With two events on Friday, March 7th, we launch the Literary Series at 1900, a celebration of the written word. Each event in the series will showcase emerging and established writers in conjunction with the other art forms we have enjoyed presenting for years - music, film, visual art, and food and drink. No matter your background with literature, the Literary Series will be the perfect space for discovering new and long-enjoyed literary voices.
At the beginning of each year, the 1900 Building will introduce a theme to shape the year’s literary events. This year, we have chosen the topic of PLACE. Together with audiences, we will explore where we are and why it matters.
On Friday, March 7 at 6:30pm, we will celebrate The Poetry of Place with three tremendous poets rooted in the Heartland, as well as Kansas City jazz greats, and mid-continental food and drink!
Stan Banks, Greg Field, and Denise Low first came together in 1981 in the pages of their first book publication, Mid-America Trio. Professor Dan Jaffe, founder of BkMk Press, gathered their individual books of poetry in a modest volume and soon after, the three read their work at Whistler's Bookstore in Westport. Forty-five years later, each of them continues to write and encourage poetic writing around us. Now the trio comes together to expand our sense of place and share memories about iconic sites and times in Kansas City.
Kansas City based jazz pianist Brad Cox and tenor saxophonist Rich Wheeler add musical voices to the evening, highlighting Kansas City's deep history of improvisational music.
Guests will also enjoy offerings from The Restaurant at 1900: hors d’oeuvres and special beverages will celebrate the Heartland and Kansas City!
We also invite you, our 1900 Building guests, to contribute your sense of place to a collection of writing on where we are and why it matters. Ideally, we’d like to compile the submissions to make a chapbook, a small booklet that contains poems, stories, or other writing. We plan to keep the submissions open through the year.
DENISE LOW, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, is author of House of Grace, House of Blood, archive-based poetry from the University of Arizona Press. Other recent publications are The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (University of Nebraska Press); Wing (Red Mountain); and Casino Bestiary (Spartan). The American Book Review described her Jackalope (Red Mountain Press 2016) as: “an engaging and humorous read, one that reveals a great deal about the parallel, contemporary Native America that exists and thrives in ways largely invisible to many other Americans.” Other recent books are Jigsaw Puzzling: Essays (Meadowlark 2022), and poetry from Red Mountain Press: Shadow Light (2017 Editor’s Choice Award) and Mélange Block (2014).
Low is a literary programmer for The 222 an arts organization in northern California. She teaches, coaches, freelance edits, and reviews. Since 2004 she has published Mammoth Publications, which specializes in Indigenous American and literary authors. She posts commentary about poets and writers on her blog. Members of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs elected her to the national board in 2008-13, and she served as president of the AWP board 2011-2012. She is a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) 2020 to the present. The Poetry Foundation selected samples of her work for its site, and the March, 2025 issues of Poetry features her comments in a roundtable discussion of Indigenous languages.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE. Currently, Denise Low teaches for Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies and leads independent creative writing workshops. She taught at Haskell Indian Nations University, where she founded the creative writing program, for 25 years. She has been visiting professor in the Creative Writing programs of the University of Richmond (’05) and the University of Kansas (’08).
ONLINE PUBLICATIONS. The poem “Two Gates” was selected for the national series American Life in Poetry (ed. Ted Kooser); “Where the Dead Go” is a Verse Daily selection; and Paidraig O’Tuama reads and explicates her “Walking with My Delaware Grandfather” for the On Being project. Recent reviews and essays appear in New Letters, North Dakota Quarterly (79.2, Spring 2014) and Numero Cinq.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS: Low’s Natural Theologies: Essays about Literature of the New Middle West (The Backwaters Press 2011) is the first book about contemporary grasslands-region literature. Ghost Stories: From Einstein’s Brain to Geronimo’s Boots (Woodley 2010) won a Ks. Notable Book Award, as well as Words of a Prairie Alchemist (Ice Cube Press 2006) . She edited two editions of Kansas Poems of William Stafford (Woodley 2010). Her collection of commentaries about Kansas-related poets, Ad Astra Poetry Project: Kansas Poets (Washburn Center for Ks. Studies & Mammoth) also won a Kansas Notable Book Award. She and her husband Thomas Weso (1953-2023) wrote a photo-biography, Langston Hughes in Lawrence. Other writings, appear in Va. Quarterly Rev., New Letters, Yellow Medicine Rev., Conguries, North American Rev., Northwest Rev., Midwest Q., Connecticut Rev., and others.
AWARDS: She holds a 2011-2012 NEH Faculty Fellowship for Tribal College Faculty for research into Northern Cheyenne ledger art. An article co-authored with Ramon Powers on ledger art appears in Kansas History in 2012, and she directs four ledgers for the Plains Indian Ledger Art site (Univ. of Cal.-San Diego). PERSONAL. Denise Low is a 5th generation Kansan of mixed German, British, and unaffiliated Lenape (Delaware) She grew up in the Flint Hills town of Emporia, where, in high school, she wrote a weekly column for the Emporia Gazette under William L. White.
EDUCATION: Ph.D., English, University of Kansas. Dissertation Honors. Comprehensive examinations over American Indian literature, nonfiction prose, and Loren Eiseley; M.F.A., Creative Writing, Wichita State University, both poetry and fiction classes; M.A., English, University of Kansas, literature option; B.A., English, University of Kansas.
STANLEY E. BANKS has been Poet, English Professor, and Artist-in-Residence at Avila University for 27 years. In 2023, he received Avila University’s MEDAL OF HONOR for his Exceptional Teaching. Banks had his 5th book of poetry, BLUE ISSUES, published in 2013. His other 4 books are BLUE BEAT SYNCOPATION (2003), RHYTHM AND GUTS (1992), COMING FROM A FUNKY TIME AND PLACE (1988), and ON 10th ALLEY WAY (1981) for which he won the LANGSTON HUGHES PRIZE FOR POETRY. In 1989, he was awarded the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS FELLOWSHIP/GRANT for his Poetry. In 2023, Banks received the RESOLUTION and HONOR AWARD from the City of Kansas City, Missouri for his writing and teaching career. Banks went to Howard University in Graduate School in 1980. He performed his poem, “The Jazz Man Hit A Mean Lick,” (renamed “Romaine”) on Sonny Kenner’s Jazz and Blues Album in 1995. Banks has acted in 2 Independent Films and hosted his own Talk Show titled Arts At Ya! Further, Banks has given interviews on Television, Radio, Podcast and YouTube. Finally, Banks has had his work published throughout the country!
GREG FIELD is an artist, writer, and musician. His books are The End of This Set, a chapbook (BkMk Press), The Longest Breath (Mid-America Press), and Black Heart (Mammoth Press). His most recent book is Uncertainties (Woodley Press). He plays drums for the improvisational jazz band, River Cow Orchestra. His paintings are in private collections all over the country. His poems have appeared in New Letters, Chiron Review, Laurel Review, Chouteau Review and other journals. He is one of the editors of the I-70 Review. He lives in Independence, Missouri with his wife, poet, Maryfrances Wagner and their dogs, Anne Sexton and Lucille Clifton.
BRAD COX is a composer in the uniquely American Ellington model, dedicated to forming long lasting relationships with musicians and writing music for those musicians. Brad is a founder and contributing composer to The People's Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City, and conceived and organized the ensemble’s versions of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and The Battleship Potemkin. In addition to his work with Owen/Cox Dance Group, he has created compositions and arrangements for Sony Classical recording artist Nathan Granner, Grammy award-winning producer and engineer Russ Elevado, Paris-based songwriter Krystle Warren and internationally-recognized puppeteer Paul Mesner. Brad is a 2009 recipient of the Tanne Foundation Award, and 2010 recipient of the Charlotte Street Foundation Generative Performing Artist Award.
RICH WHEELER has been a freelance professional saxophonist and private saxophone teacher in the Kansas City area for the past 15 years. He has performed across the US and Europe, and can be heard locally with the Rich Wheeler Quartet, Fluorescer, Brandon Draper New Quintet, Jeff Harshbarger Trio, People's Liberation Big Band, Marcus Lewis Big Band, Ensemble Iberica, Relativity Brass, Alaturka and many others. Rich can be heard on multiple albums including dates with Fluorescer, New Jazz Order, the Peoples Liberation Big Band, Alaturka, Marcus Lewis Big Band, Brandon Draper Quintet, Draper Family Band and many albums by bands in the Kansas City Rock and Pop scene. Alaturka's critically acclaimed second album Yalniz received 4.5 stars in a review from Downbeat Magazine. (August 2013).