Poetry Reading: Clayton Clark

Indy Reads is excited to host poet Clayton Clark on April 25, 2026 from 5-7pm for a celebration and reading of his second poetry collection: Auscultate!

Join us for a reading with a discussion and book signing to follow!

Meet the Author: Clayton Clark

Clayton Adam Clark lives in Saint Louis, his hometown, where he works as a mental health counselor in private practice alongside his wife, Tina, and their therapy dog, Tank. His latest poetry collection, Auscultate, was published by Galileo Press in 2025, and his debut poetry collection, A Finitude of Skin, won the 2017 Moon City Poetry Award (Moon City Press, 2018). His honors include two Artist Support Grants from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. He earned the MFA in creative writing at Ohio State University and both a master’s in communication and a master’s in clinical mental health counseling at University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Auscultate:

In Auscultate, Clayton Adam Clark's second poetry collection, Clark crafts a poetic landscape where time bends, bodies bear history, and nature hums with quiet, insistent rhythms. Moving through the haunted corridors of memory, industry, and the elemental forces that shape our lives, these poems trace an intricate map of loss, resilience, and transformation. From the quiet tremors of a leap-second vigil to the spectral presence of a shuttered auto plant, Clark's work meditates on what lingers--beneath the skin, beneath the leaves, beneath the earth itself.

Rooted in the Midwest but reaching beyond, Auscultate pulses with the weight of place and the urgency of movement. Whether capturing the reverberations of tornado sirens, the slow attrition of time, or the intimate architecture of the body, these poems ask how we hold onto what is fleeting. Clark's language is at once precise and expansive, a lyrical excavation of the seen and unseen, the personal and the collective. With selections previously appearing in Asheville Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, The Greensboro Review, and more, Auscultate establishes Clayton Adam Clark as a vital voice attuned to the echoes of the past and the tremors of the present.

This event is Pay What You Can — Here’s what your Suggested Donation can do for the Indy Reads community:

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