Gillian Ferris

Austin Davis learned to channel his emotions through poetry writing and performance from a young age. He often writes through the lens of his work as an activist for people experiencing homelessness. With the holidays upon us — a time of reflection and gratitude — Davis celebrates some of the people he has known and loved in his poem, "we call it grief."

Gilbert-based poet Karen Rigby says the inspiration for her poem, "Tangelo," came from her childhood memory of seeing a disturbing magazine cover photo depicting political violence. Rigby’s poem weaves together that trauma with vivid sensory beauty, creating a fragile balance of human experiences.

Erik Bitsui's book "Mosh Pit Etiquette Volume One: Secrets of a 21st Century Navajo Headbanger" is a mixture of heavy metal, humor and Diné tradition. Bitsui says it took him 30 years to write it.

Page-based poet Mike Collins was born and raised in Arizona and works as a kayak guide on Lake Powell. He has the unique ability to store dozens of poems in his head, which he can recite at will whenever the situation is right.

Margarita Cruz was always a fiction writer, but she says it was a life-threatening medical crisis that turned her into a poet. Poetry was therapeutic in her recovery and gave her a place to put her grief, a central theme in much of Cruz’s writing. She weaves the idea of loss through the poem she shares with us today, "Like Stars, Like Feathers."

In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, Pam Davenport shares with us her poem As She Shows Me My Heart. She wrote it after undergoing an echocardiogram, and it’s a reminder to all of us to count our blessings; big or small, obvious or subtle, mundane or dramatic.

In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet Lauren Camp, the current Poet Laureate of New Mexico. She didn’t know she was a poet until someone attending one of her visual art shows many years ago told her she was based on the blurbs she wrote for her pieces. It was a revelation that changed her life.

Remember when you were on the verge of adulthood and all you wanted was to get a job and an apartment and start your life? Remember when you finally got there and were hit with the surprising realization that youth is actually fleeting, and adulthood is a very long journey full of responsibility and repetition? Poet Hunter Hazelton does.

Flagstaff-based writer Andie Francis is the featured writer in the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps! In her poem When My Head Hangs Too Low, Francis weaves together landscape, grief, and love for a brother she hadn’t seen in many years. It’s set at Gates Pass in the Tucson Mountains. If you’ve ever been there, you know it’s a truly sublime place to watch the sunset.

In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet Sean Avery Medlin, a writer and educator based in southern Arizona. Since their teen years, Medlin has used writing as a form of self-expression and a way to make sense of the world around them. Medlin’s work is a fluid mixture of poetry, raps and musicality, and they are always blurring the lines and mixing things up.