Calling themselves “Animal Luminoso,” New Mexico poets Anna MacNaughton, former director of the long running Taos Poetry Circus, and Amalio Madueño, co-founder of the Circus, join forces with Denver performance poet SETH for a unique interweaving of poetic styles.

$20 (in advance), $25 at the door, (students/seniors $5 off).

Doors at 6:30p, performance at 7p.

“I call this poetry jazz opera,” says organizer Madueño, a practicing poet for 50 years.

Sponsored by New Mexico non-profit organizations TaosPoetix! and the Taos Jazz Bebop Society, Animal Luminoso includes the Denver-based improvisational music ensemble Art Compost & the Word Mechanics.  

 Anne MacNaughton is a poet, author and visual artist based in northern New Mexico. Co-founder of the Society of the Muse of the Southwest (S.O.M.O.S), she is a founding member of the “Luminous Animal” poetry and jazz group, founded in 1983. MacNaughton coaches performance and teaches creative writing around the Southwest.

 Living on the Rio Embudo south of Taos, Amalio Madueño has published 20 books of poetry and performed live throughout the southwest and west coast, conducting seminars and workshops as well. Madueño joined the Luminous Animal in 1993. 

 A published poet, short story writer and novelist, SETH is a former member of the poetry theater ensemble “Open Rangers” and the critically-acclaimed performance art trio “Jafrika.” In 2000, SETH founded Art Compost & the Word Mechanics, an elastic ensemble of musicians and poets performing their special style of improvisational music. Twenty-five years later, the ensemble continues to perform weekly at the Pearl, formerly the Mercury Café.

 “Animal Luminoso picks up where Luminous Animal left off,” Madueño explains. “We are celebrating a uniquely American jazz-poetry tradition much like that practiced by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Think of it. Poetry…and all that jaazzz!”