Brought to you in partnership with NIGHTJAR

Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, Obie-winning playwright, performing artist, translator, and educator. Her most recent book is A Sand Book, winner of the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. Wave of Blood, a book-length exploratory essay, is out this fall from Divided Publishing, and The Rose, her next poetry collection, will be published in April 2025 by Graywolf. Reines has taught poetry as the Holloway Poet at UC Berkeley, Mary Routt Chair in Creative Writing at Scripps College, Visiting Professor of the Practice at Tufts, and at many other institutions and community organizations, including NYU, Pratt, Yale, Poets House, and the Poetry Project. In 2012, inspired by her experiences in Haiti and the ideas of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, she created Ancient Evenings, a Friday night project for the study of poetry. And in 2020, while a Divinity Student at Harvard, Reines founded Invisible College, an online hub for the study of poetry, the arts, and the sacred.

The reading is associated with our Rachel Leah Cohn exhibit, “Mem” related to feminine energy, motherhood, and the womb, symbolizing protection, safety, and giving to others.

NIGHTJAR cultivates the literary arts of Indianapolis by connecting audience members with the work of contemporary poets and their own poetic capabilities. Every third Wednesday evening at the Tube Factory, Michelle Niemann and C.S. Carrier host a reading or performance by a featured poet and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses. NIGHTJAR is about experiencing poetry as the communal and diverse endeavor that it is. It’s about exploring poetry’s connections to the visual arts and music. The series brings together poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms; welcomes both spoken-word performers and page-based poets; and creates a supportive space for all.