Poetry Reading with Daniela Naomi Molnar
August 24 | 4:00pm
Admission is free
Hoffman Center for the Arts | 594 Laneda Avenue | Manzanita
Join us to hear Daniela Naomi Molnar read from her book, CHORUS, winner of the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, selected by Mark Wunderlich, Eleni Sikelianos, and Abigail Chabitnoy and winner of Omnidawn’s 1st/2nd book award, selected by Kazim Ali. The sprawling, celebratory, mourning chorus of this book is the sum of many voices; the words of other writers, poets, and artists are interwoven with the author’s words. This is a celebration of language’s capacity to supersede bodily limits, mortality, and existential loneliness. Daniela Naomi Molnar’s CHORUS encompasses violence, love, empathy, fear, a burning planet, a pandemic, heartbreak, desire, joy, and grief. Rather than seeking resolution, these poems look through the lens of a fragmented self, dwelling in plurality, discord, and harmony.
“CHORUS is a lyric wail stunned into awakening by crises both planetary and personal– though here, as in the physical universe, the two are not oppositional phenomena. Pieces made of fragmented verse, sinuous prose, and desperate frenzied plea make a rhetoric of salve or salvation. As the poet writes, ‘The songbird is and is not a metaphor./The songbird is and is not gone.’ What I mean to say to you (I meaning me, you meaning absolutely you, the one reading this) is that this is a book that speaks from a body and to a body. I felt spoken to. Known. ‘Are you there. Is anyone there.’”—Kazim Ali, judge of the 1st/2nd Omnidawn Book Contest 2021
“Tendrilic, electric, Daniela Naomi Molnar’s CHORUS traces a mind in swift action. A near daybook, this collection is intimate and expansive, born of the solitudes highlighted in the pandemic, while resistant to the individualisms thrust upon us. It is a choral undertaking that points to the ecosystems of our languages, the subterranean connections between our lives and the world, and the ‘open portals’ of books in our current fires. A stunning book by a poet I am excited to follow.” —Solmaz Sharif, author of Customs
Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her book CHORUS won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press’ 1st/2nd Book Award. Her work is the subject of a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times, a PBS Oregon Art Beat profile, and a feature in Poetry Daily. Her next books include: PROTOCOLS (Ayin Press, 2025) and Light / Remains (Bored Wolves Press, 2026). Her work will also be included in the forthcoming Volume 2 of The Ecopoetry Anthology. She founded the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and helped start and run the backcountry artist residency Signal Fire.
View and download event flyer here
Instagram: @daniela_naomi_molnar
August 24 -Poetry reading
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Situated on the main street in Manzanita just a few blocks west of Highway 101, the Hoffman Center is located across the street from the North Tillamook Library.
