Poetry at The Dali is an ongoing series hosted by St. Petersburg Poet Laureate, Helen Wallace. Occurring on the second Thursday of each month through May 2018, each evening will feature Wallace joined by selected poets to present poems addressing the theme of “Cages and Liberation.” Following the presentation, there will be an audience Q&A.
Cost: Free (Parking is free for members, as available; $10 parking for non-members; free after 5pm on Thursdays, as available)
Location: Series takes place in the Will Raymund Theater
Helen Pruitt Wallace
Helen Pruitt Wallace serves as Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg. She received a Florida Book Award for Shimming the Glass House, her first collection of poems, which was chosen for the 2007 Richard Snyder Prize, and published by Ashland Poetry Press. A chapbook, Pink Streets, was published in 2016 by Yellow Jacket. Wallace’s individual poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, and she served as co-editor of the anthology Isle of Flowers published by Anhinga Press. She’s received a McKay Shaw Academy of American Poets Award, The dA Center for the Arts Poetry Award, a residency fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. After earning her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from Florida State University, Wallace was a professor of poetry and nonfiction at Eckerd College. She currently serves as a trustee for the Dali Museum where she helps host the Dali Poetry Series.
Mia Leonin
Mia Leonin is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Chance Born (Anhinga Press) & a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). A book-length poem, Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child will be published by BkMk Press in 2018 with illustrations by artist, Nereida García Ferraz. Leonin has been awarded fellowships from the State of Florida Department of Cultural Affairs for her poetry & creative nonfiction, two Money for Women grants by the Barbara Deming Fund, & she has been a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts/Annenberg Institute on Theater and Musical Theater. Leonin has written extensively about theater & culture for the Miami Herald & other publications. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.
Polly Buckingham
Polly Buckingham’s collection The Expense of a View won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, her chapbook A Year of Silence won the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award for Fiction (2014), and she was the recipient of a 2014 Washington State Artists Trust fellowship and Hubbub’s Kenneth O. Hanson Award for poetry. Her work appears in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, The Poetry Review, Hanging Loose, Witness, North American Review, PoetryDaily.com and elsewhere. Polly is founding editor of StringTown Press. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Washington and will be the editor of Willow Springs magazine for 2018.