Maggie Smith presents A Suit or a Suitcase

Join Magers & Quinn for an evening with beloved poet Maggie Smith, celebrating her brand new poetry collection!

In conversation with Michael Bazzett

Good to know:

• Books can be purchased with ticket or at the event. The best way to ensure your copy is to pre-purchase with your ticket!'
• Check in starts at 6:00pm, Event starts at 7:00pm
• The entrance to Queermunity is right next door to Magers & Quinn! (3036 Hennepin Ave. S, Minneapolis MN 55408)

Instant New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith returns with a new collection of poems on the sometimes-blurry distinction between mind and body, and how the self shifts and moves through time and space.
Within, poems turn over the strange relationships between the body and the mind, the self and the world. With her signature tenderness and clarity of observation, and with stunning swoops of imagination, Smith considers—and reconsiders—what it is to be human: Does one life matter in the grand scheme of space and time? How can it be that we are the same people we were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, but also different people? And could there be more to life, just beyond the borders of we can experience?
Each poem is an ode to the power of our minds, and proof that both a life and a self, whether within a suit or a suitcase, is infinitely expandable.

About the speakers:

Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of nine books of poetry and prose, including A Suit or a Suitcase, Dear Writer, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can find her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.

The recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in both poetry and translation, Michael Bazzett is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Echo Chamber (Milkweed Editions, 2021) and Cloudwatcher, winner of the inaugural Stern Prize from The American Poetry Review, forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2026. He’s also published two book-length translations, including his verse version of the creation epic of the Maya, The Popol Vuh (Milkweed, 2018), which was longlisted for the National Translation Award and named by the NY Times as one of the best poetry books of 2018. His poems have recently appeared in GRANTA, The Nation, Threepenny Review, The Paris Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Magazine, and The Sun.

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