Bay Area poets, MK Chavez and Heather June Gibbons, will be doing a reading from Gibbon’s new book “Her Mouth As Souvenir” on Sept. 20 in the Poetry Center located in the Humanities building room 512 from 7 to 9 p.m. The book was released in June and is the winner of the 2017 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the University of Utah Press.

“A study of distraction, mediated reality and our humdrum efforts to avoid reflection by filling our time with activity,” Ingrid Rojas Contreras said, who writes the Spine for KQED Arts.

Gibbons is an associate professor at SF State where she teaches creative writing.

Her poems have been published in the literary journals; Boston Review and New American Writing.

“She is inspirational and uses metaphors well,” Kelsy Buch said, senior majoring in creative writing and former teacher aide of Gibbons. “Very personal and hands on.”

“I found myself rereading lines, then whole poems to digest the clever turns of phrase that took something a little punk and made it puncture. Gibbons is smart and unapologetically unromantic, even in her most aching lines on love,” Lara, a reviewer from Amazon.com posted.