Many Wests, UMFA’s latest special exhibition which closes June 11, asks us to explore the perspectives of the original boundary breakers, memory makers, and caretakers of the American West. Join us in the Katherine W. and Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. Auditorium as we explore the West via the poignant and powerful poetry of Paisley Rekdal from her latest book,  West: A Translation. Stay for a book signing with the author and to explore the exhibition.

About West: A Translation 

Punctuated by historical images and told through multiple voices, West: A Translation explores what unites and divides America by drawing a powerful, necessary connection between the completion of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943).

Carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained during the Chinese Exclusion Act, is a poem elegizing a detainee who committed suicide. As West translates this anonymous Chinese elegy character by character, what’s left is a haunting narrative distilled through the history and lens of transcontinental railroad workers, and a sweeping exploration of the railroad’s cultural impact on America. Punctuated by historical images and told through multiple voices, languages, literary forms, and documents, West explores how our ideas about American history creep forward, even as the nation itself constantly threatens to spiral back. West is accompanied by a website (www.westtrain.org) that features video poems and encourages self-exploration of the transcontinental railroad’s history through an interactive, non-linear structure.

About the Author  

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction, and seven books of poetry, including Nightingale, Appropriate: A Provocation, and, most recently, West: A Translation. Her work has received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship, and various state arts council awards. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah where she is a distinguished professor.