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When: Thursday June 10, 2021, 7:30–8:30pm CDT.

Where: Live online via Zoom, from the comfort of your own home. The Zoom invitation will be posted on the website at 6am on the morning of the reading. If you don't already have it, you should get the Zoom client installed on your device ahead of time.

You will be placed in the virtual waiting room until 7:30pm when the reading starts. We are limited to 100 Zoom participants. The reading will be recorded and posted to YouTube afterwards; please check the website for details.

Original poems from LeRoy Sorenson, Lizz Paulson, Ray Gonzalez and Diane Jarvenpa.

Host: Roslye Ultan, uroslye@gmail.com
LeRoy Sorenson is the author of two applauded poetry collections. Forty Miles North of Nowhere was published by Main Street Rag, and Railman’s Son was recently published by Finishing Line Press. His work has appeared in the American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Cider Press Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Comstock Review, Nimrod and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, among other publications. In 2019 LeRoy won the Tishman Review Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. Sorenson has taken numerous classes the Loft Literary Center, was a participant in the Loft Mentor Series and graduated from the Loft’s Foreword program. He is a participant in the San Miguel Poetry Week project. He is a participant in monthly Zoom workshops with San Miguel poets and in the yearly workshop held in upstate New York. LeRoy currently lives and writes in St Paul, Minnesota.
 
Lizz Paulson is a 59-year old poet and teacher-reading tutor of Metis' Potawatomi North American Indigenous and diverse European ethnicities and cultures, who was inspired to write poetry by her fourth-grade teacher. Lizz is currently striving to give youth to elders a voice and passion for poetry as co-founder of the SPES Optimist Slam, a spoken word and performance poetry program in honor of Kitty Anderson (www.spesoptmistslam.org). "Poetry is deeply healing in a world where healing is necessary, unifying for citizens of Earth because we can hear a common voice and learn of diverse expressions and experiences that overlay our common threads, a symphony of sound instrumented in the author's voice and mind. As a poet, reading teacher, and mom, I am fortunate to nurture, guide, and uplift a future generation of word artists, the best of all possible legacies for me, a young girl now adult, inspired by the love of a teacher-poet-word artist." Currently on sabbatical from a partnership with Saint Paul Public Schools, Lizz devotes herself to community activism, nurturing broader "family" connections, and writing poetry.
 
Ray Gonzalez is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Beautiful Wall, winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award, and Feel Puma, a Minnesota Book Award finalist in 2021. He was awarded a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress in 2017 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southwest Border Regional Library Association in 2014. Ray teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. Gonzalez has said: "Poetry is communication with the rest of the world. A good poem arises from the experience and includes everybody in the universal manner that language creates vision. I am rewarded when these revelations bind the poet and readers together."
 
Diane Jarvenpa is the author of The Way She Told her Story, The Tender Wild Things and Divining the Landscape published by New Rivers Press. Her poetry works swift, bright, drift and Ancient Wonders: The Modern Word were published by Red Dragonfly Press. Diane has received the Midwest Independent Publishers Association Award and an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is a teaching artist with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project MN. As a singer-song writer performing under the name Diane Jarvi, she has received a McKnight performing fellowship and was awarded a Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund grant. Diane was awarded funding to bring her poetry and music together in the video The Way She told Her Story. Jarvenpa finds tremendous inspiration from working with creative writing and poetry students through her workshops with the East Side Arts council and assisted living sites. Diane is an inspiring and enlightened poet and teacher.
Before and after: Both Milkweed, downstairs from our usual venue, and Merlin’s Rest, a bar/restaurant 3 blocks west where Midstream attendees often congregate, are once again open.
For further information: Roslye Ultan, uroslye@gmail.com
Copyright © 2021 Midstream, All rights reserved.


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