The Woodberry Poetry Room invites you to Wax Poetics, a series that brings together our landmark AV collection with readings by contemporary poets. This season, we're thrilled to celebrate the early recordings of poet-activist Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) with Canadian trailblazer Erín Moure.

Moure will start the evening off by reading some of her own recent writings on Rukeyser and inviting the audience to immerse in a collective listening session.

Moure is the author of over 20 collections of poetry: most recently, Theophylline (House of Anansi Press, 2023), first conceived during Moure’s creative fellowship at the Poetry Room in 2017. Transcending boundaries of time, nation, language, and genre, Theophylline weaves together critical and lyrical inquiries as its author encounters the works of Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, and Angelina Weld Grimke, ultimately “seeking poetry’s futurity in a queer and female heritage.”

All are welcome to this festive occasion, in which we honor Rukeyser's enduring legacy as one of the 20th century's most prolific, ethical, and essential poets. Mocktails and snacks will be served.

A book-signing (provided by Grolier Poetry Book Shop) will follow the event.

In-Person Event: Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330. Free and open to the public. 

Erín Moure's most recent works include translations of Chus Pato’s The Face of the Quartzes (Veliz Books, 2021) and of Chantal Neveu’s you (Book*hug, 2024), and Theophylline: an a-poretic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (Anansi, 2023) which she began writing at the Woodberry Poetry Room in 2017. She is a poet-translator who "welcomes poetry called unconventional or difficult." She is a two-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award (poetry and translation), winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Nelson Ball Prize, co-recipient of a QWF Spoken Word Prize, three-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award in poetry, and three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She has published 18 books of poetry, essays, articles on translation, and two memoirs, and is translator or co-translator of 26 books from French, Galician, Portunhol, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian into English, and from Galician into French. She is based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.