Forces of Nature: A Reading on Love, War, and God

Forces of Nature: A Reading on Love, War, and God

Even when grappling with large questions, poets always find something to sing about. Poetry both focuses in and zooms out, documenting life outside of headlines and history books, and recording how it feels to be human at this particular moment in time. Join poets from Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego (@heidiseaborn, @donnasmetz, @marga_pintado, and @carlymariedemento) as they read from their work, forging meaning and beauty through poetry’s particular way of seeing. Following the reading, there will be a moderated conversation where the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Join us for this special evening celebrating “our capacity for humanness” or what the poets Jane Hirshfield says “comes from finding ourselves simply, decently moved.”

Flyer design: Collab between James Shaff at @letgoprinting and Midjourney

The poets:


Donna Spruijt-Metz’s debut poetry collection is ‘General Release from the Beginning of the World’ (2023, Free Verse Editions). She is an emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. She was featured as one of ‘5 over 50 debut authors’ in Poets & Writers Magazine (11/23). Her chapbooks include ‘Slippery Surfaces’, ‘And Haunt the World’ (with Flower Conroy). and ‘Dear Ghost’ (winner, 2023 Harbor Review Editor’s prize).  Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Tahoma Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She is the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent work in Agni, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, diode, Financial Times of London, Penn Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Plume, Rattle, The Slowdown and elsewhere. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU.  heidiseabornpoet.com

Margarita Pintado Burgos (Puerto Rico) is the author of 4 poetry collections, including Una muchacha que se parece a mí/ A Girl Who Looks Like Me (Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Poetry Book Award, 2016) and Ojo en Celo/ Eye in Heat (2024), for which she won the Ambroggio Award given by The Academy of American Poets. In 2022, she was awarded the Letras Boricuas fellowship (Mellon Foundation.) Pintado Burgos holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Emory University (Atlanta, GA), and is a professor of Language and Literature at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA.

Carly Marie DeMento is a poet and writer for climate-change startups living in Encinitas, California. She recently began to submit her poetry at the age of 40. Her work has appeared in the North American Review, Kestrel, and Green Hills Literary Lantern. With support from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Craigardan, she is a 2023 finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize and the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize. When she’s not writing, she’s adventuring with her honey and eating copious amounts of tacos.