Green Roof Poetry: Poetry as Resistance
Event Details
Part of: Summer Social 2026
Green Roof Poetry brings together some of the Twin Cities’ most dynamic writers for an evening of literary readings.
Bring your blanket and relax for an evening of moving literary works from a curated roster of poets and writers. Local authors Sun Yung Shin, Raymond Luczak, and Jer Loudenback join Minneapolis’ first poet laureate, Heid E. Erdrich, and current poet laureate, Junauda Petrus, for poetry on the hillside. Catch their lively readings exploring the thematic threads of authenticity, collective power, radical honesty, and liberation.
Across from the Hillside in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, a special dance performance will kick off the evening. Beginning at 6 pm, Sherri Waterman-Hopper (Onondaga Nation, Beaver Clan), alongside singer “Huggy” and multiple guest dancers, will lead a demonstration of Smoke Dancing under the Pavilion. Smoke Dance is an engaging Haudenosaunee social dance that involves storytelling, quick footwork, and spins. Originally a war dance practiced by men to demonstrate their agility, stamina, and strength, in the last 70 years a graceful women’s dance style has since evolved.
Galleries are open late and free on Thursday nights from 5 to 9 pm.
This event will have ASL interpretation.
For questions about accessibility or to request accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
Heid E. Erdrich is a writer, curator, editor, and teacher. She served as the inaugural Minneapolis Poet Laureate, supported by an Academy of American Poets award. Her books include Verb Animate (2024) and Little Big Bully (2020), which won a National Poetry Series award. Erdrich edited New Poets of Native Nations and co-edited the 2025 publication Boundless: Abundance in Native American Art and Literature. Erdrich is Ojibwe and enrolled at Turtle Mountain.
Jer Loudenback, a native of Washington state, has been Deaf since birth. He worked as an ASL instructor and a teacher of the Deaf. Upon retirement, he moved to Minnesota and became involved in numerous Deaf organizations, which he enjoys immensely. He has written ASL poetry and poems in English. His work has appeared in four anthologies.
Junauda Petrus is a writer, pleasure activist, filmmaker, performance artist, and the current Poet Laureate of the City of Minneapolis. Born on Dakota land of Black Caribbean descent, she centers her work around wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer, and liberation. She is the author of The Stars and the Blackness Between Them, winner of the 2020 Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award.
Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of more than 40 books, including 14 full-length poetry collections such as [Exeunt.], Animals Out-There W-i-l-d, and Ironhood. He’s edited many anthologies such as I’ll Tell You Later: Deaf Survivors of Dinner Table Syndrome, Feet in the Waves: Poems of Lake Superior, and Deaf Poetry Now!!! Luczak lives in Minneapolis.
신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born poet, essayist, fiction writer, editor, and author of children’s books. Her works include The Wet Hex, Unbearable Splendor, and Six Tones of Water (with Vi Khi Nao). She has edited several influential anthologies, including A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota and What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family. She is the author of the creative nonfiction book Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Language, and Belonging, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in July 2026. A recipient of fellowships from the Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and MacDowell, Shin is cofounder of Poetry Asylum and lives in Minneapolis with her family.
Part of: Summer Social 2026
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