Rozsa Art Galleries to bring Ukrainian Poet, Former U.P. Poet Laureate and Estonian Letterpress together in the Keweenaw
HOUGHTON – The Rozsa Art Galleries opens Simple Machines: Letterpress, and the Art of the Little Magazine in their professional A-Space Gallery next Friday, February 2. This thrilling international affair is a collaboration that spans the United States, Estonia, and Ukraine. The opening includes events with visiting Ukrainian Poet Yulia Musakovska and former U.P. Poet Laureate M. Bartley Seigel. The free exhibit is open through March 31 in the Rozsa Art Galleries A-Space, located on the lower level of the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts on Michigan Tech’s Campus.
The art and words of Simple Machines, an international letterpress poetry magazine, are featured in the multimedia exhibit. Founded and edited by Former U.P. Poet Laureate and Michigan Tech Professor M. Bartley Seigel and funded through a Research Excellence Fund—Scholarship & Creativity Grant, the little magazine is produced in collaboration with designer/printers at the Copper Country Community Arts Center, Hancock, Michigan, and TYPA Letterpress & Paper Art Center, Tartu, Estonia, and featuring original poetry from national and international poets, including Yuliya Musakovska.
Leading up to the exhibition, meet Musakovska at Speaking Truth to Power: Poets, Writers, Resistance, and Resilience, a poetry reading followed by a panel discussion. Moderated by Gallery Director Terri Jo Frew, the panel discussion includes Musakovska and Michigan Tech professors Richard Canevez, Stephanie Carpenter, and M. Bartley Seigel. The free event will be held in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on February 1 from 12-1 p.m.
The following evening, head to the Rozsa Art Galleries A-Space on Friday, February 2, for the free opening reception from 5-7 p.m. Meet featured poets Musakovsa and M. Bartley Seigel in a relaxed environment, enjoy light refreshments, experience the exhibit, and witness a live letterpress demonstration by Bonnie Locus and Daniel Schneider from the Copper Country Community Arts Center. There will also be a poetry reading performed by Musakovska and others.
This event is sponsored by Michigan Tech’s Institute for Policy, Ethics, and Culture (IPEC), Pavlis Honors College, College of Sciences and Arts, Department of Humanities, Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Michigan Tech Writing Center, TYPA Printing and Paper Art Centre, and by
the Copper Country Community Arts Center (CCCAC). This program is partially funded by the Visiting Professor Program which is funded by a grant to the Office of the Provost from the State of Michigan's King-Chavez-Parks Initiative.
To learn more, visit mtu.edu/rozsa, email rozsa@mtu.edu, or call 906-487-1906.
About the Artists
Yuliya Musakova was born in 1982 in Lviv, Ukraine. She is an award-winning poet, translator, and member of PEN Ukraine. She is the author of five poetry collections in Ukrainian, most recently The God of Freedom (2021) and a bi-lingual collection Iron in Polish and Ukrainian (2022). She has received numerous literary awards in Ukraine, among them the prestigious Smoloskyp Poetry Award for young authors and the DICTUM Prize. Her works have been translated into more than twenty languages and published internationally. Yuliya is a translator of Tomas Tranströmer to Ukrainian and of contemporary Ukrainian authors to English.
M. Bartley Seigel is a former Poet Laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a former Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. He is the author of the poetry collection, This Is What They Say, and his poems frequently appear in literary journals like Poetry Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fourth River. He is founding editor-in-chief of the poetry letterpress, Simple Machines, and founding editor emeritus of the literary magazine, Pank Magazine. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Tech, where he also directs the Writing Center.
Rozsa Art Galleries Director Terri Jo Frew is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator from Ontario, Canada. Through her art, Professor Frew is interested in contributing to the contemporary dialogue concerned with breaking down boundaries between art and craft. By utilizing materials and processes from Fibre Arts (textiles) and Illustration- media commonly considered to be from the realm of craft- in concert with conceptual content, she hopes to challenge antiquated notions of art media hierarchy.