Poet Laureates From Across The Southwest To Present In Las Vegas
Poet Laureates from across the southwestern United States are scheduled to present their poetry on January 4 for Preview Thursday at Left of Center Art Gallery.
Five poet laureates : Manuel Gonzalez, Deborah Mouton, Lindsay Wilson, Rosemarie Dombrowski, and Vogue Robinson will be sharing their work and what being "Poet Laureate" means to them. This event will be preceded by a self-guided tour through one of North Las Vegas' hidden gems, the Left of Center Art Gallery. This project was funded in part by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Check out the featuring poets in our gallery below:
VOGUE ROBINSON
Vogue Robinson recently became Clark County’s second-ever poet laureate. With a Bachelor of Arts in English from San Diego State University, she has dedicated herself to expression. Spoken Word brings a new element to her writing. Robinson will always have an appreciation for human beings who find ways to put truth and heart into words. She serves as organizer and co-host to the Battle Born Poetry Slam and Words in Motion Open Mic. Her work has been published in Red Rock Review, Catching Calliope: Vol. 2, Legs of Tumbleweeds, Wings of Lace: An Anthology of Literature by Nevada Women and Clark: Poetry from Clark County, Nevada. Vogue has competed at the National Poetry Slam as a 4-time Las Vegas representative. She spends her spare time with family, and as Executive Director of Poetry Promise, Inc.
MANUEL GONZALEZ
Photo courtesy: Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)
Manuel Gonzalez is the current Poet Laureate of Albuquerque, NM. A performance poet who began his career in the poetry slam, Manuel has represented Albuquerque four times as a member of the ABQ Slam Team at the National Poetry Slam. Manuel has appeared on the NMPBS show, Colores: My Word is My Power, and is one of the founding members of the poetry troupe The Angry Brown Poets. Manuel teaches workshops on self-expression through poetry in high schools and youth detention centers. He has also worked with art therapists to help incarcerated young men find an outlet to express themselves. Manuel was a also a coach and mentor for the the Santa Fe High Poetry Slam Team for four years.
DEBORAH MOUTON
Photo: Houston Chronicle
Houston’s current Poet Laureate is Deborah "DEEP" Mouton. She has published and performed poetry since the age of 19. She released her first full-length album in 2009 titled "The Unfinished Work of a Genius." Her sophomore album, "Beautiful Rebellion," was released in 2015, exploring more socially themed poems.
Deborah Mouton is Slammaster/Coach for the Houston VIP National Poetry Slam Teamand a high school English teacher.
LINDSAY WILSON
As of April 2017, Lindsay Wilson is the winner of the FY2017/18 Poet Laureate position. Lindsay Wilson is an English professor at Truckee Meadows Community College where he has edited the literary journal, The Meadow, since 2006. He has served on the editorial boards for Unwound Magazine, the Owen Wister Review, and Fugue. From 2009 to 2017 he served on the Nevada Writers’ Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He earned his B.S. in Social Science (1997) and his M.A. in English at the University of Wyoming (2003) before completing his M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Idaho (2006). In 2016 he won the Board of Regent Nevada System of Higher Education Regents’ Creative Activities Award. He has been named a finalist for the Phillip Levine Prize, he has published five chapbooks, and his first collection, No Elegies, won the Quercus Review Press Spring Book Award. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals including The Bellevue Literary Review, Pank, The Portland Review, Verse Daily, and The Missouri Review Online.
ROSEMARIE DOMBROWSKI
Rosemarie Dombrowski is the founder of rinky dink press, the co-founder and host of the Phoenix Poetry Series, and an editor for Four Chambers. She has received four Pushcart nominations, was a finalist for the Pangea Poetry Prize in 2015, and was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology in 2016 (Sundress publications). Her first collection, The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press, 2014), was the recipient of the 2016 Human Relations Indie Book Award for Poetry (personal challenge category). She's a Senior Lecturer at Arizona State University's Downtown campus where she teaches courses on radical poetics, women's literature, and creative ethnography. Additionally, she was selected in December 2016 to be the inaugural poet laureate of Phoenix, AZ.