On the occasion of the exhibition Liz Larner: Don’t put it back like it was, join poet, playwright, and performance artist Ariana Reines and poet Carmen Giménez Smith for this intimate in-gallery program, bridging the literary and visual arts.
Reines and Giménez Smith will read select poems that uplift, illuminate, resituate, and connect with Liz Larner’s work and artistic practice: “I believe her to be an artist concerned with transformation, who is changed by what she makes, and who intends change for those who really relate, actually relate, in the room, on the sidewalk, to what she has put there,” says Reines of Larner, in an excerpt from the exhibition’s catalogue.
About the Participants
Named one of Flavorwire’s 100 best living writers and “a crucial voice of her generation” by Michael Silverblatt, Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, Obie-winning playwright, performing artist, and translator. Her books include A Sand Book (2019), winner of the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award; The Cow (Alberta Prize, 2006); Coeur de Lion (2007); Mercury (2011); and The Origin of the World (2014). Her Obie Award–winning play Telephone (2009) was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre and has been performed in numerous translations. She has taught at Columbia University, the European Graduate School, NYU, Tufts, Naropa, the New School, Yale, and many others. In 2009 she was the Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at the University of California-Berkeley and in 2021 was Distinguished Poet in Residence at Wichita State University and the Mary Routt Chair in literature at Scripps College. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, The Believer, The Boston Review, Bomb, Granta, Harpers, Los Angeles Review of Books, POETRY, and more. She has composed texts for many artists, including Nicole Eisenman, Seth Price, Justine Kurland, Liz Larner, Anna Sew Hoy, Carol Rama, Mondongo, and Sanya Kantarovsky. Reines currently lives in upstate New York.
Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Be Recorder (Graywolf Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize in 2020. Her forthcoming book Nostalgia Has Such a Short Half-Life will be published by Graywolf Press in 2023. A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, she is a professor of English at Virginia Tech. Giménez Smith has served as the publisher of Noemi Press since 2002.
Accessibility
The in-gallery reading on Saturday, July 9, will have ASL interpretation.
For more information about accessibility or to request additional accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
Attendance Requirements
Masks are strongly encouraged inside the museum for all visitors ages 2 and older regardless of vaccination status. On Free First Saturdays and Sensory Friendly Sundays, we require visitors ages 2 and older to wear face masks inside the building to support the safety and comfort of families and attendees.
If you have questions or require additional assistance, please email orders@walkerart.org or call 612-375-7600.