O.B. Hardison Poetry Series 2017/18 Brochure

OB HARDISON POETRY SERIES 2017/18

...and for the breath of an hour it is possible to consider the waters of this sea wine-dark, to remember that there was no word for blue among the ancients, but there was the whirring sound before the oars…

—Carolyn Forché

HONORING O.B. HARDISON (1928-1990)

Poet, teacher, author, and scholar, O.B. Hardison had wide-ranging interests and a passion for teaching.

While at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (he also taught at Princeton and Georgetown), he was named one of the country’s great teachers by Time magazine.

This same spirit led Hardison, while Director of the Folger from 1969 to 1984, to create public and outreach programs, including the Folger Poetry Series, which was renamed in 2010 in his honor. Hardison was the editor or author of 16 books, including celebrated academic volumes, poetry, and a murder mystery. His awards included the Medieval Academy of America’s Gold Medal Award and the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest.

OB HARDISON POETRY SERIES CELEBRATING 49 SEASONS OF POETRY AT THE FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY

Begun in the late 1960s, the series provides a stage for contemporary poetry’s most eloquent voices—from the emergent to the long-cherished. The series supports poetry through education by working with PEN/ Faulkner’s WRITERS IN SCHOOLS program; the SHAKESPEARE’S SISTERS high school seminar on early modern women writers; and the LANNAN FELLOWS program, which enables selected college students to attend the readings. The series also presents community-engaged events such as NOT JUST ANOTHER DAY OFF in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and DC Poet Laureate Dolores Kendrick’s POET IN PROGRESS reading. As part of an institution dedicated to the humanities, the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series offers opportunities to explore the links between the artistic process and humanistic inquiry.

202.544.7077

folger.edu/poetry

HARDISON SEASON OPENING

Phillis Levin John Burnside October 23 Monday at 7:30pm

WORDS WANTING TO BE SAID

Photo: Sigrid Estrada

Reading together for the first time, John Burnside and Phillis Levin have in common a quiet, formidable strength to their verse. PHILLIS LEVIN is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Mr. Memory & Other Poems, a finalist for the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia. She is a professor of English and poet-in-residence at Hofstra University.

Scottish author JOHN BURNSIDE has published ten books of poetry, including his most recent and first American publication, Black Cat Bone, winner of both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize. Other awards include the Geoffrey Faber Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. His memoir, A Lie About My Father, was named the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year.

From Loved and Lost

Give me a childhood again and I will live as owls do, in the moss and curvature of nightfall

—glimpsed,

but never really seen…

—John Burnside

Excerpt from “Loved and Lost” from Black Cat Bone by John Burnside © 2011 by John Burnside, published by Graywolf Press. Used with permission.

202.544.7077

Gjertrud Schnackenberg Mike White November 6 Monday at 7:30pm

The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, created in honor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, is awarded annually by The Waywiser Press for a poetry collection by a poet who has published no more than one previous book of verse. The award includes publication and a $3,000 prize.

Prize judge GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG is the author of six poetry collections, including the book-length poem The Throne of Labdacus, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Heavenly Questions, winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Schnackenberg’s many honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

MIKE WHITE’s first book, How to Make a Bird with Two Hands, was awarded the Washington Prize in 2012. His poems have been nominated on six occasions for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in numerous journals. His book Addendum to a Miracle is the winner of the 12th Hecht Poetry Prize.

Photo: Mike Minehan

ANTHONY HECHT POETRY PRIZE

Addendum to a Miracle

And then, after asking for silence, and for silence please, and for silence way in the back please, he made of the many fishes (churning silver in the brimful baskets) just one

irrefutable fish, size of a single loaf of bread,

and the mouths of the multitude watered, and the gills of the dying fish fanned the poison air.

—Mike White

From Addendum to a Miracle by Mike White © 2017, published by The Waywiser Press. Used with permission.

folger.edu/poetry

Sandra Gilbert December 11 Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America

EMILY DICKINSON BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE

With poems many can recite, such as “Because I could not stop for Death,” Emily Dickinson’s work is rich with poetic contemplation about the end of life. For this annual tribute evening, the renowned poet, author, and feminist literary critic SANDRA GILBERT explores this contemplation of death and grief, reading from Dickinson’s poetry and her own.

Gilbert has published numerous collections of poetry, including the Patterson Prizewinning Ghost Volcano and Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems 1969– 1999, winner of an American Book Award.

Recent collections include Belongings and Aftermath: Poems. In addition to numerous anthologies, other work includes Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve, a cultural and literary history of grief, as well as The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the NineteenthCentury Literary Imagination, co-written with Susan Gubar and considered one of the most influential works of contemporary scholarship.

From Grief: A History

When you spun away in the whirlwind my grief followed you a whimpering spaniel you were gone your absence was absolute & my grief sat on my kitchen table a vase of bloody roses my grief sprang from my breastbone a young birch swaying & scabrous my grief was a dull pot at the back of the stove...

Excerpt from “Grief: A History” from Aftermath: Poems by Sandra Gilbert © 2011 by Sandra M. Gilbert, published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used with permission.

—Sandra Gilbert

At the reception following the reading, Emily Dickinson’s black cake is provided

by The Suga Chef.

202.544.7077

Kwame Dawes Safiya Sinclair February 5 Monday at 7:30pm

Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Reuben Jackson

NATURAL MYSTIC: A POETIC CELEBRATION OF REGGAE This evening of poetry celebrates reggae music and pays tribute to one of its most acclaimed singer/ songwriters, Robert “Bob” Nestor Marley, the day before what would have been his 73rd birthday. Born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica, KWAME DAWES is the author of 20 collections of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays, including City of Bones: A Testament and Duppy Conqueror. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival.

From Gourd

The browned gourd carries the echo of music like the taste of garden eggs and okra stew with its slivers of white river fish with its crimson peppers islanding a mound of pounded cassava.

The browned gourd is the pregnant fullness of a woman’s belly, the sounds of its water the suck-suck of an infant the hum of a deep water when you pluck a string...

Born and raised in Montego Bay, SAFIYA SINCLAIR is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Whiting Writers’ Award.

She is the author of Cannibal, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in Poetry.

—Kwame Dawes

Excerpt from “Gourd” from Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems

by Kwame Dawes © 2013, published by Copper Canyon Press.

Used with permission.

folger.edu/poetry

O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES 2017/18

PURCHASE TICKETS

Online folger.edu/poetry

By Phone 202.544.7077 In Person Visit the Box Office, Open Monday-Friday, noon-5pm Complimentary wine receptions and book signings follow each reading.

SUBSCRIBE Save your seats for all 7 readings for only $75.

This guarantees your seats—even to events that sell out. Subscribers enjoy exclusive discounts, a complimentary subscription to Folger Magazine, and special offers at the Folger and area restaurants and businesses.

BECOME A MEMBER Please consider supporting the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series by becoming a Friend of the Folger. Our members provide fundamental support and enjoy an insider’s view of all that the Folger Shakespeare Library has to offer.

Folger Shakespeare Library is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world.

201 East Capitol Street, SE Washington, DC 20003

Connect With Us

Programs subject to change.

Save the dates!

Detach these pages for a poster with all seven readings.

The browned gourd carries the echo of music...

—Kwame Dawes

Phillis Levin & John Burnside

10/23

Gjertrud Schnackenberg & Mike White

11/6

Sandra Gilbert

12/11

...become what no one wants to: vessel, caisson, wounded into making us the thing we want to call beautiful...

—Paisley Rekdal Kwame Dawes & Safiya Sinclair

2/5

Sherwin Bitsui & Paisley Rekdal

3/22

Carolyn Forché

4/30

...that there was no word for blue among the ancients...

—Carolyn Forché

Kaveh Akbar & Kazim Ali

5/21

Sherwin Bitsui Paisley Rekdal March 22 Thursday at 6:30pm Co-sponsored with The Phillips Collection and Kundiman, an organization that supports and sustains Asian-American poetry Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Jennifer Chang

10 ARTISTS AFTER PAUL KLEE

Paul Klee, Young Moe, 1938. The Phillips Collection © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY

Photo: Richard Castaneda

AT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

This exhibition explores the seminal role of Swiss-born artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) in the development of mid-20th-century American art, featuring work by Klee in dialogue with ten American artists including Adolph Gottlieb, Norman Lewis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, and Jackson Pollock.

From Vessels

…Nothing could be so roughly handled and yet feel so little, your pity turned into part of this production: you with your small, four-chambered heart, shyness, hungers, envy: what could be so precious you’d cleave another to keep it close? Imagine the weeks it takes to wind nacre over the red seed placed at another heart ’s mantle…

Photo: Austen Diamond

A reading in response to the exhibition Ten American Artists: After Paul Klee

The author of two volumes, Flood Song and Shapeshift, SHERWIN BITSUI has been noted for his poetry that is imagistic, surreal, and rich with details of landscape.

The recipient of a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, and the PEN Book Award, he is Diné (Navaho) of the Todích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan).

PAISLEY REKDAL is the author of a book of essays, a photo-text memoir, and four books of poetry, including Animal Eye, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Prize and winner of the UNT Rilke Prize. Her newest book of poems is Imaginary Vessels. A book-length essay, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam, is forthcoming. She is the current Poet Laureate of Utah.

—Paisley Rekdal Excerpts above and on previous page from “Vessels” from Imaginary Vessels by Paisley Rekdal © 2016, published by Copper Canyon Press. Used with permission.

202.544.7077

Carolyn Forché April 30 Monday at 7:30pm Introduction and conversation moderated by Poetry Board Chair Gigi Bradford

FOLGER POETRY BOARD READING

Photo: Sean Mattison

POETRY OF WITNESS

Award-winning poet, translator, editor, and human rights advocate CAROLYN FORCHÉ coined the phrase “poetry of witness,” which is the title of the anthology she co-edited with Duncan Wu. Her poetry collections include Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; The Country Between Us; The Angel of History; Blue Hour; and most recently, Lateness of the World. Her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting, was praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” She is Professor of English and Director of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.

From Mourning

…in the calms awaiting port call, pleasure boats whose lights hours ago went out, fishermen setting their nets for mullet, as summer tavernas hang octopus to dry on their lines, whisper smoke into wood ovens, sweep the terraces clear of night, putting the music out with morning light, and for the breath of an hour it is possible to consider the waters of this sea wine-dark, to remember that there was no word for blue among the ancients, but there was the whirring sound before the oars of the great triremes sang out of the seam of world, through pine-sieved winds silvered by salt flats until they were light enough to pass for breath from the heavens…

—Carolyn Forché

Excerpt from “Mourning” by Carolyn Forché © 2016. Used with permission.

folger.edu/poetry

Kaveh Akbar Kazim Ali May 21 Monday at 7:30pm

Co-sponsored with Kundiman, an organization that supports and sustains Asian-American poetry Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Gowri Koneswaran

SILENCE AND BREATH

Photo: Tanya Rosen-Jones

Both Kaveh Akbar and Kazim Ali explore the relationship between poetry and prayer, examining the silence and breath in each lyric. KAVEH AKBAR is the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, and his debut full-length collection is Calling a Wolf a Wolf.

He is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Born in Tehran, Iran, Akbar is the Visiting Professor of Poetry at Purdue University.

Poet, essayist, novelist, and translator KAZIM ALI has published several volumes of poetry, including The Far Mosque, winner of the Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award, Sky Ward, The Fortieth Day, and the cross-genre work Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities. A new poetry book, Inquisition, is forthcoming. His books of essays include Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art, and the Architecture of Silence.

From Rimrock

...It ’s serious business, this living.

As long as the earth continues its stony breathing, I will breathe.

When it stops I will shatter back into gravity. Into quartz.

—Kaveh Akbar

Excerpt from “Rimrock” from Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar © 2017, published by Alice James Books. Used with permission.

202.544.7077

Lannan Center for Poetics & Social Practice Readings 2017/18 at Georgetown University Presented with the generous support of the Lannan Foundation

Georgetown Lannan Poetry events are free and open to the public. All readings take place in Copley Formal Lounge, on campus at 37th & O Streets, NW. Unless otherwise noted, each event includes a seminar at 5:30pm in the Lannan Center (New North 408) and a reading at 8pm in Copley Formal Lounge.

TARFIA FAIZULLAH & JAMAAL MAY September 19, 8pm

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam, as well as the forthcoming Register of Eliminated Villages. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize.

Jamaal May’s poetry collections include The Big Book of Exit Strategies and Hum. His first collection received an American Library Association’s Notable Book Award.

PETER BALAKIAN & LAYLI LONG SOLDIER October 17, 8pm Peter Balakian’s Ozone Journal won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He published six earlier books of poems, a memoir, and a bestselling prose work on the Armenian genocide.

Layli Long Soldier is the author of the Whiting Award-winning WHEREAS. Her other honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

HELON HABILA & HARI KUNZRU November 28, 8pm Helon Habila’s most recent book is The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria. His honors include the Caine Prize and a PEN Open Book Award.

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novel White Tears. His other books include The Impressionist, My Revolutions, and Gods Without Men, as well as a short story collection and a novella.

LANNAN CENTER FOR POETICS & SOCIAL PRACTICE Georgetown University 202.687.6294 lannan.georgetown.edu

SOLMAZ SHARIF & MAI DER VANG January 30, 8pm Solmaz Sharif ’s poetry collection, LOOK, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland, winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is co-editor of How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology.

TYEHIMBA JESS February 20, 8pm Tyehimba Jess’s collection Olio received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His Leadbelly was named one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005” by The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review.

LANNAN CENTER SYMPOSIUM April 9-10 The theme of the symposium will be We’re in This Thing Together: Creative Coalitions in Devastating Times. Details to be announced.

JENNIFER NATALYA FINK April 17, 8pm Jennifer Natalya Fink received the 2017 Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize from FC2 for Bhopal Dance. She is the author of five other books, including The Mikvah Queen.

LANNAN CENTER FOR POETICS & SOCIAL PRACTICE Georgetown University 202.687.6294 lannan.georgetown.edu

You are cordially invited‌ The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series holds intimate salons with select poets in the homes of friends of the series. These benefit evenings include a wine and light fare reception with an informal reading and conversation with the attending poets.

All proceeds support poetry at the Folger.

Please contact Teri Cross Davis at tdavis@folger.edu for more information.

October 22 Phillis Levin & John Burnside December 10 Sandra Gilbert April 29 Carolyn ForchĂŠ

THE FOLGER POETRY BOARD provides significant support to the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series by organizing and sponsoring fundraising events and by hosting an annual reading by a distinguished author.

Gigi Bradford Chair Anne Harding Woodworth C0-chair Edwin P. Conquest, Jr. Christina Daub Harriet Patsy Davis Barbara Goldberg Patricia Gray Marifrancis Hardison Joseph Hassett Anita Herrick Sherman E. Katz Hiram Larew Robert C. Liotta Richard Lyon Mary P. McElveen Barbara Meade Chloe Yelena Miller Mary Muromcew Jean Nordhaus Jacqueline L. Quillen Susan S. Rappaport Heddy Reid Marianne Schuelein Joan Shorey Amy Tercek Nigel Twose David Weisman Mary-Sherman Willis Douglas Wolfire Teri Cross Davis Poetry Coordinator

Kaveh Akbar & Kazim Ali 5/21

Carolyn Forché 4/30

Sherwin Bitsui & Paisley Rekdal 3/22

Kwame Dawes & Safiya Sinclair 2/5

Sandra Gilbert 12/11

Gjertrud Schnackenberg & Mike White 11/6

Phillis Levin & John Burnside 10/23

O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES 2017/18 Join us for these readings and receptions promising seven evenings of poetry, conversation, and inspiration.

202.544.7077 folger.edu/poetry

201 East Capitol Street, SE Washington, DC 20003

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