Artistic Discipline: Poetry

“As a Teaching Artist, I invite people to engage with words in new and unexpected ways on the path toward creating poems that resonate with their own voice and experience.”


Kelly Nelson is a member of the 2016 AZ Creative Aging Teaching Artist Institute cohort.

Kelly Nelson is a poet and teacher based in Tempe.

She is the author of two chapbooks, Who Was I to Say I Was Alive and Rivers I Don’t Live By, winner of the 2013 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series Award.

Her poetry has appeared in more than 40 literary journals and she has performed her poems at coffee shops, book stores, galleries, diners, farmers markets, the Houston Poetry Festival, the Phoenix Art Museum and on the Phoenix Light Rail.

She holds an M.S. in Adult Education and teaches poetry classes through ASU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. She serves as a judge for Tempe’s Community Writing Contest, volunteers as a gallery docent at the Tempe Center for the Arts and serves on her city’s arts and culture commission.

Kelly received a 2014 Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts in support of her first full-length collection: a lyric, found biography of her uncle based on his 500-page prison record.

Nelson is a Senior Lecturer at Arizona State University where she’s been teaching Interdisciplinary Studies since 1999.

Website: www.kelly-nelson.com

National Poetry Month 2016

In 1996, the Academy of American Poets established April as National Poetry Month. To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of this annual celebration of the poets and their work, the Arizona Commission on the Arts is throwing a spotlight on recent recipients of our Artist Research and Development Grant.

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External Ideas, Internal Experiences: A Conversation with Arizona Poet Kelly Nelson

"I’m fascinated by the process of mixing external ideas and internal experiences to create poetry that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying to readers.  The themes I find myself continually returning to are family history, place, death, secrets and things unsaid."

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Photo by Carrie Meyer




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We're very excited to visit Hilltop Gallery on February 1 to learn about the impact of arts and culture in City of Nogales, Arizona! In partnership with Patrons of the Arts, Inc. and Arizona Citizens for the Arts, we'll be hosting a community mixer with special guest Randy Cohen, Vice President of Research at Americans for the Arts and the architect of the landmark Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 national study! Hope to see you there! ... See MoreSee Less
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