Marisol Cortez
Last weekend Deceleration co-hosted the 13th annual Words for Birds, a celebration and cry for protection of winged relatives for National Poetry Month. Historically an in-person reading held out of doors within the beautiful environs of Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, COVID sacked last year’s W4B, which instead became a funky online zine titled “Poetics for Pandemics.”
Co-organized alongside Stone in the Stream/Roca en el Rio and Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, this year’s W4B consisted of an online reading in two sessions. If you missed it live last weekend, you can catch both sessions for a lyrical appreciation of the ancient flighted lizards that limn our relation to urban nature.
Reading 1 (Saturday, April 24, 2021)
MC’d by ecowriter/Deceleration co-editor Marisol Cortez. Readers featured include Masauki & Guadalupe Lagunes Jimenez, Dyhanara Rios, RitaMaria Contreras, Eddie Vega, Javier Fuentes Vargas, Alesia Garlock, Kamala Platt, Laura Schultz, Megha Sood, Norma Moore, Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, and Molly Wright.
READING 2 (Sunday, April 25, 2021)
MC’d by poet Jim LaVilla-Havelin, hosting outdoors from Mitchell Lake Audubon Center and thus very backlit! Readers featured include Alexandra van de Kamp, D Ellis Phelps, Viktoria Louis, Ernesto M. Garay, Fernando Albert Salinas, Lisha Garcia, Jasmina Wellinghoff, Jean Hackett, Jeanie Sanders, Ignacio Magaloni, Patricia Keoughan, Rachel Jennings, and Tammy Melody Gomez.
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Featured image of (City-bulldozed, former) rookery at Elmendorf Lake comes courtesy of local photographer Richard Vasquez. Look for his work on Facebook at @richardvasquezphotography or follow him on Twitter at @ricvphoto.
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