Teatro Paraguas to host Genevieve Betts book launch, reading
Sep. 6—Teatro Paraguas is hosting a book launch and reading for Genevieve Betts' new poetry book "A New Kind of Tongue" at 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 17, at 3205 Calle Marie in Santa Fe.
Genevieve Betts is a poet raised in Tempe, Arizona. She spent much of her time backpacking all around the state with her family, from as far south as the Huachuca Mountains to as far north as the Grand Canyon. She attended Arizona State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and an Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Her first poetry collection, "An Unwalled City" came out in 2015. Her work has appeared in Sleet Magazine, Minerva Rising, New Mexico Review, Cloudbank, Hotel Amerika, The Tishman Review, The Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, and in other journals and anthologies. She teaches creative writing at Santa Fe Community College, as well as for Arcadia University's low-residency MFA program in Glenside, Pennsylvania.
As a collection, "A New Kind of Tongue" includes poems that are sometimes quirky, sometimes lyrical, sometimes edgy, and sometimes humorous. Language — our understanding of it, its regionality and its many intricacies — is a main theme rooted within the book's strong sense of place. Betts compares the East Coast, specifically Brooklyn, and the Southwest, specifically Santa Fe, making comparisons and observations. The author exclusively uses language from outside texts such as Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore," Tom Robbins' "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten," and Angela Carter's short story "The Bloody Chamber." Betts reshapes the language of these texts to speak her own voice through the voices of others. This voice and her lens take a feminist perspective with subject matter that includes family, work, the political climate, and other aspects of life, revealing hidden truths alongside shared truths of these recently-lived experiences.
See teatroparaguasnm.org.
