Main Street Poetry Read

depositphotos_102004392-stock-illustration-group-of-children-reading-books.jpgJoin the Locust Grove Arts Alliance in a mass poetry reading being held in conjunction with the Big Read celebration of Joy Harjo’s book How We Became Human.  Eighty-five participants will line Main Street and read the poems in Harjo’s book all at once. Each person will have one of the 85 poems in the book to read and at 2:15, everyone will begin reading out loud the poem they have been assigned or chosen. Everyone else is invited to roam up and down the street listening. The poems will be read over and over again until 3:00 p.m.

If you would like to read one of the poems, please check the list below to make sure a reader (name in all caps) has not already been assigned to it and then email Shaun Perkins, ROMPoetry@gmail.com with your name and selection OR fill out the form at the bottom of this page. A few free books are still available.

Poems (and page numbers) in How We Became Human

  1. SANDY PIERCE, Watching Crow, Looking South Toward the Manzano Mountains (3)
  2. ROBB ROSE, for a hopi silversmith (4)
  3. San Juan Pueblo and South Dakota Are 800 Miles Away on a Map (5)
  4. BILL GUTHRIE, he told me his name was sitting bull (6)
  5. 3 A.M. (8)
  6. MAKAYLA MARTIN the last song (9)
  7. Are You Still There? (10)
  8. BETTY PERKINS, Conversations Between Here and Home (11)
  9. Four Horse Songs (12)
  10. JERRY YATES, I am a Dangerous Woman (17)
  11. There was a Dance, Sweetheart (18)
  12. Crossing the Border (20)
  13. Someone Talking (22)
  14. SARAH SCALES Fire (25)
  15. Call it Fear (29)
  16. Anchorage (31)
  17. For Alva Benson, and for Those Who Have Learned to Speak (33)
  18. BILL MCCLOUD The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window (35)
  19. White Bear (38)
  20. Skeleton of Winter (40)
  21. ADELE COLLETTE, Remember (42)
  22. New Orleans (43)
  23. ALYSSA FIELDS She Had Some Horses (47)
  24. SANDY BURFORD, I Give You Back (50)
  25. My House Is the Red Earth (55)
  26. If You Look with the Mind of the Swirling Earth (56)
  27. If All Events are Related (57)
  28. ROXANN YATES  This Land Is a Poem (58)
  29. Anything That Matters (59)
  30. SARA VAN HORN, Invisible Fish (60)
  31. Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit
  32. It Is an Honor (62)
  33. GWEN POOL  Grace (65)
  34. Deer Dancer (67)
  35. For Anna Mae Pietou Aquash, Whose Spirit is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (70)
  36. CINDY ROHLIND, Trickster (72)
  37. CASSIE SHIRES Bird (73)
  38. The Real Revolution is Love (75)
  39. PAT SPARKS Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On (78)
  40. Rainy Dawn (79)
  41. Santa Fe (80)
  42. Desire (81)
  43. The Book of Myths (82)
  44. ASHLY CALL, Transformations (84)
  45. CARA SCHWICHTENBERG, Eagle Poem (85)
  46. Reconciliation, a Prayer (89)
  47. The Creation Story (91)
  48. The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (93)
  49. The Flood (100)
  50. MEREDITH REEDER, A Postcolonial Tale (104)
  51. The Myth of Blackbirds (106)
  52. The Song of the House in the House (108)
  53. Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century (110)
  54. ALYSHA LITTLE, Promise of Blue Horses (113)
  55. The Place the Musician Became a Bear (114)
  56. Fishing (116)
  57. Promise (118)
  58. The Dawn Appears with Butterflies (120)
  59. KELLY PALMER  Perhaps the World Ends Here (123)
  60. Songline of Dawn (127)
  61. A Map to the Next World (129)
  62. The End (133)
  63. Emergence (136)
  64. VERLA FLETCHER Songs from the House of Death, or How to Make It Through to the End of a Relationship (138)
  65. The Path to the Milky Way Leads Through Los Angeles (141)
  66. The Power of Never (143)
  67. Hold Up (146)
  68. Returning from the Enemy (149)
  69. The Ceremony (165)
  70. This is My Heart (167)
  71. Protocol (169)
  72. Morning Song (171)
  73. In Praise of Earth (175)
  74. Letter (with songline) to the Breathmaker (177)
  75. I Am Not Ready to Die Yet (179)
  76. SULA ROBERTSON Naming (181)
  77. JASMINE BARK Faith (182)
  78. Equinox (184)
  79. Ah, Ah (185)
  80. AMY CLARK, Morning Prayers (186)
  81. The Everlasting (188)
  82. And If I Awaken in Los Angeles (192)
  83. DUSTIN LITTLE, It’s Raining in Honolulu (194)
  84. Rushing the Pali (195)
  85. EMILY HOFF When the World as We Knew It Ended (198)

To reserve one of the above poems, be sure you are available April 27, from 2-3 pm and then fill out the form below. If you don’t know which poem to choose, just sign up and we will choose one for you and have it available for you when you come!