Thursday, February 21, 5-6pm
Bellas Artes, Hernandez Macías 75
$100

Poems of Home and Beyond - poetry

By Maia Williams

On February 21st, Poetry Café Bellas Artes will feature three poets who have led fascinating lives in multiple countries around the world.

Born in a small farming community in northern Canada, Leona DeFehr enjoyed a diverse international career. She and her husband Art ran a furniture manufacturing company, developed and directed refugee programs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Somalia, and created development programs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Nepal. Along the way, Leona’s music degree, singing, acting, piano playing, writing and art provided the balance.

Leona published a book on starting a university in Lithuania and her short stories and poems reflect her international life and experiences.

An observation from Anado McLauchlin:
In 1971 I left Oklahoma to give my art and poetry a “good go” in what I considered to be “Ground Zero”: the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island. Inspired by artists Allen Kaprow and Robert Rauschenberg and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and his lot…I set up shop in a yellow taxicab and went into the streets for a closer education in the depths of that magnificent city. I recited and physically presented my take on performance art and poetry in the venues that provided space for that art form at the time...St Marks in the Bowery, CBGB’s, 92nd Street YMCA, the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Theater for the New City and countless parks, coffee houses and bars in the East and West Village. The work was and is based in the rhythm of my particular life experience based in Beat Poetry and the sensual experience of Rock and Roll. The last public performance of my work in that period was in Central Park in the Summer of 1977 with Patti Smith and Lou Reed. Certain life experiences led me to leave that scene behind for the highlands of India and the mysteries available there… All these years later…I thought I would give these words a fond and proper rest in this upcoming event at the Poetry Café…

Laura Juliet Wood, MFA Columbia University, lives between San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Pensacola, Florida where she teaches, translates and writes. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Los Angeles Review, The Atlanta Review, The West Marin Review and The Hollins Critic. She is author of the book of poems, All Hands Lost, published in 2013 by Finishing Line Press and the forthcoming chapbook, Dreaming During the Advent of Rain. She is co-translator with Allen Josephs on their book-length translation of Spanish poet Fernando Valverde’s The Insistence of Harm, due out in fall of 2019 by University of Florida Press. Most recently she has taught poetry for the San Miguel de Allende Summer Workshops and as guest lecturer at the Pensacola Cultural Center.

Please arrive a few minutes early. Seating is limited.