Consequences Upon Arrival:
An Ensembled Monologue

Join us for a performance facilitated by poet Saretta Morgan in conjunction with her recently published collection titled Alt-Nature. Written for and with the desert, Alt-Nature “moves in desert dreams and riverbeds, an emergent chorus feeling toward languages of connection in the American Southwest.” 

In MOCA’s Great Hall, a group of poets and activists will give voice to the ensembled monologue of Consequences Upon Arrival, a long poem that emerges in five movements throughout Alt-Nature. The evening’s performance will be developed from the text through a collaborative workshop process with performers Amber Morningstar Byars, Raquel Gutiérrez, Sasha Hawkins, and Coco Montellano. Matthew Flores will provide live-annotation of the performance. 

On Thursday, March 28 at 7:00pm Saretta Morgan will be reading at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. Learn more here.

 

Presented in partnership with The University of Arizona Poetry Center and the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands. In kind support by The Downtown Clifton.

 

About:

Alt-Nature moves in desert dreams and riverbeds, an emergent chorus feeling toward languages of connection in the American Southwest. These poems open to the desert as a practice of sensuality. Landscapes and Black queer social ecologies illuminate an anti-map of interior poetics and converging horizons. Here, geography forms the basis of feeling. Being and becoming along meridians of environmental degradation, globalized/ing militarism, and incarceration, Saretta Morgan thinks through the languages that instantiate violence alongside those which prepare the body for love. Published by Coffeehouse Press.

Saretta Morgan was born in Appalachia and raised on military installations. Her work considers the ecologies and intimacies that materialize in the shadows of U.S. militarization. From 2018-2023 she lived between the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts where she organized with the grassroots humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths Phoenix, as well as several community based initiatives that centered wellness for BIPOC and immigrant communities. Her first full-length book of poems, Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), emerged from those experiences. She is also the author of the chapbooks Feeling Upon Arrival (2018) and room for a counter interior (2017). She has received fellowships and support from The Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Arizona Commision on the Arts, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, ASU’s Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and elsewhere. Morgan is a 2024 Grants to Artists Recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Find her at www.sarettamorgan.com.

An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Amber Morning Star Byars is an artist, advocate, and Indigenous rights activist. Professionally, Amber works as a producer, impact producer, and cultural consultant. She graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018 and from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law in 2022. Passionate about justice and the art of storytelling, Amber enjoys navigating the intersection of art and law, specifically in the realm of documentary filmmaking. She has worked with a variety of names in the entertainment industry such as AMC Networks, IFC Films, XTR and more. Amber currently resides in her hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Matt Flores is originally from South Texas and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Arizona State University where they are the graduate Artistic Development Assistant at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands. They have received fellowships and residencies from the Mellon Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia G. Piper Center. Their published work can be found in Gulf Coast, Defunkt Magazine, and Houston Art's Alliance.

Raquel Gutiérrez is a critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator. Gutiérrez’s first book Brown Neon (Coffee House Press) was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and listed in The Best Art Books of 2022 by Hyperallergic. A 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism, as well as a 2017 recipient of the The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Gutiérrez is currently the inaugural Writer-In-Residence in the Art department at Whittier College in Southern California and teaches in the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Gutiérrez calls Tucson, Arizona home.

Sasha Hawkins is a writer from Laveen. Her work has been published in The Volta and The Poetry Project Newsletter. She is the author of the poetry collection Batesian Prey of the American Southwest (Schism Neuronics, 2022), as well as the chapbooks And His Banner Over Me Was Love (Pansy Press, 2024) and These Deals Won’t Last Forever (the operating system, 2019).

Coco Montellano is a multimedia artist, social worker, and dj. Their life and work center around play, resistance, and liberation. They have spent the last few years as a graduate student working in both public school and outpatient private practice settings providing social and emotional support for queer and trans teens and adults.