Featured Reader: Megan Kaminski. Open Mic begins at 6:30pm.

In this writing workshop led by poet Megan Kaminski, we’ll engage in deep listening practices to tap into the knowledge shared by the world around us and the often-unheard wisdom already present in our own bodies and spirits. As spring brings us longer days and tender green shoots of new life, we’ll listen to the growth occurring all around us to help us clear out the clutter of last year’s dormant period and make way for new writing. If weather permits, we may go outside, so please dress accordingly. This class is part of the Written Storytelling Certificate Programs as a Writing Elective. Please note this program will take place in person in the Story Center Historic Home. Please make sure to register the number of guests in your party. Registration is required and space is limited.

Climate Feminism and Other Ways of Leading around Climate Change

-How might we describe Climate Feminism? What is it not?

-How do these principles and practices show up in your work?

-What kinds of possibilities might feminist-led efforts make space for?

-How are youth-led efforts embracing feminist principles?

-What other forms of knowledge should enter the conversation?

Register here

In this workshop, a group of faculty and staff at the forefront of inclusive practices at KU will share their innovations and approaches to disability and neurodivergence inclusion and trauma-informed pedagogy. With Dea Follmer, CTE/Psychology; Megan Kaminski, English/Environmental Studies; and RB Perelmutter, Jewish Studies/ Slavic & Eurasian Languages & Literatures.

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry and the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017). Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.

Camille will be hosted in conversation with Imani Wadud, PhD Candidate in American Studies & Megan Kaminski, Professor of English and Environmental Studies.

 Register at https://bit.ly/DungyKU

Featuring

Vidhu Aggarwal, Megan Kaminski, Ashwini Bhasi, Teresa Carmody, Angela Peñaredondo, Bishakh Som, Olivia Muenz, Ronaldo Wilson, Ginger Ko, Emily Brandt, Jameelah Lang, and Petra Kuppers

Offsite reading featuring:

Michele Battiste, Teresa Carmody, Megan Kaminski, Kristen Nelson, and Hoa Nguyen

AWP Panel

w/ Michele Battiste, Teresa Carmody, Megan Kaminski, Kristen Nelson, and Hoa Nguyen

Divination and writing are both processes that draw from archives of knowledge, but divination opens us up to sources often difficult to access: ancestral, somatic, elemental, natural, spiritual, unconscious, silenced. By accessing these sources to inform and guide writing, our writing, in turn, generates meaning and connections that alter the archives in structure, content, and accessibility. We will explore how divination creates new paths to hidden ways of knowing and writing.

The 11th Annual Rock And Roll Reading bill is set, and it's going to awesome. We have a lot of readers (We have to this year! It's our home field in KC, and lots of folks are coming home), but each reader only has 3 minutes or less (for real), and we'll break things up with an intermission. As always, all pieces will be about or inspired by Rock and Roll or any of its precursors or offshoots.

Literary Landscapes

Personal stories about the places of midwest literature Register Here →

Join us to celebrate the release of Wild Words, from Humanities Kansas! Stroll through the wetlands and prairies with restoration ecologist and Executive Director of Native Lands Restoration Collaborative, Courtney Masterson and Megan Kaminski, poet, editor of Wild Words, and Professor of Creative Writing and Environmental Studies at the University of Kansas. We’ll learn about the flowers that dot the fall landscape and interact with poems in the collection as guides to fostering relationships of care and reciprocity. Free copies of Wild Words will be available first-come-first-served.

We'll meet at the Roth Trailhead parking lot at 9:30AM, and venture on a walk through the woods. Our walk will finish at the Rockefeller Prairie. If you're interested in an ADA accessible option, you can meet the group at the Rockefeller Prairie trail deck (there is a parking lot and paved trail leading to the prairie and the deck/seating area) at roughly 10AM. Please email Ruby if you have questions. For more information about the KU Field Station (and maps) visit: https://biosurvey.ku.edu/field...

Find more information about Wild Words here: https://www.humanitieskansas.o...

Connecting with the natural world can provide a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration, enabling us to (re)discover strategies for living in the world, to grieve and heal after loss, and realign our thinking toward kinship, community, and sustainability. This beginner-friendly nature and poetry walk will be oriented to connecting with the more-than-human world through literature in the environmental humanities. By the words of poets, writers, and our own senses, this hike will engage with diverse habitats throughout Kansas to help participants listen to the often-unseen wisdom around us.

Join poet Megan Kaminski and botanist Courtney Masterson for a field hike at the Baker Wetlands using HK’s Wild Words as a guide. Poets have long reflected on the wild beauty of plants to give meaning to self and home. In what ways do these poems look to the Kansas prairie to define our place in the world? Water, sunscreen, and bug spray are recommended for this outdoor activity.

Wild Words has been made possible with support from the Elizabeth Schultz Environmental Fund at the Douglas County Community Foundation, Kansas Tourism, Native Lands LLC, and the Sunflower Foundation. 

For more information contact:
Bluebird Taylor-McKown, 
Bluebird.Taylor-McKown@bakeru.edu

Humanities Kansas invites readers to engage with native plants through Wild Words, a chapbook of poems and original illustrations that honor the Kansas prairie, from the iconic sunflower and big bluestem to the unexpected antelope milkweed.  Panel features Megan Kaminski, Wild Words editor + featured poets. Moderator: HK Director of Grants & Outreach, Leslie VonHolten.

Megan Kaminski | Wed | Sept 13 | 7:30 pm | Weber Fine Arts Gallery

Megan Kaminski is a poet and essayist—and the author of three books of poetry, most recently Gentlewomen (Noemi Press, 2020). She’s also the author of Prairie Divination (Sunseen Books, 2022), a book of illustrated essays and oracle deck in collaboration with artist L. Ann Wheeler, and Quietly Between (A Viewing Space, 2022), a co-authored collection of poetry and photography. Her current book project, In Bloom, explores inter-generational healing, interspecies collaboration, transcorporeal embodiments, and chronic illness via a queer ecopoetics. Her writing and teaching focus on helping people connect to their own ecosystems as a source of knowledge and inspiration for strategies to live in their world, to grieve and heal after loss, and to re-align thinking towards kinship, community, and sustainability. She is Professor in English and Environmental Studies at the University of Kansas.

Connecting with the natural world can provide a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration, enabling us to (re)discover strategies for living in the world, to grieve and heal after loss, and realign our thinking toward kinship, community, and sustainability. This beginner-friendly nature and poetry walk will be oriented to connecting with the more-than-human world through literature in the environmental humanities. By the words of poets, writers, and our own senses, this hike will engage with diverse habitats throughout Kansas to help participants listen to the often-unseen wisdom around us.

Historiae, the 2018 collection from contemporary Italian poet Antonella Anedda, is available for the first time to English readers thanks to a stunning translation by Susan Stewart and Patrizio Ceccagnoli. On September 4 at 7 p.m., the Raven will be joined by Ceccagnoli for a bilingual reading of Anedda’s work and a discussion of the art of translation. Join us as Ceccagnoli explores the work of translating Historiae in conversation with classicist and translator Stanley Lombardo and poet Megan Kaminski.

Conversation with host Jenny Inzerillo and the Land Institute’s Aubrey Streit Krug about Wild Words on High Plains Morning.

https://www.hppr.org

“Speculative Ecologies” (Creative Engagements)

Petra Kuppers, “Starship Somatics”

Megan Kaminski, “Co-Dwelling”

Jason Baltazar, “Sunken Testimonies”

Ginger Ko, “The Faithful Sea”

Join Megan Kaminski and her students for a writing workshop among the trees of the Lawrence Community Orchard! You’ll practice centering and creative expression in a community of peers, fruit trees, and more-than-human neighbors, and be guided in setting your intentions for the season and deepening your relationship to place.

The New Territory is hosting an hour of the Lit Crawl at the Columbia Art League. Featuring a group Prairie Divination reading + more TBA. 

Connecting with the natural world can provide a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration, enabling us to (re)discover strategies for living in the world, to grieve and heal after loss, and realign our thinking toward kinship, community, and sustainability. This interactive presentation will be oriented to connecting with the more-than-human world through literature in the environmental humanities. Combining the wisdom of poetry, prairie ecology, and our own senses, we will engage with the Kansas prairie for guidance on our own lives. 

On the occasion of the release of Transparencies, the English translation of the lastest book of poetry by the Italian scholar and writer Maria Borio, the Department of English and the Dept. of French, Francophone and Italian Studies are proud to host a double book presentation moderated by Patrizio Ceccagnoli. Maria Borio will present her book in dialogue with our poet in residence, Megan Kaminski, who will read from her recent poetry collection, Gentlewomen. 

Maria Borio is the author of two collections of poetry: Trasparenza (Interlinea, 2019) and L'altro limite (LietoColle, 2017). A selection of her works entitled "Vite unite" was included in Quaderno italiano di poesia contemporanea XII (Marcos y Marcos, 2015). She holds a Ph.D. in contemporary Italian Literature and has written the monographs Satura: Da Montale alla lirica contemporanea (Serra, 2013), and Poetiche e individui (Marsilio, 2018). She is poetry editor of the journal Nuovi Argomenti, previously directed by Alberto Moravia and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Megan Kaminski is a poet and essayist—and the author of three books of poetry, Gentlewomen (Noemi Press, 2020), Deep City, and Desiring Map. Prairie Divination (Sunseen Press, 2022) her collection of essays and oracle deck with artist L. Ann Wheeler, turns to the plants, animals, and geological features of the prairie as guides for living in good relation to each other. She is an Associate Professor in English at the University of Kansas and leads community writing and environmental humanities workshops throughout the state of Kansas and beyond through Humanities Kansas and other nonprofit organizations. 

Online conversation and reading. More details TBA.

1pm Pacific/ 3pm Central

This beginner-friendly nature and poetry walk is oriented to connecting with the more-than-human world through poetry and mindfulness. Guided by the words of poets, writers, and our own senses, this workshop helps participants listen to and write with the often-unseen wisdom all around us. Poems and observations will spark a discussion about fostering relationships of care and mutuality and offer new possibilities for engaging with and within our common home.