Friday, April 12, 2024 at 7 p.m. in the Bear Gallery
The Bear Gallery is located on the 3rd floor, Alaska Centennial Center for the Arts 2300 Airport Way, Fairbanks, AK 99701
Join Fairbanks Arts for a reading of original poetry by University of Alaska Fairbanks’ MFA students. The works were inspired by a trip to Morocco and Spain.
A lifelong poet who’s always sort of known it, Kaje Thunk is fresh on the scene, having only been published in his alma mater’s biannual art magazine. A lover of storytelling and oral history, he is passionate about making words dance off the page to sail through your ear canals.
He describes this work as a musing on the experiences of a young man’s first voyage overseas. This body of work offers tender introspection and careful observation, encountering cultures, history, and landscapes of an old world. Smell history, taste traditions, see sights, feel the breeze, and hear the waves as you engage with Bull Skin & Lion Mane.
For Kaje, Frank Stanford is the jewel in the crown of poetry. In addition to taking inspiration from the terse prose of Hemingway and Cormac, Kaje credits Marshall Mathers and Dwayne Carter Jr. as major lyrical influences. Although constantly busy finding his way with words, you’ll still find him in a local gym playing basketball or perusing Creamer’s Field, birdwatching with his trusty Akita.
Manuel A. Melendez is a poet born and partially raised in Camagüey, Cuba. He is getting his MFA in Poetry at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has been published in Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine, WayWords Literary Journal, Apricity Magazine, and Dream Noir Magazine. He has received several awards for his writing (across multiple genres), including The 3rd Annual Derick Burleson Poetry Contest Award, the E. L. Bartlett Contest for Literary Criticism Award, and The Farthest North Fiction Contest Short Story or Single Chapter Award.
For this literary reading, he will be reading selected poems from his chapbook, I’m Not Formed by Things That Are of Myself Alone. It is a collection of place-based poems that span a trip to Spain and Morocco and a return to Fairbanks.
UAF’s MFA Program in Creative Writing is Alaska’s premier creative writing program, drawing applicants nationwide. It’s a 3-year residency program that allows students to practice and study in the genres of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama. Each student produces a book-length thesis with an eye toward publication. Our alumni have gone on to publish many books, and to work in academia, publishing, editing, and public relations.
The trip to Spain and Morocco that inspired these writers and their works for this literary reading was through EF Tours, an educational travel company. Manuel and Kaje accompanied a mix of foreign language students and poet Sean Hill. It was decided beforehand that they would do an independent study upon return, and each would produce a chapbook related to the travel. They created poems daily while on the trip. The chapbooks are short books of poetry and are separate from their MFA thesis. They are each pursuing publication for the chapbooks.
This event is free and open to the public thanks to support from our members and donors
You must be logged in to post a comment.