Leonore Hildebrandt Leonore Hildebrandt and Elise Stuart will read from their latest books of poetry on Friday, April 24, 2026 at 3pm at the Silver City Public Library. Their works, both released in 2025, talk of ordinary things in plain language, but explore difficult topics in an effort to transform them.
Kirun Kapur writes about Leonore Hildebrandt's book Somewhere the Day Begins, which "explores personal, artistic and natural landscapes with tender description and memorable music. The careful intelligence of these poems makes note of both the beauty and the unfathomable difficulties of our current world… Hildebrandt reminds us that it is our job to
leave traces of joy.' 'Earth is spinning you into a goodness/ only you and I are capable of making up,' she writes. Somewhere the Day Begins serves as a book of modern pastorals, reminding us that, even in times like these, the land and our own acts of imagination still have the power to replenish our spirit."
Right from the beginning, Elise Stuart's collection of poems, Across A Field of Stars, takes you on a journey. You feel the heat of the sand at the water's edge in the New Mexican desert, you see the little side path that brings you to the slow-moving river, you hear the rush of ravens' wings flying above your head. The journey becomes more intimate as Stuart takes you on the path of her own story of loss and transformation, constantly entwined and enlivened by the wind in the trees and the stars shining light against the dark.
Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections The Work at Hand, The Next Un-known, and Where You Happen to Be. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poet-ry Daily, Rhino, and Sugar House Review, among other journals. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Germany, Leonore lives in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter in Silver City, New Mexico.
Elise StuartElise Stuart has lived in Silver City for nineteen years. Living in the Midwest, then the North-west, she was taken by surprise at the immensity of the New Mexico sky, the wide blue, the clouds that told her stories, the mountains, the Gila River, the wildflowers that live with so lit-tle rain. She became the poet laureate of Grant County in 2014. Her vision was of youth bring-ing their poetry into the world, so she began offering poetry workshops. She gave nearly 100 workshops at schools in the area for three years. The students made "poem flags" by writing and illustrating one of their original poems. These were displayed in libraries, schools, coffee shops, an assisted living center and at WNMU's art gallery for the Southwest Word Fiesta. In 2017, her first book of poetry, Another Door Calls, was published, followed by My Mother and I, We Talk Cat, a memoir of prose and poetry.
For more information contact the Silver City Public Library at (575) 538-3672 or
