Upcoming readings

On Saturday, February 25, the Women’s Center for Healing & Transformation presents “An Evening of Louisiana Poetry with Diane Elayne Dees.” I’ll be reading from my two latest chapbooks, both of which have New Orleans/Louisiana themes.

The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press, 2022) is a memoir of/tribute to noted New Orleans photographer and art critic D. Eric Bookhardt, who died in late 2019. The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press, 2022) explores life in New Orleans and Louisiana—the oddities, the frustrations, the unique culture, and the sometimes breathtaking natural beauty. Hurricanes, egrets, Creole tomatoes, the BP oil spill, and Louisiana’s swamp splendor are all included in this collection, which also focuses on life during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Also reading will be St. Tammany poets Dennis Formento and Orisia Haas, and there will be an open mic (for all poets and including all poetic subjects). The event will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., and those who wish to read during the open mic segment should arrive no later than 6:00 p.m. to sign up for the reading.

Admission is free, though donations to the Women's Center are welcome. Chapbooks will be available for purchase.

On Saturday, March 4, I'll be one of the readers (via Zoom) for the New Orleans Latter Library's Poetry Buffet series. The hour-long event begins at 2:00 p.m. CST and a Zoom link will be posted on Twitter.

"Legacy is always a heavy weight to bear. A person’s life offers so many gifts, so much insight and influence, that the debt is difficult to repay. Diane Elayne Dees more than carries that load in her new collection, The Last Time I Saw You, which memorializes the life and impact of New Orleans photographer and art critic Eric Bookhardt. Intimate and earnest, these poems find the best ways to honor the memories and life of a loved one."
          —Jack B. Bedell, author of Color All Maps New, Poet Laureate, State of Louisiana, 2017-2019

"...Through her careful wordcraft we come to value life in the Mississippi Delta region from egrets to storm victims, Creole tomato aficionados and pine bark beetles to the devastated unhoused. Many, if not all of the poems reveal something of the flooding that dominated headlines and lives in August 2005, if not to this day. Diving headlong into some form of wreckage that was once Louisiana and New Orleans after the 'natural disaster' that was Hurricane Katrina, her poems revive the battered corpse of memory, collective and individual...."
          --Jan Keough, editor
Origami Poems Project