Joanne Dominique Dwyer will read from her new book of poetry ‘RASA’ Dec. 11. Courtesy/TEATRO PARAGUAS

TEATRO PARAGUAS News:

Joanne Dominique Dwyer reads from her new book of poetry ‘RASA’, 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11 at Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie.

Dominique Dwyer also will hold a book signing at this event.

Tickets: Free, donations to theatre most welcome.

Dominique Dwyer’s poetic life began as an intuitive, self-taught writer, whose early influences were Anne Sexton, Pablo Neruda and Sherman Alexie. After a short foray in performance and slam poetry, Dwyer attended Warren Wilson’s program for Writers where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

She was featured on the cover of The American Poetry Review, before her first poetry collection, Belle Laide, from Sarabande Books, was published. She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award, an American Poetry Review Jerome J. Shestack prize, a Massachusetts Review Anne Halley Prize, a Pushcart nominee, and a Bread Loaf Scholar. She was also included in Best American Poetry, 2019. Dwyer counts her experiences working with teenagers and poetry, most recently in the small rural high school in Pecos, New Mexico as one of her most meaningful engagements with poetry.

For many years, Dwyer was a visiting poet to people with dementia and Alzheimer’s in memory care units. RASA, chosen by David Lehman for the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, is Dwyer’s second collection of poems. 

RASA won The Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, selected by David Lehman, the series editor of Best American Poetry Anthology. It was published in May 2022.

“Dwyer is an exceptionally talented poet, whose mind in motion on every page in Rasa gives pleasure. She writes that “Intimacy means profoundly interior/ countless sets of keys and cryptic codes.” The book is intimate in this special sense.” David Lehman said, Judge of the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize.

Contact: Argos MacCallum, 505.577.2679; argos@teatroparaguas.org