Poetry & Painting

2005 Theme

The 23rd annual Tucson Poetry Festival is the third in a series of Tucson Poetry Festivals that highlights and explores poetry's connection to other forms of artistic expression, such as film, music, and dance. With the assistance of this year's guest poets Kathleen Fraser, David Shapiro, Will Alexander, Patrick Pritchett, Heather Nagami, Tenney Nathanson, and you — our big, beautiful poetry and painting audience — we will examine the relationship between poetry and painting as experienced by a variety of poets in our time. In an effort to educate the community about the synergistic value of downtown Tucson and its arts — specifically the cultural significance of local poets, painters, and art critics — we will examine the relationship between poetry and painting, poets and painters.

There is a long history of poets and painters conversing about paint and words, color and language. Painters have created liquid poems and pigment poems, while poets have composed written paintings and word images. We invite you to Come! Listen! and Paint! With you by our side, we look forward to exploring the colorful relationship between poetry and painting.