary meet-and-greet, and poetry reading and conversation. Presented in partnership with the Poetry in the Woods and The Novel Neighbor.
EVENT INFO
Craft Talk: Poetry & Renewal
at Webster University Pearson House
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Literary Meet & Greet
at Frisco Barroom
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Poetry Reading: Amie Whittemore & Travis Mossotti
at Novel Neighbor Bookstore
7:00pm – 8:00pm
Doors open at 6:30pm for the poetry reading
Seating will be offered on a first come, first served basis.
Books available for purchase from The Novel Neighbor.
Seating is limited, and registration through Poetry in the Woods events page is strongly encouraged:
ABOUT THE BOOKS
NEST OF MATCHES
Amie Whittemore
Nest of Matches is a lavish declaration of the beauty of the natural world, queer identity, and of the imagination set free. Whittemore’s third collection explores the complexities of love—romantic, familial, and love for place—and wonders at cycles of life, finding that: “Every habit / even love—strangest / of them all—offers exhaustion / and renewal.” Moving seamlessly from meditations on the moon’s phases to explorations of dream spaces to searches for meaning through patterns of love and loss, Whittemore’s work embodies the mysteries of dichotomies—grief and joy, consciousness and unconsciousness, habit and spontaneity—and how they coexist to create our identities. Throughout the collection, Whittemore reveals how interior nature manifests into exterior habits and how physical landscapes shape the psyche.
APOCRYPHAL GENESIS
Travis Mossotti
Apocryphal Genesis comes as a reminder of how deeply personal an impersonal world can often feel. The failed promises of the previous centuries are mere preamble to the predicaments of the current one. Humanity’ s contentment to entertain the illusion of control over the world around us is also the source of our collective discontent. In Mossotti’s poems, dark humor underpins every turn. His wit cuts through the bang and blab of what passes for polite discourse, and his visions are jarring and delightful in equal measure. His poems cinematically zoom from the exceedingly distant vantages of “ telescopes scraping deeper into the womb / of the universe” to the microscopic “ space between the whirl of electrons.” While the ghost of Apollinaire guides the reader through these haunting poems, it’ s the poet himself who’ s on display more often than not (like a moth pinned inside a glass case), naked and unadorned. Apocryphal Genesis is a book that’ s mature enough to be unimpressed with the trappings of maturity. It’ s the first glance the poet’ s after, subtle movement of stirrings under the leaf litter, and page after page, Mossotti transforms the cosmically divine into something indelible.
ABOUT THE POETS
AMIE WHITTEMORE (she/her) is the author of Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press), Star-Tent: A Triptych (Tolsun Books), and Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press, 2024). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was named a 2020 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow. Through her laureateship she partnered with Southern Word to offer Write with Pride, a series of poetry workshops and open mics for LGBT+ teens in Rutherford and Davidson counties. She is Director of MTSU Write, a from-home, one-on-one creative writing certificate program and teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University. She holds degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (B.A.), Lewis & Clark College (M.A.T.), and Southern Illinois University Carbondale (M.F.A.). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, Blackbird, The Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Cold Mountain Review, Pleiades, The Account, and elsewhere.
TRAVIS MOSSOTTI‘s previous collections are About the Dead, Field Study, Narcissus Americana, and Racecar Jesus. He’ s been the recipient of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, the May Swenson Book Award, the Christopher Smart – Joan Alice Poetry Prize, the Alma Book Award, and others. Mossotti’s fifth collection, Apocryphal Genesis, was just released with Saturnalia Books. He currently serves as a Biodiversity Fellow for the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University. He lives and works in St. Louis.
PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
