The Word Works’ Café Muse program hosted poets B.K. Fischer and Serena Fox on Sunday, August 5 at the Friendship Heights Village Center. The program was opened by classical guitarist Michael Davis.
B.K. Fischer’s reading drew mainly from her collection of ekphrastic poems titled “St. Rage’s Vault” (winner of the 2012 Washington Prize). She delighted the crowd with an unconventional performance, simultaneously reading and displaying projections of the artworks that inspired the poems that operate on a physical and metaphysical level. The collection followed the course of a pregnancy that Fischer called “a quick gestational tour.”
Serena Fox read from “Night Shift,” a collection inspired by her career as an intensive care physician. She read several poems inspired by her time in a D.C. emergency room, a period filled with trauma but which she noted was punctuated by “quiet moments of awe.”
The program was followed by a commemoration of poet Reetika Vazirani, who passed away in 2003 and whose estate sponsored the event.