Event Report - Rivera & Moxley

Poets Eléna Rivera and Jennifer Moxley read to a capacity audience in the Soderberg Auditorium on 20 March 2008. Both writers read from work in manuscript (set lists below). The event was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon), on lo-fi audio (8-bit wav) and hi-fi audio (thanks to Rebecca Griffin). Benjamin Costanzi’s recap of the event for the Maine Campus is online here.

PHOTOS

(from l-r) Eléna Rivera reading from her work; Jennifer Moxley reading from her work; Rivera (foreground) and Moxley entertaining questions from the audience. (Click to enlarge.)

See more photos on Benjamin Friedlander’s Flickr page.

SET LISTS (compiled by Katie Lattari)

Jennifer Moxley
Poetry
1. The Quest
2. You Are Not an Image (open mp3)
3. The Drip
4. The Price of Silence
5. excerpt from “Approximations”
6. excerpt from “Approximations”

Essays
“There Are Things We Live Among”
1. Lose All Companions
2. Clothes
3. Fetish
4. Secret Meaning

Eléna Rivera
1. The Reading (open mp3)
2. Gold
3. Orange
4. Silver
5. White
6. Red
7. Movement in the Upper Regions
* Poems 2-6 from a series of color poems Rivera thinks she considers a set

Questions
1. For Moxley: Between your poetry or prose, what pushes you toward one or the other when you write?
2. For both: Can you talk about the dialogue/ friendship you two share and how it impacts your work?
3. For both: Can you discuss how poetics came into your life—were there early shaping forces or was it something inherent?
4. For Elena: Do you find that writing in a space of discomfort is more fruitful than writing in your comfort zone?
5. For Elena: Did you see yourself as a socially conscious writer to begin with?
6. For both: Does translation work affect your own writing?