Su Love: Featured Author and Open Mic (Theme: Wauƞṡida-Compassion)

Join us on July 23rd, 2026 for poetry and community! Arrow Broken Poetry Collective is honored to welcome Su Love as our featured artist.

Su Love’s long career as a choreographer and dancer informs her artistic aesthetic and poetry practice. Her six published books of poetry include Weight of Light, a Pushcart Editors’ Book Prize nominee; Buddha, Proof a Minnesota Book Award finalist; and The Memoir of Mona Lisa, published in Ireland by Salmon Poetry. Published chapbooks include Wild Hush and Unamuno Author Series #22 (Madrid). Journals and anthologies in which Su’s poems appear include Collecting Life, a Colorado Book Award Finalist, and Queer Nature Anthology, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Su’s poetry has also been honored by the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize and the Joy Harjo Poetry Award. Su is deeply grateful for the many small presses, editors, production teams, and curators who have helped deliver her poems to readers in beautiful vessels. Su is also deeply grateful for supportive grants and residencies from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Arts Council, Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, Tofte Lake Center, Pine Needles/St. Croix Watershed Research Station, Red Wing Arts, Lake Region Arts Council, Duvall Arts Council, Vermont Studio Center, Desperate Literature, and American Space Madrid.

As a maker of books, Su co-founded Laurel Poetry Collective, a small press of handsome poetry and, for many years, Su was the managing and production editor at the University of Minnesota Institute on Crime and Public Policy. Additionally, she taught graduate-level creative writing, undergraduate critical writing, and writing for English language learners. Su continues teaching as a visiting artist at colleges, universities, and arts organizations internationally and across Minnesota. Find Su’s books, poems, and interviews at sulove.org.

The free event will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will be held at the The Village Hall in Marine on St Croix. Open Mic will begin at 8:30 p.m. Everyone is invited to share their work and will be allotted three minutes to perform.

July’s theme is Wauƞṡida-Compassion. The foundation of our Dakọta spiritual lifeways is the concept of Wauƞṡida, compassion. It teaches us to treat everyone as a wotakuye, relative, and as such we are to be compassionate with one another, to be a good relative. Everything you do is done in a good way—from using the language in a respectful, kind way, to your actions—to not make anyone feel bad.

This event is sponsored by the St. Croix Valley Foundation and Marine Library Association, with support from the Brookside Bar & Grill, Christ Lutheran Church, and Marine Mills Folk School.