Join us at the Anderson Collection for an evening of poetry!
Bay Area poets and Stanford students share poems inspired by the Anderson Collection. Travel through the museum to hear poets read alongside the works that inspired them. Come learn about their process and write a little something of your own in response to prompts the poets will offer. We hope you'll go home with inspiration and the seeds of ekphrastic poems of your own!
Monday, February 9, 2026
4:30 PM - Doors open
5 PM - Readings
6 PM - Art viewing, Q&A & book signing
We invite you to arrive early to view the artworks up close ahead of the readings.
Anderson Collection
314 Lomita Drive
2026 Poets
Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Photo by Michelle Castillo
Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Mothersalt (Alice James Books, 2025) and Isako Isako, California Book Award finalist and winner of the 2017 Alice James Award, Nautilus Gold Award, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. She is also the author of the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year (Bateau Press, 2022). Mia holds degrees in creative writing from Stanford (BA ’07) and the University of Washington, and she is currently a 2025-2026 Distinguished Visiting Writer at Saint Mary's College of California. Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets, and The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. A dedicated member of the Choir of St. Paul's Burlingame and frequent musical collaborator, Mia’s commissioned texts have been performed as choral anthems throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom.
©The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.
Reproduction of this image, including downloading, is prohibited.
Richard Diebenkorn (1973)
Sarah Mangold
Sarah Mangold is the author of The Atom (Wave Books, 2023), a chapbook inspired by the visionary work of Swedish artist and researcher Hilma af Klint. She has published five poetry collections, including Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners (Fordham University Press, 2021), selected by Cynthia Hogue for the POL Prize, and the forthcoming In the Service of the Mysteries (Saturnalia, 2027), which continues her poetic dialogue with af Klint’s life and art.Â
Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Millay Arts, Artist Trust, Dora Maar House, Willapa Bay AiR, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and MacDowell. Originally from Oklahoma, Sarah now lives and works in Edmonds, Washington.Â
© 2014 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction, including downloading of ARS member works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Helen Frankenthaler (1962)
Brittany Perham
Photo by Marco Giugliarelli
Brittany Perham is the author of Double Portrait (W.W. Norton), which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize; The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP). Her writing has received support from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Hemingway House, the James Merrill House Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. New work may be found or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her latest book, Executrix, won the AWP Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2026.
© Estate of Joan Mitchell. Reproduction of this image, including downloading, is prohibited.
Joan Mitchell (1985)
Peter Kline
Peter Kline is the author of two poetry collections, Mirrorforms (Parlor Press, 2020) and Deviants (SFASU Press, 2013). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has also received residency fellowships from the Hemingway House, Amy Clampitt House, and James Merrill House, and has won prizes from Southwest Review, The Columbia Review, and River Styx. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and many other journals, as well as the Best New Poets series, the Verse Daily website, the Random House anthology of metrical poetry, Measure for Measure (2017), and the Persea anthology of self-portrait poems, More Truly and More Strange (2020). Since 2012 he has directed the San Francisco literary reading series Bazaar Writers Salon. He teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and Stanford University.
© 2014 Robert Therrien / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction, including downloading of ARS member works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Robert Therrien (1985)
Student Poets
Jono Wang Chu
Jono Wang Chu is a Chinese Canadian writer.  His writing has appeared in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, where he was a finalist for the 2021 Poetry Prize, selected by Eduardo C. Corral. He studies Comparative Literature and German at Stanford. In his free time, he enjoys pastel drawing and going on hikes.
© Nathan Oliveira Estate courtesy John Berggruen Gallery. Reproduction of this image, including downloading, is prohibited.
Nathan Oliveira (1958)
Ameera Ramadan Eshtewi
Ameera Eshtewi is a Libyan-American poet and undergraduate student at Stanford University. Her work explores identity and diaspora, political violence, and memory. She writes to bear witness to life and the human condition. Eshtewi is also a member of Stanford’s Spoken Word Collective and has opened for Safia Elhillo and Jamila Woods.
© 2014 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction, including downloading of ARS member works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Franz Kline (1952)
This event is hosted by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI) in collaboration with the Anderson Collection, and with support from the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.
If you need a disability-related accommodation for this event, please contact us at artsinstitute@stanford.edu  at least two weeks prior to the event.
Inter-Departmental Mail Code
#2250
Office
(650) 497-9905
Fax
(650) 723-8231
ADDRESS
Stanford Arts
Littlefield Center
2nd Floor
365 Lasuen Street
Stanford, CA 94305
