The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry | Ann Arbor District Library

1. Du’a #10 Contrapuntal With My Mother’s Wisdom

2. Journey to Iraq 1 (I try to visit in my dreams and am stopped on the tarmac)

3. Dream Market 

4. Dream Market

5. چمة

6. American Dream Market

7. Dream Market (silly sonnet for l)

8. رشاد 

9. طین

Noor Al-Samarrai is a deeply committed poet, journalist, and educator who earned her MFA in creative writing at UM-Ann Arbor, where she was recognized as an “exceptional talent who can produce singular work that opens our eyes to the wide range of human experience.” As an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, she studied with C.S. Giscombe, Robert Hass, and Lyn Hejinian. Noor developed an enduring love of teaching during this time, directing poetry workshops for the campus spoken word community, and further cultivated her journalistic practice. Her undergraduate thesis in political economy focused on the relationship between architecture and identity in mid-twentieth-century Baghdad. This work illuminated a lack of complex, human stories in the literature describing Baghdad and set Noor on the path to fashioning her own archive of Iraqi oral histories about pre-war Baghdad.

Following her graduation from UC Berkeley, Noor pursued the life of an itinerant writer and independent scholar, first in Turkey where she volunteered as an Arabic translator for NGOs serving refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, freelanced as a journalist, and met many members of her extended family — themselves refugees from Iraq — for the first time. Then, with the support of a Fulbright fellowship, Noor moved to Amman, Jordan and dedicated herself to gathering oral histories for a documentary poetry collection about the emotional cartography of pre-war Baghdad. Noor has also worked as a journalist for Atlas Obscura, toured in 11-piece punk band Sloppy Jane, worked as a podcast producer, and written a book of fieldwork-derived poetry, “EL CERRITO,” published with Inside the Castle Press in 2018 and recipient of an honorable mention from the 2019 Arab American Book Awards.

As a post-graduate Zell Fellow in poetry, she has continued work on her second book, continuing her oral history work in partnership with the Arab American National Museum’s Community History team and Allied Media Projects. Noor is partially deaf and blind, and her favorite sense is touch. 

Artist Statement:  At its best, poetry offers us a form of meaning-making, amulets to carry, worry, and return to when the world becomes unrecognizable. These poems emerge from my own meaning-making practices: dreams, travels with friends, conversations with my mother and other elders, the formalized practices of oral history and historiography … In my lifetime, I haven’t yet managed to see Baghdad as a result of ongoing troubles (war, sanctions, occupation, etc). This saddens me. These are some glimpses from my practice of looking lovingly and carrying this place with me, from afar.

1. Sculpture

2. Half Full Moon

3. Trying To Reach The Ocean

4. Spring Visions

5. April Night

6. Versos De Terra Primavera

7. Moons Enough

8. New York Poem

9. Summer Solstice Ode

10. My Body Held You in Water

11. For Kim

12. Solstice List

13. Aquarius Supermoon

Carmen Malis King is a Detroit-rooted writer, mother, community herbalist, and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. She is a former editor of Critical Moment, and her writing has been published in The Wayne Literary Review and Ofrenda Magazine. Carmen holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Women’s Studies from Wayne State University and a Master of Arts in Integrative Health Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies. King reads excerpts from her 2024 poetry chapbook “Now/Again Collected Writings 2008-2018”, published by Awe Society Press, designed by Bridget Quinn of Awe Society Press.

1. Please Forgive Me

2. The Last Harvest

3. July at Valley Drive

4. Nearly

5. You Lied To Me

6. I’ll Talk To God When You Stop Answering

7. Must I Marry Elvis

8. Pittsburgh Diorama

Sarah Good-Lang is a poetry writer from Pittsburgh, PA now living in Ann Arbor, MI. She graduated from University of Pittsburgh in 2024 with a BA in History & English Writing. Her poems have been featured in publications such as The Northern Appalachia Review and her short story "Footage Lost" won 1st Place in The Pitt News annual writing contest. Much of her writing relates to the concept of the living past. Her writing focuses on subjects such as abandoned structures, families that remain together only within picture frames, and the imprints of the ghosts we carry with us. Sarah enjoys blending creative writing with historical research and finding the shared space between the discovery of the past and the translation of it. She likes to hike, read, paint, and visit the lost photos section of antique stores.

1. And So Comes The Night

2. Untitled Poem

3. I’m Alone and I’m Walking

4. For Carter

5. November Yesterday

6. Lavendar Lady

7. Connies House

8. I’d Like To Be A Child Again

9. Happy Lobsters

About the Artist:

Katie Geddes is a lover of music, poetry, and words. She likes arranging words for the way they sound as well as for the way they look on the page. Her poetic influences include her mother, her second-grade teacher, and poet/musician, Patti Smith. Her favorite current poet is Brian Bilston.

Katie has been a financial planner for 40 years and a singer for 25 years. For 25 years, she has been the director of the Green Wood Coffee House Series, a popular acoustic music concert series. She sings regularly at senior residences and in concert halls. Katie is the music director at Grass Lake United Methodist Church.

1. Rainbow after “The Night Blooming Cereus”

2. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus after “The Peacock Room”

3. Lying in Bed, Thinking of Dumplings after “Elegies for Paradise Valley”

4. Chinatown Koan after “Words in the Mourning Time”

5. Manistique, Michigan after “Stars”

6. Primavera after “Monet’s Waterlilies”

7. Fairytale after “Theme and Variation”

8. A Ringlet in a Ruth Asawa Sculpture after “[American Journal]”

9. January after “October”

10. Murmuration after “A Plague of Starlings”

Bio:

Shannon Rae Daniels is a writer and visual artist whose recent work has explored questions of impermanence, goodness, language, and beauty as they relate to the self and to communities at large — particularly American Chinatowns. Her art and writing have been recognized by the Poetry Society of America, the Random House Creative Writing Awards, The Guild of Artists & Artisans in Michigan, and the Ann Arbor District Library. She has taught arts and humanities classes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston Arts Academy. She was born and raised in New York City and currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is a bookseller.

Artist Statement:

These poems were commissioned by the AADL for the AADL 200 in response to the poetry and legacy of Robert Hayden. As someone who’s drawn to poetry that is driven by philosophical and formal elements, it was a joy to grow as a poet through this project. In my work, like Hayden’s, I too try to understand how art and beauty can wrestle with difficult questions.

1. Pied Piper

2. Heiligenstadt

3. Ode To The Violin

4. Technical Solace

5. Blood and Soil

6. Survivor Guilt

Rebecca G. Biber is a collaborative pianist and music teacher living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poetry has appeared in Cutthroat, Lilith, The Lyric, The Passionfruit Review, The Petigru Review, and the forthcoming Bop Book. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Building Bridges Poetry Prize and the Northwind Writing Award, and was named a winner of the “Up a Tree” eco-poem contest. Her first book, Technical Solace, was published in 2017 by Fifth Avenue Press. She holds BM and MM degrees from the University of Michigan School of Music and an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte.

Artist Statement:

Often I write about the practice of music: what it means to us, how it changes us. In other pieces, I use the musical elements of poetry–such as internal rhyme, rhythmic stress, consonance, and repetition–to talk about non-musical subjects. All of these poems speak about the needs of the body, which precede language and demand to be expressed.

1. Autobiographies

2. Granny Is The Revolution

3. Blood

4. My Self Portrait #1 (After Adam Zagajewski

5. What The Bullet Said

6. Goodbye To The Gods

7. The Garden (Where My Sister Used To See Me)

8. Family Time

9. Boogie On, My Darling (For Bridget)

10. Fuck A Brain

11. Stone Soup Bones

12. Detroit Dream World 1 - 4

13. Community Service Blues

14. Laid Off At the Laugh Factory (for Michael Richards)

Artist Statement:

Mourning is an inconvenient life-giving necessity. It is painful, yet oh so important, to mourn, to allow your world to break with recognition of what has moved along, what has been loved and lost. Even as the world seems to go on as if nothing has happened. My poetry hopes to open a space for healing within these cracks in so-called normality. You’ll find here speculative worlds, surrealism, musicality, metaphysics. I hope that my attempts to poem the vulnerability I need gives you something valuable also.

About the Poet:

Owólabi Aboyade is a multidimensional father/ essayist/ poet/ critic/hip hop artist (Will See Music) from Detroit. His poetry chapbook, Lee, Young Lee was published by AWE Society Press in 2024. He is a contributor to Riverwise, Geez, Therapeutic Edgelands, and Against The Current magazines. Working with his partner, sculptor and indie publisher Bridget Quinn, he is text editor of Bullet*Train, a magazine chronicling Detroit’s revolutionary culture and making meaning, a zine for people with chronic illness. He’s currently working on collapse, collected essays about grief, culture, and family in gentrifying Detroit.

Owólabi has been named a Tin House Resident as well as a Radical Imagination Fellow for advancing Detroit’s culture of racial justice via arts. He is a community partner of the abolitionist collective Motor City Mobile Wellness and has been navigating kidney failure and the medical industry since 1990. He is a Kwame Dawes Mapmaker Fellow in Pacific University’s nonfiction MFA program (class of 2025).

1. Did you Eat means I Love You

2. Poignant Truth, Precarious You, and Preparing for the Sriracha Apocalypse, an Excerpt

3. Crying on Airplanes

4. Tsundere Pride or You Are So Prickly, An Excerpt

5. What ever happened to Wang Da Zhong?

6. You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair is in Braids

7. Grandfather Walking

8. Academic Love Affair

9. The Arteries of our City

10. The Traveler

11. Ready to Take Flight

12. Running Hero

13. The Dinner Party

14. Suddenly Spring

Artist's Statement

"When I was on my high school’s speech and debate team, I read Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News every week. I came across an article about how Asian Americans were good at math and science but were not good leaders. I believed it without question because I thought that if it was published, it had to be true. My father simply said, “China has a 4,000 year history — who do you think was leading it?” I suddenly realized that because I come from a different background, there are things that I can see, connections that I can make, stories that I can tell that others cannot. Slowly, I came to trust the questions that only I was asking. Over time, I realized that because I am privileged to be educated, English speaking, and a U.S. citizen, I should use my privilege to speak up for others. I push back because I can, because someone has to. I write the stories that no one else is writing. And I always stop to translate for lost Chinese grandmas. I am one of a handful of writers who has been writing consistently for and about Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Arab American diasporic communities for over twenty years. I have written as a journalist, essayist, and prose poet. My next project is a book called, “Writing to Save the World.” In these political times, especially with the new Republican administration, the war in Gaza, and increasing anti-immigrant hate and violence, we must find commonalities and ways to better understand each other. Through writing and creating art, we can change hearts, lift up communities, and move people to action." - Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Artist Bio

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a poet, essayist, journalist, and scholar focused on issues of Asian America, race, justice, and the arts. The child of immigrants, she has worked in philosophy, journalism, ethnic new media, anthropology, international development, nonprofits, and small business start-ups. Her writing has appeared at PBS NewsHour, NBC Asian America, PRI Global Nation, Angry Asian Man, Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, Drunken Boat, and several anthologies, journals, and art exhibitions. She has taught Asian/Pacific Islander American studies at the University of Michigan and creative writing at the University of Hawaii Hilo and Washtenaw Community College. She was Executive Director of American Citizens for Justice and Asian Pacific American Chamber of Commerce. She is a co-founder of IS/LAND Asian American Contemporary Performance Collaborative. She co-created a multimedia artwork for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, “Dreams of the Diaspora.” She has written three chapbooks and a book of prose poetry, “You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids,” Wayne State University Press, 2022. In Chinese School, she was often scolded for having the best spoken Chinese in class and the worst written Chinese.

About the Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry

The Ann Arbor District Library, Fifth Avenue Studios, and 1473 are proud to present The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry. This series was created to celebrate and document the art of poetry in recorded form. Featuring poets from Ann Arbor, metro Detroit, and beyond, we hope that this series showcases and archives the incredible poetry scene here in Ann Arbor, metro Detroit, and beyond.

The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is named after and dedicated to two of my high school teachers, Judi Coolidge and Tom Wagner (RIP) of Bay High School (Ohio), who encouraged in me, as well as thousands of their other students, a lifelong appreciation and open-minded love of the arts.

-Chien-An Yuan, 1473

1. A Wat Is To Temple As To Escape Is To Survive

2. A Discussion of Monsters

3. An Archaeology of Snow Forts

4, Babylon Gallery

5. Burning Eden One Branch At A Time

6. Cameos

7. DemocraCIA

8. E Pluribus Unum

9. Five Fragments

10. In The Beginning

11. Jaew: Hot Sauce

12. Japonisme, Laoisme

13. Khop Jai For Nothing, Farangs

14. Returning

15. The Buddha of Bombies

16. Ypsilanti, 1982

17. Zelkova Tree

18. Sticky Rice Blues

Artist's Statement

"These particular poems are from his new collection American Laodyssey (Sahtu Press, 2025) that features many of his most noteworthy pieces from the last 3 decades that appeared in global anthologies, newspapers and journals, exhibits, and other distinctions. This set addresses many of his concerns that emerged from a journey spent recovering the lost histories and stories from the US Secret War in Laos in the 20th century, and how we probe memory and dream, loss and opportunity in diaspora. What is the role of the imagination as a community makes a transition from centuries of a monarchy to a democracy? What happens to our innermost fantasies and hopes as refugees and immigrants?" - Bryan Thao Worra

About the Poet

Bryan Thao Worra is a Lao American poet who grew up in Michigan in the 1980s and 90s. He is the first Lao American to receive a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2016-2022 he was president of the International Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. One of the most widely-published Lao American writers in the world, he has over 20 awards for leadership and community service, and presented at the 2012 London Summer Games, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, Poets House, the Singapore Writers Festival, and more. In October 2024 he was inducted into the Saline Area Schools Hall of Fame.

About the Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry

The Ann Arbor District Library, Fifth Avenue Studios, and 1473 are proud to present The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry. This series was created to celebrate and document the art of poetry in recorded form. Featuring poets from Ann Arbor, metro Detroit, and beyond, we hope that this series showcases and archives the incredible poetry scene here in Ann Arbor, metro Detroit, and beyond.

The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is named after and dedicated to two of my high school teachers, Judi Coolidge and Tom Wagner (RIP) of Bay High School (Ohio), who encouraged in me, as well as thousands of their other students, a lifelong appreciation and open-minded love of the arts.

-Chien-An Yuan, 1473

1. Coshocton Tribune

2. Before (What was there…)

3. Before (The cares…)

4. Before (I call you…)

5. Tide Pool Mammal

6. Goldenrods

7. Subject Lines

8. Un-titled

Artist's Statement

"These poems are meditations on ancestry and descent. They start with my more recent ancestors and move back in time through assimilation and colonization, back to home, far, far back through my ancestors across species to the beginning of life. Then they move forward again with a new understanding of what ancestry means, coming through the present to the future into a vision of interconnectedness, joy, sorrow, and love." - Emily Nick Howard

About the Poet

Emily Nick Howard is a small potato (said lovingly) poet, writer, and maker. They have lived in the Ann Arbor area for over 15 years and very lightly hold a doctorate in English from the University of Michigan. You can find more of their work at emilynhoward.com.

About the Cover Artist

Shannon Rae Daniels is a Cantonese American visual artist and writer whose recent work has explored questions of impermanence, goodness, and beauty as they relate to the self and to communities at large — particularly American Chinatowns, which she is deeply invested in as someone with strong roots in New York City’s Chinatown. In 2023, she was selected for the Emerging Artists Program hosted by The Guild of Artists and Artisans in Ann Arbor, Michigan and then was chosen by a jury to show and sell her work at the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair. She has taught arts and humanities classes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston Arts Academy. She was born and raised in New York City and currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

About the Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry

The Ann Arbor District Library, Fifth Avenue Studios, and 1473 are proud to present The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry. This series was created to celebrate and document the art of poetry in recorded form. Featuring poets from Ann Arbor, metro Detroit, and beyond, we hope that this series showcases and archives the incredible poetry scene here in Ann Arbor, metro Detroit, and beyond.

The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is named after and dedicated to two of my high school teachers, Judi Coolidge and Tom Wagner (RIP) of Bay High School (Ohio), who encouraged in me, as well as thousands of their other students, a lifelong appreciation and open-minded love of the arts.

-Chien-An Yuan, 1473