Join us for an evening filled with poetry and photos, featuring poets Kyle McCord and Paul Brooke.

In What to Do in a Time of Impending Doom, Kyle McCord forges a poetics of social justice that is at once ambitious in scope and deeply personal. What’s so refreshing about this collection,
though, is the way McCord addresses social issues head-on while at the same time offering the complexity and purposeful ambiguity that is missing from much of contemporary discourse.

In his new book, Pantagruelian: Photographs and Poems of Torres del Paine, Paul Brooke follows a narrative created with a series of cueca chilenas (form poems). It features the story of a woman who walks into the wilderness and is saved by pumas after she becomes destitute and despondent. Brooke expertly weaves this myth with local knowledge of the wildlife while exploring the beauty and harsh realities of the lives of pumas in Torres Del Paine, Chile. He will also show images from his new book and read poems inspired by his interaction with up close interactions with pumas.

Dr. Kyle McCord is the author of seven books including National Poetry Series Finalist Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders and the novel Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult. He has work featured or forthcoming in AGNI, Blackbird, Boston Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He’s received grants or awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Baltic Writing Residency. Kyle holds an M.F.A. from University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. He served as associate poetry editor of The Nation and currently serves as Executive Editor of Gold Wake Press and Acquisitions Director for Atmosphere Press.

Dr. Paul Brooke is a Professor of English at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he teaches Advanced Creative Writing, Environmental Literature, Creative Photography, Poetry Writing, Introduction to Nonfiction, Editing and Digital Publishing, Contemporary Literature, Diverse Voices, Novel Writing, Major Authors, and Literary Theory. His writing has been featured in such journals as the North American Review, The Antioch Review, Rocky Mountain Review, Scientific American, International Poetry Review, Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, and the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and the Environment.