Join Jules and John reading their poems - new work and from their collections, at the Placitas Community Library.
Free - books for sale - a portion of book proceeds will benefit the library.
Light refreshments.
Jules Nyquist’s Atomic Paradise
2021 NM/AZ Book Award WINNER.
"I've dug in hard on ATOMIC PARADISE. It's a fantastic send-up on what I'd call part of the essence of New Mexico.
Indeed, I have spent countless hours in Southwest churches both on and off my knees, both crying and praying and asking for signs, and remembering that I know so little, really nothing. And then, eventually, that "Flash of sunrise/40,000 tons of TNT..." that is figurative, but now, through your book, I see it also as literal, or some vestige of "the blast." Perhaps, too, it remains subtle as "white yucca flows/irreversible time/at Trinity."
In the end, ATOMIC PARADISE succeeds because one learns and digests the fact that the bomb exploded and still explodes on both a national, personal, regional, and spiritual level. In New Mexico, it's only brighter and more intense because it is the source.
— Lawrence Welsh, author of Begging for Vultures: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2009
Jules Nyquist lives in Placitas, New Mexico where she is the founder of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse. Her recent award-winning books are Atomic Paradise, Homesick, The Sestina Playbook, Behind the Volcanoes, and Appetites. She took her PhD in Post-Secondary Adult Education from Capella University and her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. Jules poems have been featured in print, online, audio, radio or in-person at various readings and events including the NM History Conference, in Las Cruces, NM, the American Psychological Association Conference in Denver, CO, the Jonquil Motel in Bisbee, AZ, the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque, NM, a kind of a small array gallery in Magdalena, NM, the Briar in Minneapolis, MN, the Black Dog Café in St. Paul, MN, a Masonic Lodge in Bemidji, MN, the New Mexico Humanities Council, in Albuquerque, NM, Unquarked in Los Alamos, NM, and featured at the International Women’s Day at the Santa Fe Capitol Rotunda, and many other bookstores, bars, galleries, and the Placitas Community Library. Her poems have appeared in Salamander, 5AM, Malpais Review, Adobe Walls, A View from the Loft, St. Paul Almanac, Long Islander News, Gray Sparrow, House Organ, Duke City Fix, Café Review IKON Magazine, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Taos Journal of Poetry, Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes, Oddball Magazine, and elsewhere. Forthcoming work in A Year of New Mexico Poetry (the Anthology), Casa Urraca Press.
Author photo: Auxaarczen Photography
John Roche: Tubbables
An abracadabra of argle-bargles. A dictionary of deamflums. A guide book of gallilmaufries. A trilogy of taradiddles. What it definitely isn’t is an unreadable hurkle-durkle of caterwauling crinkum-crankums. Roche’s poems do and say what poetry has mostly forgotten and decided not to do and say in the recent past. They speak to us from viewpoints we can and will all enjoy, remember and revisit. Poems from and for all ages from thens to nows to always. To parapraise the closing words of this unbafflegabbing book of brawnesses, you’ll definitely want to pour another few cups of poetic joe.
— Stuart A. Paterson, Recent BBC Scotland Poet-in-Residence
John Roche lives in Placitas, New Mexico, helping Jules Nyquist run Jules’ Poetry Playhouse and edit Poetry Playhouse Publications. His latest poetry collection is Tubbables, which is a NM-AZ Book Award Finalist. Other books include On Conesus, Topicalities, Road Ghosts, The Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet, and Joe Rides Again: Further Adventures of Joe the Poet. He has also created and edited the five-volume Poets Speak series (Trumped, Hers, Water, Walls and Survival) and other anthologies (including Mo' Joe). Dr. Roche taught Literature and Creative Writing classes for decades at various colleges and teaches at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse and has done workshops for the New Mexico State Poetry Society. He was formerly President of Just Poets in Rochester, NY, a member of the board of BOA Editions, chief organizer of the Black Mountain North Symposium, and an instigator of the annual Cloudburst Council poets' retreat in the Finger Lakes.
Author photo Auxarczen Photography
We’re at the Placitas Library! Sat Sept 26, 2 pm.
Jules Poetry Playhouse at PCL
September 26 (2 PM)
By Doris Fields
If you have driven on NM Highway 165, you may have seen the cutely decorated sign on the side of the road announcing “Jules Poetry Playhouse.” Once each month, Jules and her partner in life, poet John Roche, host the Playhouse in their creative garden. Poets from throughout New Mexico, neighboring states and, indeed, other countries come to create, play, write, and share in the delight of poetry in Jules Poetry Playhouse. On Saturday, September 26, at 2 PM, everyone will have an opportunity to hear Jules and John read poems. Some of their poems, no doubt, blossomed from the Playhouse!
Jules Nyquist holds an M.F.A. in Writing & Literature (Poetry) from Bennington College, and a B.A. in Creative Writing from Metropolitan State University. She experiments with sound and form, and writes poetry on the page and for performance. Jules' two books of poems, Behind the Volcanoes and Appetites (Beatlick Press), were finalists for the NM/AZ Book Awards in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Her poems have appeared in 5 AM, Salamander, Malpais Review, Adobe Walls, St. Paul Almanac, Long Islander News, Gray Sparrow, House Organ, Duke City Fix, Café Review and others. She is co-editor of the Poets Speak anthology series with John Roche and edited the volume 2 Hers series in 2017.
After earning an M.A. at University College Dublin and a Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo, John Roche taught Literature and Creative Writing classes for four decades at various colleges and universities, including Emory University and Michigan State, and is Emeritus Associate Professor from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Along with editing the five-volume Poets Speak series (Beatlick Press/Poetry Playhouse Publications 2017-2018), and other anthologies (including Mo' Joe, Beatlick Press 2014), his own poetry collections include On Conesus (FootHills 2005), Topicalities (FootHills 2008), Road Ghosts (theenk Books 2011), The Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet (FootHills 2012), Joe Rides Again: Further Adventures of Joe the Poet (FootHills 2005), and Tubbables (Poetry Playhouse Publications 2024).
Jules and John live in Placitas and are excited to share poems from their assortment of award-winning books, along with new work. Themes such as the New Mexico landscape, road ghosts, wildlife, nuclear history, fun with forms, and word-play may have you inspired to try your own. Join us at this free event on Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 2 PM in the Gracie Lee Community Room. A portion of book sales will benefit the library.