Join us for an afternoon with writer Dave Oliphant, who will be reading from his new poetry collection, The Hero’s Fall I Fell For: Jazz Poems. (At the reading The Hero’s Fall and the accompanying CD will be available for free on a first-come, first-served basis.)

With these poems devoted to jazz, Dave Oliphant offers a testament to the variety and significance of the art form and its artists. These poems are an attempt to pay homage to the art of jazz and to its musicians, whose lives and performances have long been a source of pleasure, inspiration, and solace.

Dave Oliphant was born in 1939 in Fort Worth, Texas. Host Publications has published two of his collections of poetry, Memories of Texas Towns & Cities (2000) and Backtracking (2004). His Maria’s Poems (1987) won an Austin Book Award. Host has also published three books that he translated from the Spanish: Enrique Lihn’s Figures of Speech (1999); Oliver Welden’s Love Hound (2006), winner of best book of poetry at the 2007 New York Book Festival; and Nicanor Parra’s After-Dinner Declarations (2009), winner of the 2011 translation award from the Texas Institute of Letters. KD: A Jazz Biography, his verse biography of Texas trumpeter Kenny Dorham, was published in 2012 by Wings Press, and The Pilgrimage: Selected Poems, 1962-2012 appeared from Lamar University Press in 2013. The poetry collections The Cowtown Circle and María’s Book were published by Alamo Bay Press in 2014 and 2016 respectively. He was with the University of Texas at Austin for 30 years, as an editor and a senior lecturer.