Skip to content

Loading Events

Friday, February 25, 2022 @ 5:00 pm EST - 6:00 pm EST

Meeting Location:
  • Online
Virtual Event

Poet Laureates in Conversation: Suzanne Rhodes and Luisa A. Igloria

Muse instructor Suzanne Rhodes was named Poet Laureate of Arkansas!

Join The Muse Writers Center in celebrating with a virtual reading, followed by a conversation between Suzanne and Virginia Poet Laureate Luisa A. Igloria about what it means to be a poet laureate and poetry’s role in the public.

This event will be held live on Zoom and a recording will be available on the Muse Facebook page afterwards.

Register to attend the Zoom webinar.

 

Muse poetry instructor Suzanne Underwood Rhodes lives, writes, and teaches in the mountains of Fayetteville, Arkansas. A native of New York, she began writing poetry at age six and won several prizes for her poems as a girl. Inspired by teachers and others who nurtured her writing, Suzanne takes a passionate interest in developing other poets through workshops, mentoring, and editing.

Her poems explore personal history and family, the allure of the natural world, the psychological contradictions and complexities of human personality, and Christian spirituality. She holds words close to her ear to capture the rhythms and sounds that lead to poems.

She received a bachelor’s degree in English from James Madison University and a master of arts degree from Johns Hopkins University in the Writing Seminars where she held a teaching fellowship. She taught creative writing at King University and St. Leo University, and has given poetry workshops to students ages five to eighty. Currently, she conducts remote poetry workshops and classes at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. She owns and operates a small, independent communications business, PR Flair. Her latest collection of poems, Flying Yellow, came out in April 2021.

 

Muse teacher and Board member Luisa A. Igloria is the author of 14 books of poetry and 4 chapbooks. In July 2020, Governor Ralph Northam appointed her as the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In April, she was one of 23 Poet Laureate recipients nationwide of a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, she now makes her home in Virginia with most of her family. She is a Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Creative Writing and English, and from 2009-2015 was Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University. In the Spring Term 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Visiting Writer in Residence at Washington & Lee University.

Her work has appeared or been accepted in numerous anthologies and journals including New England Review, The Common, Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Poetry East, Umbrella, Sweet, qarrtsiluni, poemeleon, Smartish Pace, Rattle, The North American Review, Bellingham Review, Shearsman (UK), PRISM International (Canada), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), The Asian Pacific American Journal, and TriQuarterly.

 

 

 

Please note: This class or event will be held online (using Zoom or a similar live platform). To participate, students or attendees should have a stable internet connection. Class participants: you should have a computer or device with a webcam and microphone; and your Zoom link will be automatically sent to you after you register. Check your spam box if you don't see it.