Drew to Host June Poetry Readings
MADISON, NJ--This month, 14 award-winning poets will deliver live readings of their acclaimed works as part of a series at Drew University. The school's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Poetry program will sponsor the series.
The series will kick off with readings on Tuesday, June 23, by Alicia Ostriker and Michael Waters. Ostriker, a poet and critic, and professor emerita at Rutgers, was a finalist for the National Book Award twice. She is the author of several books of poetry, including “The Volcano Sequence” and “No Heaven.” Waters, a professor at Monmouth University, has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and four Pushcart Prizes. His published collections include “Darling Vulgarity” and “Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems.”
Waters and Ostriker will be followed by Joan Larkin and Ira Sadoff, who will appear at Drew on Wednesday, June 24. Larkin recently won the Audre Lorde Award for her newest published collection, “My Body: New and Selected Poems.” She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Sadoff has written seven collections of poetry, including “Barter and Grazing” and “History Matters.” He has received grants and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Education Association and the Poetry Society of America. He is currently the Jeremiah Roberts Chair in English at Colby College.
The evening of Thursday, June 25, will feature Aracelis Girmay and Anne Marie Macari. For her first book, “Teeth,” Girmay was awarded a Pan-African Literary Fellowship. She has also won grants from the Watson and Jerome foundations, and her work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The Indiana Review and Callaloo. Macari is currently the director of Drew’s Master of Fine Arts in Poetry program. Her published works include “She Heads into the Wilderness,” “Gloryland” and “Ivory Cradle.” She has been the recipient of the James Dickey Prize and the APR/Honickman first book prize.
Gerald Stern and Jean Valentine will read on Friday, June 26. Stern, the first poet laureate of New Jersey, is a winner of the National Book Award, the Lamont Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Ruth Lilly Prize. He has written 14 books of poetry, including “Save the Last Dance,” “This Time: New and Selected Poems” and “American Sonnets.” Valentine is also a winner of the National Book Award. Her published collections include “Door in the Mountain, New and Collected Poems,” “Little Boat” and “Lucy.” She has been awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Shelley Memorial Prize. Valentine is currently the poet laureate of the New York.
The reading on Saturday, June 27, will feature Peter Cole and Jim Haba. Cole is well-known as both a writer and translator of poetry. His original collections include “Rifts, Hymns and Qualms” and “Things on Which I’ve Stumbled.” His translated works include “So What: New and Selected Poems” by Taha Muhammad Ali, “J’Accuse” by Aharon Shabtai, and the anthology of Medieval Hebrew poetry, “The Dream of the Poem.” Cole has received numerous honors for his work, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. Haba has published two chapbooks-“Love Poems” and “Thirty-one Poems”-and edited “The Language of Life,” a collection of poems and interviews that accompanied a PBS series of the same name. From 1986 through 2008 he designed and produced all twelve biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festivals.
The readers on Monday, June 29, will be Carey Salerno and Jonathan Thirkield. Salerno is the author of the award-winning book, “Shelter.” Her poems have appeared in many magazines, such as Rattle and Natural Bridge. She is currently the executive director of Alice James Books. Thirkield is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. He was the winner of the 2008 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. His works have appeared in many journals, such as New American Writing, Colorado Review and American Letters & Commentary.
Lynn Emanuel and Ross Gay will finish the series with a reading on Tuesday, June 30. Emanuel is the author of several books, including “Hotel Fiesta,” “The Dig” and “Then Suddenly.” Her work has been featured in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry, and she has been a recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from the Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a National Poetry Series Award. Gay is the author of a collection titled “Against Which,” which was published in 2006. His work has been featured in The American Poetry Review, the Harvard Review and Margie.
Drew's MFA in Poetry program sponsors two on-campus residencies each year. Students spend most of the year working from home, corresponding with their mentors and receiving feedback via e-mail and telephone. Gerald Stern and Jean Valentine, who will both read on June 26, are the program's distinguished poet-in-residence.
Each reading will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Founder’s Room in Mead Hall. For more information about Drew’s poetry reading series, please contact Anne Marie Macari, director of the university’s Master in Fine Arts in Poetry program, at 973/408-3016 or e-mail amacari@drew.edu.
