UNT Special Collections 2021 Research Fellowship Awardee

Project Title

Louisiana Saturday Nights

Project Description

This project focuses a collection of poetry that considers the legal designation “non-resident alien” and what it means to land from the sky (like an extraterrestrial) into an entirely foreign landscape and culture. My time with the Music Library Collection will be spent exploring jazz and zydeco musicians out of South Louisiana and New Orleans. As a writer with a specialization in contemporary poetry, the output I will produce from this engagement will be a series of ekphrastic reflections on the forms, “rules,” and cultural resonance of 20th century jazz

Biography

Megan J. Arlett was born in the UK, grew up in Spain, and now lives in Texas where she is pursuing her PhD. The recipient of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2019, Best New British and Irish Poets, The Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, and Third Coast.