Richard Tayson's books are The World Underneath, The Apprentice of Fever , which won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and Look Up for Yes. A New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, Tayson has received a Pushcart Prize and is now a Chancellors Fellow in the PhD program in English at City University of New York's Graduate Center where he is writing about William Blake's influence on American avant-garde culture.

Tayson's essay "Visionary Scrawl: Romantic Ancestors and Patti Smith's Just Kids" is now available in the Summer 2010 issue of Pleiades.

Tayson is at work on two new books, a book of poems titled Assault and a self-help book for gay men and women titled The Book of Break-Ups. Utilizing his personal experience in the recent dissolution of a 10-year partnership as well as the tribulations of other LGBT couples, this work surveys the difficulties of queer divorce--whether from emotional abuse, HIV seroconversion, or a partner who buys a dozen pair of new underwear that you know are not for your pleasure!--within a social structure that does not recognize or sanction queer unions. Tayson explores how states with civil union and marriage rights differ from those that don't, charting how emotional and physical trauma is mitigated in states granting LGBT people appropriate rights.

Watch YouTube video of Tayson's May 5, 2010 reading at Queensborough Community College:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkwogdcx3WU

Hear a podcast of a reading at New York University from My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (link at the bottom of this page).

London, England
William Blake Society
The City of Westminster Archives Centre
10 St. Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE - just off Parliament Square
June 8, 2010, 6:30
25th Anniversary of the Blake Society
and in support of the Blake gravesite project

RECENT PAST READINGS

New York
Queensborough Community College
S112
Wednesday, May 5, 1 pm
Saturday, March 27, 2010

Poets at the Poet's Salon /The Rainbow Book Fair
The Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies

The Graduate Center, CUNY
The World Underneath
February 15, 2008

Radio show: The Moe Green Poetry Hour
The World Underneath
February 20, 2008

New School University
The World Underneath
February 25, 2008

The Ear Inn
The World Underneath
March 15, 2008

Queens Public Library, Briarwood
The World Underneath
June 12, 2008

Interview: NPR's "Poetry Off the Shelf"
"The Casualties of Walt Whitman"
http://podcastdownload.npr.org
July 12, 2008

Living Theater
The World Underneath
July 28, 2008

LGBT Center, Manhattan
My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them
May 13, 2009

Queens Public Library, Jackson Heights
The World Underneath
June 16, 2009

Bryant Park Word for Word Poetry Series
The World Underneath
July 14, 2009

Graduate Center, CUNY
My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them
October 16, 2009

New York University
My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them
Friday, October 30, 2009

Ohio
Kent State University
Wick Poetry Center 25th Anniversary Celebration
The World Underneath
November 17-18, 2008

Chicago, Illinois
AWP Conference
Kent State U. Press & Wick Poetry Center
The World Underneath
Feb. 13, 2009

New Jersey
Princeton Library
The World Underneath
with Alicia Ostriker
May 28, 2008

Highland Park Public Library
The World Underneath
November 6, 2008

Colorado
University of Colorado, Denver
The World Underneath
April 21, 2008

University of Northern Colorado
The World Underneath
with Mary Crow
April 22, 2008

Colorado State University, Fort Collins
The World Underneath
April 24, 2008