The urban naturalist

Read Leeya Mehta's review of Saleem Peeradina's "Final Cut" in the amazing journal "The Missing Slate":

"He reminds me of strength, of the passing of time, the interconnectedness of our world and of my own journey to America...."

Don't you just love this cover!
 

http://themissingslate.com/2016/10/23/the-urban-naturalist/

In Vinyl - Two Poems set in Washington

"When has this man’s body ever been a sacred thing?
It remembers everything but laughter –
swallows disappearing into the evening sky."

Read the poems here: 
http://vinylpoetryandprose.com/2016/09/leeya-mehta/

Reading at Joaquin Miller Cabin series: July 10th 2016

It was very exciting to submit and hear back from Kathi Morrison-Taylor that I will read at this wonderful local reading series, which began in 1973. I will be reading on July 10th in Rock Creek. Here is an interesting historical piece about the cabin and the series: http://washingtonart.com/beltway/jmiller.html

Joaquin Miller Poetry Reading Series, 2016

June 5:  Lesley Wheeler and winners of the Jacklyn Potter Young Poets Prize, Katherine Brown and Taylor Petty

June 12: Lois Marie Harrod and Martin Shapiro

June 19: Alan King and Ross White

June 26: Remica Bingham-Risher and Michael Brokos

July 10:  Hayes Davis and Leeya Mehta

July 17: Karren Alenier and Ayaz Pirani

July 24: Teri Ellen Cross and Richard Levine

July 31: Jason Gebhardt and Amie Whittemore

Submit your best poems to Origins Journal

As guest poetry editor of Origins Journal, I'd love to read your best poems for the Fall theme: "Witness". Incredible poems that don't fit the theme will be considered for publication online. Send us some amazing work! http://www.originsjournal.com/submit

2016 District Lit Readers' Choice Award

District Lit has announced the winners of the 2016 Readers’ Choice Awards in poetry and fiction. Writers published in District Lit in 2015 were eligible to receive votes during the month of February 2016.


Poetry: Leeya Mehta with “Black Dog on the Anacostia River” (also nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

Fiction: Julia Mascioli with “Bodies”

Upcoming readings in Washington: April 14, 15th

Come join the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington DC.

I'll be on two panels on 14th and 15th April, presenting new poems with a wonderful group of poets and activists from the across the world.

THURSDAY APRIL 14, 2015: 4.00-5.30 

University of CA Washington Center Auditorium (UCDC), 1608 Rhode Island Ave, DC
The Names We Carry: Poetry Inspired by Radical India 
Vidhu Aggarwal, Minal Hajratwala, Tanuja Jagernauth, Ellen Kombiyil, Shikha Malaviya, Leeya Mehta
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]

The Names We Carry is a companion reading to the workshop Revolt: Writing Poetry Inspired by Radical India, reflecting the many names, labels, and categories we use/discard/attach to ourselves and others, throughout our lives. In this reading, poets connected to India and the Indian diaspora will share poems exploring issues of exile, imperialism, identity, caste/color discrimination, sexuality, and more. Participants from the Revolt workshop will also be asked to share select work generated with prompts meant to explore these same themes. More specifically, through this reading, we want the audience to think more deeply about what the function of activist poetry is, how it not only informs and explores, but is also a call to action. In order to engage the audience and illustrate how powerful activist poetry is, we will encourage audience participation during the reading as well, asking them to fill in words and missing phrases, to help them create and think about the different kinds of dialogues we constantly must create and reinvent in order to highlight different causes.
http://www.splitthisrock.org/programs/festival/2016-poetry-festival/program-schedule/thursday-april-14-2016/

FRIDAY APRIL 15, 2015: 11.30-1pm

Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, 17th and M Streets, DC 20016
Physical Bodies and Poetic Bones
Diana Smith Bolton, Marlena Chertock, Leeya Mehta, Sarah Sansolo, Tyler Vile
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 101 [Map]
This panel will discuss body image and bodily integrity through the lens of female experience. Poetry carves a space that is inclusive and experimental, while still acknowledging and respecting poetic tradition and heritage. As poets, we contain multitudes beyond the straight, white, male experience. This panel will attempt to address the complex realities of the female body and identification (or rejection) of it as lived through poetry. Further, there are social and political implications for individuals whose bodies do not conform to the dominant media standard, such as through disability, racial identity, and gender identity. In recognition of emerging social justice for LGBT individuals and the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, this panel will explore how poets can channel the physical body into their poems to explore the physical and non-physical. This panel includes group discussion, poetry readings, and take-home workshop materials.
http://www.splitthisrock.org/programs/festival/2016-poetry-festival/program-schedule/friday-april-15-2016

Recording: The Abduction

Found the link to the recording of The Abduction: 

http://www.bpj.org/poems/mehta_abduction.mp3

(Published in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Spring 2014)