The Poetry Reading Series at Boston University, 2009-2010

Co-sponsored by the College of General Studies and the Humanities Foundation at Boston University, the Poetry Reading Series strives to make poetry a fundamental part of university and community life. By presenting the work of both renowned and emerging poets, the series attempts to broaden our vision of poetry’s concerns and effects. In the past, the series has featured readings by Jorie Graham, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Geoffrey Hill, Robert Pinsky, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Marilyn Hacker, Saskia Hamilton, and Linda Gregg, among others.

All readings are free, open to the public and unless otherwise stated, take place in the College of General Studies, 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215.

2009-2010 Schedule:

Monday, September 21st at 7 p.m.: SIMON ARMITAGE

Out of the Blue: Poetry and Redemption

Reading and discussion

Simon Armitage has published nine volumes of poetry including Killing Time, 1999 (Faber & Faber) and Selected Poems, 2001 (Faber & Faber) His most recent collections are The Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs, both published by Faber & Faber in 2002.

Moderator: Mark Feeney, Boston Globe Living Arts Reporter and winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Free and open to the public | Reception to follow

Co-sponsored by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC, the Institute for Human Sciences, the Center for International Relations at Boston University, the literary journal AGNI, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), and Zephyr Press

Monday, October 5th at 7 p.m.:

KIERON WINN and SASKIA HAMILTON

“There lives the dearest freshness deep down things…”

Reading and discussion

KIERON WINN was educated at Tonbridge School, where he later briefly taught, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate for a thesis on Herbert Read and T. S. Eliot. His poems have appeared in magazines including Agenda, The Dark Horse, The London Magazine, Oxford Magazine, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Review, The Rialto and The Spectator, and in a short film about his work on BBC1. A selection of his poems appears in the Carcanet anthology Oxford Poets 2007. He was awarded the University of Oxford’s English Poem on a Sacred Subject Prize in 2007. He lives in Oxford, where he is a freelance teacher.

SASKIA HAMILTON is the author of two books of poetry, As for Dream (2001) and Divide These (2005). She is also the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005) and a co-editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008). The recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Saskia Hamilton teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University, and lives in New York City.

Moderator: Christopher Ricks, the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 2004, and is known both for his critical studies and for his editorial work. At present he is undertaking a full critical edition of T.S. Eliot’s Complete Poems to be published by Faber & Faber.

Free and open to the public | Reception to follow

Co-sponsored by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC, the Institute for Human Sciences, the Center for International Relations at Boston University, the literary journal AGNI, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), and Zephyr Press

Thursday, October 29th at 5 p.m.: DAVID FERRY

Katzenberg Center, 3rd Floor, 871 Commonwealth Avenue

David Ferry is the author of Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations, winner of the 2000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He is the translator of Gilgamesh (1992), The Odes of Horace (1998), The Eclogues of Virgil (1999), The Epistles of Horace (2001), winner of the Landon Translation Prize, and The Georgics of Virgil (2005), all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ferry’s other awards include the Sixtieth Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets, the Teasdale Prize for Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the William Arrowsmith Translation Prize from AGNI magazine. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley College and a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Boston University.

Thursday, November 5th at 7 p.m.: TOMAZ SALAMUN

(Dis)locations: Poetry and Place

Reading and discussion

Considered Slovenia’s greatest living poet and one of the foremost figures of the Eastern European poetical avant-garde, Tomaz Salamun is revered by many American poets for his unique surrealistic style. His most recent collection in English is The Book for My Brother (Harcourt, 2006, translated by Christopher Merrill and others).

Moderator: David Rivard, Poetry Editor at the Harvard Review; author of Bewitched Playground (2000), Wise Poison (1996), and Torque (1987)

7:00 PM
Barrister’s Hall
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Avenue, 1st floor

Free and open to the public | Reception to follow

Co-sponsored by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC, the Institute for Human Sciences, the Center for International Relations at Boston University, the literary journal AGNI, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), and Zephyr Press

Please contact Meg Tyler (mtyler@bu.edu or 617-358-4199) with any questions.

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