At 7 p.m. Friday, Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., will welcome poets Matthea Harvey, Jim Moore, and Katie Ford, who will read samples of their works If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?, Underground, and Blood Lyrics.

The three will appear as part of Graywolf Poetry on Tour, a series of readings in various cities that feature poets who have been published by Graywolf Press. While Harvey and Ford will journey to other Graywolf Poetry Tour dates, Moore will only read locally.

“[The three of us] work differently, but it seems to me that we all share an interest in how to negotiate a world in which sadness and longing are at the heart of things,” Moore said.

Very little connects the poems written by the individual authors, which allows for a broad palette of themes to be explored in the readings, from the struggle to find a role to play in the world to the supernatural.

“There are a number of poems about mermaids [in my book], two about aliens, and two about invented animals,” Harvey said. “Many of the characters that populate the poems are makers in some way — inventors, seamstresses, glass-makers. The book as a whole is interested in exploring the different ways that text and images can combine.”

Readings such as these offer audiences a peek at the nuances of poetry and an opportunity to hear the poems in the way the authors themselves intend them to sound.

“I’d like [the audience] to take away the feeling that we all belong together in the same strange, wacky, terrifying, and amazing world,” Moore said.

— by Isaac Hamlet