The RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU

10/15/2026

We had an amazing evening at the MSU Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU as we kicked off "The Poetry Gallery" Series with a reading by Sasha Debevec-McKenney, and our student intern Gabrielle Yeary, who opened for her. Another of our student interns, Charisma Holly, produced a beautiful letterpress broadsheet of one of Sasha's poems. Thanks to The State News for the coverage and these photos!

Michigan State University's Independent student voice since 1909

10/14/2026

Tonight! We're excited to welcome poet (and new Michigander) Sasha Debevec-McKenney to open the Poetry Gallery Series at the Broad Art Museum!

Debevec-McKenney, a poet who studies the presidents, has conducted long-term embodied research into key sites of American national identity. Her poetry invites us to consider American history and the stories we tell about our nation. A meet-and-greet book signing will follow.

Register for FREE at this link (https://50807.blackbaudhosting.com/50807/The-Poetry-Gallery-Sasha-Debevec-McKenney) or on the Events page on our website.

10/13/2026

Poem of the Week: "Like" by Sasha Debevec McKenney

LIKE

As I led the man through
the crowded restaurant
and to his table at the back
he said, you sure are packing
us in here like on slave ships
when he could have said
anything else: packing us in here
like daisies into a grocery-store
bouquet, packed together
like the pages of a wet book,
like A-listers in a Wes Anderson movie,
like hemorrhoid cream in an unopened tube,
like pennies in a pickle jar,
like forty to fifty exuberant
rural children in an underfunded
classroom, like a family of polar bears
crowded together on a floating sheet of ice—
he could have said, even,
like your ass in those jeans.

Blood in a syringe, silver compact
vehicles on the beltline at rush hour,
styrofoam tight in its cardboard box.
Yes, I was packing him in there,
like textured ground-beef material
into a Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Burrito,
like Amish girls in the back of a white van
on the way to Walmart. Like bone regrowing
inside a plaster cast. Like the flames
in a fire, like the fingers in my fist.

Join us Wednesday at the MSU Broad Art Museum as we welcome Sasha for "The Poetry Gallery," a series of poetry readings in response the "We Are This Land" exhibition.

10/05/2026

You are invited to The Poets Roundtable featuring Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte and Dr. Gordon Henry Jr., the Inaugural John and Audrey Leslie Chair in North American Indian and Indigenous Literary Studies and Professor Emeritus at MSU, taking place October 23-24 at the Kellogg Center, 219 S. Harrison Rd., East Lansing.

Registration is required for the Saturday workshops/lunch. Visit https://forms.gle/Lah1iweYrguUcFiL8 to register by OCTOBER 14.

For more info, visit https://poetry.rcah.msu.edu/events/poets-roundtable-2026.html.

On Friday, Oct. 23 at 7:00 p.m, Mark Turcotte and Gordon Henry will give a reading. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. for socializing, refreshments, and book sales. A signing will follow the reading.

Saturday, Oct. 24, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Turcotte and Henry will offer workshops along with Nichole Keway Biber, Zoë Johnson, and Lansing Poet Laureate Suban Nur Cooley.
Registration begins at 9 a.m.

To guarantee a seat and lunch for the Saturday workshops, please register online by OCTOBER 14.

Many thanks to MSU's Native American Institute and the Lansing Poetry Club for making this event a reality!

09/28/2026

Meanwhile by Richard Siken
-
Driving, dogs barking, how you get used to it, how you make
                            the new streets yours.
Trees outside the window and a big band sound that makes you feel like
     everything’s okay,
  a feeling that lasts for one song maybe,
                 the parentheses all clicking shut behind you.
          The way we move through time and space, or only time.
The way it’s night for many miles, and then suddenly
                                     it’s not, it’s breakfast
   and you’re standing in the shower for over an hour,
                   holding the bar of soap up to the light.
I will keep watch. I will water the yard.
      Knot the tie and go to work. Unknot the tie and go to sleep.
                            I sleep. I dream. I make up things
   that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
                      The trees in wind, the streetlights on,
          the click and flash of ci******es
being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight.
      It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,
                                  green beautiful green.
   It’s simple: it isn’t over, it’s just begun. It’s green. It’s still green.
-
From Crush, Yale University Press, 2005

09/22/2026

Due to effects from MSU's recent power outage, this event is postponed until November 18 at 7:00 p.m.
Hope to see you there!

07/30/2026

Tonight at the Brenke Fish Ladder! A perfect night for poets, and for fish. See you there!

07/21/2026

Summer Series is back! Join us next Thursday at the Brenke Fish Ladder for readings from Claire Donohoe, Cameron McLeod Martin, and Sophia Villalobos!

06/25/2026

We’re so proud of Lansing Poet Laureate Emerita Ruelaine Stokes’ expansive vision and expert coordination of this magnificent project and endlessly grateful to the Academy of American Poets for their generous support. Read all about it here and, if you’re in mid-Michigan, take a stroll through Tollgate Wetlands to experience it yourself.

Read "Poetry: A Pathway and a Portal into a Sustainable Future" by Ruelaine Stokes, 2025 Poet Laureate Fellow of Lansing, Michigan: https://poets.org/text/poetry-pathway-and-portal-sustainable-future

05/30/2026

We’re thrilled to see Wheelbarrow Books author Mary Morris’s poem from “Late Self-Portraits” featured on The Slowdown today!
To order the book, visit Michigan State University Press at https://msupress.org/9781611864229/late-self-portraits/