Poetry: Work Is Love Made Visible

Work Is Love Made Visible will feature visiting poet Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and include Chicago authors Quaraysh Ali Lansana and Eduardo Arocho for an evening of working class poetry and observations. Bring your poetry on the theme to share in the open mic that starts the event!

About the authors:

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish is a writer, scholar, and professor, and the editor of Mongrel Empire Press. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies with an emphasis on contemporary American poetry and working-class studies. Her poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible, published by West End Press in March 2009, won three major awards in 2010. She comes to us on a reading tour from New Mexico.

Quraysh Ali Lansana’s books of poetry include cockroach children: corner poems and street psalms (1995), Southside Rain (2000), They Shall Run (2004) and Mystic Turf (2012). Lansana received the 1999 Henry Blakely Award (presented by Gwendolyn Brooks) and the 2000 Poet of the Year Award from Chicago’s Black Book Fair. He is co-editor of Dream of a Word: The Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology (2006) and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art (2002).

Eduardo Arocho has been writing and performing poetry since 1992. He has been featured in many venues in Chicago including Citiverse Poetry Series at the Sultzer Library and The Institute for Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, among others. His poetry has been published in OPEN FIST: Anthology of Young Illinois Poets, by Tia Chucha Press (1993), POWERLINES: A Decade of Poetry from Chicago’s Guild Complex, by Tia Chucha Press (2000) and EL CENTRO JOURNAL, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College New York, NY, (2001). His recently published book is Hot Wings.

This is one of two Chicago readings featuring Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and is co-sponsored by Chicago Consortium For Working-Class Studies and Guild Complex.