Welcome to this special celebration of the IKON Second Series.
Featured readers Susan Sherman, Demetria Martinez, Margaret Randall, Mary Oishi and Jules Nyquist. Hosted by Jules’ Poetry Playhouse.
IKON, the Second Series (1982 to 1994), was a major feminist publication, both historical and timeless. It was comprised of artists, writers, activists, and organizations whose work would come to define a pivotal era in women’s history including voices from New York to New Mexico to Nicaragua. These are voices of rebels, witnesses and lovers all rooted in a desire for justice.
The Archive of the Second Series is now available online thanks to support from World Literature Today and now includes an online commemorative issue done originally with SEW (The Society for Educating Women) that comprises work from the original issues as well as new work. Link will be shared at the reading.
Enjoy the read, the ride: you will touch that place deep within that yearns for revolutionary change, renewed vision, and creative action as we embrace new dreams for a different kind of world.
Susan Sherman
Poet, playwright, essayist, and founding editor of IKON magazine, Susan Sherman has had thirteen plays produced off-off Broadway including an adaptation from Spanish of Pepe Carril's, Shango de Ima (Doubleday, 1971). She has published seven collections of poetry; a highly acclaimed memoir, America’s Child: A Woman’s Journey through the Radical Sixties (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2007); and a collection of short fiction, Nirvana on Ninth Street (Wings Press, 2014). Her new and selected poems, The Light that Puts an End to Dreams, (Wings Press) published in 2012 was a finalist in the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Lesbian Poetry Award. The recipient of several writing awards including NYFA and CAPS fellowships, she is currently working on a novel, Miriam’s America, dedicated to The grandmother I never knew/ And the mother I am trying to understand.
Demetria Martinez is a poet, writer and activist based in La Cienaga, New Mexico. Her books include a collection of essays, Confessions of a Berlitz Tape Chicana, and short stories, The Block Captain's Daughter. Her books of poetry include The Devil's Workshop. She co-authored the eBook, Let Them Work, about immigration, with former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris. Her novel, Mother Tongue, is based in part upon her 1988 federal conspiracy trial; she was charged with smuggling Salvadoran refugees into the United States as part of the Sanctuary movement. She faced a potential 25 years in prison and 1.25 million in fines. Martinez, a reporter at the time covering the movement, was acquitted on First Amendment grounds. She is currently at work on a collection of poetry, For English Press One (A True Story).
Margaret Randall is a poet, essayist, oral historian, translator, photographer and social activist. She lived in Latin America for 23 years (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua). From 1962 to 1969 she and Mexican poet Sergio Mondragón co-edited EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN, a bilingual literary quarterly that published some of the best new work of the sixties. When she came home in 1984, the government ordered her deported because it found some of her writing to be “against the good order and happiness of the United States.” With the support of many writers and others, she won her case, and her citizenship was restored in 1989. Randall’s most recent poetry titles include AGAINST ATROCITY, OUT OF VIOLENCE INTO POETRY (both from Wings Press), STORMCLOUDS LIKE UNKEPT PROMISES and VERTIGO OF RISK (both from Casa Urraca Press). CHE ON MY MIND (a feminist poet’s reminiscence of Che Guevara, published by Duke University Press), and THINKING ABOUT THINKING (essays, from Casa Urraca), and ARTISTS IN MY LIFE (New Village Press) are other recent titles. In 2020 Duke published her memoir, I NEVER LEFT HOME: POET, FEMINIST, REVOLUTIONARY. Two of Randall’s photographs are in the Capitol Art Collection in Santa Fe. She has also devoted herself to translation, producing WHEN RAINS BECOME FLOODS by Lurgio Galván Sánchez and ONLY THE ROAD / SOLO EL CAMINO, an anthology of eight decades of Cuban poetry (both also published by Duke), among many other titles. Randall received the 2017 Medalla al Mérito Literario from Literatura en el Bravo, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 2018 she was awarded the “Poet of two Hemispheres” prize by Poesía en Paralelo Cero in Quito, Ecuador. In 2019 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of New Mexico and in 2022 she received the City of Albuquerque’s Creative Bravo Award. Randall lives in Albuquerque with her partner (now wife) of more than 36 years, the painter Barbara Byers, and travels extensively to read, lecture and teach.
Mary Oishi is Albuquerque Poet Laureate Emeritus (2020-2022). She is author of Spirit Birds They Told Me (West End Press, 2011) and co-author of Rock Paper Scissors (Swimming with Elephants, 2018), finalist for the New Mexico Arizona Book Award. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally in journals and anthologies including The Blue Nib, Mas Tequila Review, Malpais Review, Sinister Wisdom, Oklahoma Humanities, Harwood Anthology, and in translation in 12 Poetas: Antologia De Nuevos Poetas Estadounidenses. Her poetry collection, Sidewalk Cruiseship, will be published in 2023 by UNM Press. Oishi served as instructor for Taos Writers Conference (2021 & 2022).
Jules Nyquist is the founder of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in Placitas, NM, a place for poetry and play. She took her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, VT. Her latest book Atomic Paradise, winner of the 2021 NM/AZ Book Award for New Mexico History, is an exploration of growing up in the Cold War and living in the Land of Enchantment surrounded by nuclear secrets. Her poetic memoir, Homesick, then, is a 2018 NM/AZ Book Award winner in poetry. She is editor of the award-winning volume, Hers, of the Poets Speak Anthology series co-published by Poetry Playhouse Publications and Beatlick Press. Hers features international authors that speak of women's rights, exposure and invisibility, domestic violence, workplace struggles, religious persecution, the Women's March, the continuing struggle to pass the ERA, and reproductive rights. Jules is the author of The Sestina Playbook, a 2021 NM/AZ Book Award winner in actives, and Zozobra Poems, a 2019 NM/AZ Book Award winner in philosophy. It is with gratitude and honor that Jules’ Poetry Playhouse hosts this celebratory event honoring the courageous women of IKON magazine.
There are no words to adequately express my gratitude for the privilege of working with so many talented and dedicated people, many of whom have become close and much valued, personal friends. To them, and to the many women and men, who, as readers of IKON, have supported our work over the years, what can I say except very simply, Thank You.
SUSAN SHERMAN
Editor/ IKON Magazine
1965 – 1969, 1982 - 1994
