Recorded at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 5, 2014, as part of Lannan’s Poetry Sundays.

Poet Adrian Matejka read from his work after an introduction by poet Dana Levin, and then took questions from the audience.

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden, won the 2002 New York / New England Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature – Poetry. His most recent book, The Big Smoke, was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Big Smoke was also finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is a winner of the Julia Peterkin Award and recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Gulf Coast, Poetry, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies. He teaches in the MFA program at Indiana University in Bloomington and is currently working on a new collection of poems and a graphic novel.

You may listen to the audio of this reading on the Lannan Podcast site or get further information on the Lannan Foundation site.