Featuring noted writers reading from their work, Language Arts Live events are open to the public at no cost. The series is sponsored by the English department, the environmental studies and Spanish programs, the Learning Associates Program, the Bates Humanities Fund and the John Tagliabue Poetry fund. For more information, contact jskinner@bates.edu.

Vicuña offers an exhibition and reading at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St. Born in Chile, Vicuña is the author of 16 books and performs and exhibits her work across the globe. She is also a founding member of Artists for Democracy, a political activism group.

Her artwork has been featured at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An anthology of 500 years of Latin American poetry that she co-edited with Ernesto Livon Grosman was published in July. She is the 2009-10 Estelle Lebowitz Visiting Artist-in-Residence at Rutgers University.

Her artwork has been described by the New York Times as “both deliberate and accidental . . . formally spare, conceptually abstract, providing a nudge in the direction of feelings and ideas rather than a wrapped-up statement.”

Vicuña’s documentary film “Kon Kon,” a work-in-progress due for release this year, will be shown at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. Set near Aconcagua in Argentina, the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, the film explores connections between Vicuña’s work and ancient tradition, while revealing local ecological and cultural destruction due to globalization and industrialization.

The site was Vicuña’s first foray into the distinctive artwork she creates: “precarious,” or ephemeral installations in nature, and this journey is depicted in the film.

Maine poet Enslin of Milbridge reads from his work at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30. Enslin’s musical style of avant-garde poetry has won national acclaim (he is famously quoted as saying, that he “likes to be considered as a composer who happens to use words instead of notes”).

A Maine resident since 1960, Enslin has found both a backdrop and significant inspiration in the state’s landscape and the isolation of his home.

He has published 118 books of poetry in the past 60 years, and more recently released a 20-CD series of readings. The Bangor Daily News said of Enslin’s most recent book of poetry, “Nine” (National Poetry Foundation, 2003), that “the meaning of the poems is intended to be heard, not seen. Every line is composed as an element in a melody, not as an idea.”

Jack Collom, a poet, poetry teacher and author of more than 23 published books and chapbooks, reads from his work at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Presented by the Language Arts Live Series at Bates, the lecture is open to the public at no cost. For more information, contact this jskinner@bates.edu or this eosucha@bates.edu.

Collom’s visit is made possible by a Bates College Learning Associate Grant. Language Arts Live, featuring contemporary authors reading from their works, is sponsored by the Bates English department, the environmental studies and Spanish programs, the Learning Associates Program, the Bates Humanities Fund and the John Tagliabue Poetry Fund.

Born in 1931, Collom grew up in small-town Illinois and Colorado. A nature lover, he studied forestry at Colorado Agriculture and Mechanical College. After four years in the U.S. Air Force as a clerk-typist, he worked in factories for 20 years while developing as a poet.

For the past 30 years, Collom has worked as a freelance poetry teacher, and has also taught in the writing program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo.

Collom’s latest book is “Situations, Sings” (with Lyn Hejinian; Adventures in Poetry, 2008) and “Exchanges of Earth & Sky” (Fishdrum, 2006). His book of selected poems, “Red Car Goes By,” was published by Tuumba Press in 2001. He produced three books on and of writings by children, and has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional events in the Language Arts Alive series this fall include:

Poets Tessa Nicholas, former editor of the Carolina Quarterly, and Arielle Greenberg, author of the collections “My Kafka Century” and “Given,” read from their works at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Poet and playwright Chris Vitiello, a founding editor of Proliferation magazine, reads at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12, in Skelton Lounge at Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.

Poet Bill Berkson, author of 16 books and pamphlets of poetry, and the 2004 Distinguished Paul Mellon Fellow at the Skowhegan School, reads from his writings at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, in Skelton Lounge in Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.

Poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña speaks at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St. Additionally, a premiere screening of Vicuña’s film “Kon Kon” takes place at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. For more information on the artist’s work, see www.ceciliavicuna.org.

Finally, the prolific poet Theodore Enslin of Milbridge, Maine, appears at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30, in Skelton. His 119th volume, the prose collection “I, Benjamin, A Quasi-Autobiography,” appeared this year.