April is National Poetry Month, and there happens to be an extremely talented poet reading at a local bookshop tonight (Thursday, April 21).
Fayetteville resident Matthew Henriksen will read from his new book, Ordinary Sun, at Nightbird Books beginning at 7 p.m.
Ordinary Sun is Henriksen’s first full-length collection of poetry, and the book has already received favorable reviews from Newcity Lit, Alice Blue Reviews, and others.
Since the collection was released back in February, Henriksen has given readings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis, and he will be leaving for an East Cost tour in support of the book this May.
Here’s what Walt Whitman Award-winning poet (and former-Fayetteville resident) Tony Tost had to say about Henriksen:
If T.S. Eliot and Gram Parsons were both dug up and placed in the same small room with just a bottle of whiskey, Fox News and a couple of angels for company, the only contemporary poet they would bother fighting over would be Matthew Henriksen, their prodigal son. What rough age has bore us, I wonder, that we so need Matthew Henriksen’s cruel kind of song? If he doesn’t let up, they’ll probably end up naming him the poet laureate of something and staple the names of the dead to his chest.
