Poetry and Politics

A decorated pair of Chicago poets will join a UW-Milwaukee doctoral student for a live reading at Woodland Pattern Book Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 30. CM Burroughs, Tony Trigilio and Soham Patel are scheduled to headline this free event and each artist will bring their unique, interpretive style to the stage. Burroughs, a professor at Columbia College Chicago, has received numerous accolades for her work; including a Pushcart Prize nomination and a finalist placing for the Gift of Freedom Award. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications and her provocative debut collection, The Vital System, is filled with haunting and intelligent prose. Trigilio, a fellow faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, co-edits the poetry journal Court Green with Burroughs. A recent collection is entitled White Noise. Trigilio holds a doctorate from Northeastern University in Boston. Patel is a Kundiman Fellow and student in the creative writing program at UWM. She earned her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and her writings have appeared in The Cortland Review, Copper Nickel and other publications. Her poems express raw emotion and a strikingly direct style.

Join Boswell Book Co. for an evening of Political Fact and Political Fiction at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, as they welcome authors Kathleen Rooney and Julia Azari to the store for some rousing political commentary. Chicagoan Rooney is the author of O, Democracy, a riotous novel that blends American politics and good citizenship. Azari, political science professor at Marquette University, recently authored the political mandate, Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate.