O.B. Hardison Poetry Brochure by Peter Eramo

—Laura Kasischke

Embrace the night

Join us in 2015/16 for poetry, inspiration, and conversation at these nine evenings of readings and receptions at the Folger.

Embrace the night

202.544.7077 www.folger.edu/poetry

201 East Capitol Street, SE Washington, DC 20003

The Third Trumpet

what could be sweeter than these first few hours of every season

From

NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID HAGERSTOWN, MD PERMIT NO. 93

OB HARDISON poetry series 2015/16

Honoring O.B. Hardison (1928-1990)

Poet, teacher, author, and scholar, O.B. Hardison held 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, 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. A recording of O.B. Hardison reading from his poetry is available on CD at www.folger.edu/shop.

We know so little of light: It dies though we are early in its life. A beautiful night. Its lambent moon Lets down a light that only happens in September. —Rowan Ricardo Phillips

OB HARDISON poetry series 2015/16

In 2015/16, the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series invites you to “embrace the night” with nine evenings of poetry and conversation. Celebrating 47 seasons at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the series provides a stage for contemporary poetry’s most eloquent voices—from the lyrical to the experimental, the emergent to the long-cherished. The series supports poetry through education with the Poetry in the 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. As a part of an institution uniquely 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

www.folger.edu/poetry

The Night’s Music W.S. Di Piero & Rowan Ricardo Phillips September 28 Monday at 7:30pm Two acclaimed poets read from work that celebrates the music of the natural and urban world. Recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, among other awards and honors, W.S. Di Piero is the author of 11 books of poetry, including Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems, Skirts and Slacks, and most recently, Tombo. Award-winning author and translator Rowan Ricardo Phillips has published two volumes of poetry, Heaven and The Ground, as well as a work of literary essays, When Blackness Rhymes With Blackness.

From Embrace

The Hecht Poetry Prize, created in honor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht, 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. It includes publication with a $3,000 prize.

Anthony Thwaite & Jaimee Hills October 26 Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with The Waywiser Press Introduced by Joseph Harrison, poet and Senior American Editor of The Waywiser Press

Celebrated British poet Anthony Thwaite has worked as a broadcaster, critic, editor, and academic. His poetry collections include The Stones of Emptiness: Poems 1963-66 and Collected Poems (2007). Thwaite was literary editor of the New Statesman and is the major editor of the work of Philip Larkin. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1990. Jaimee Hills is the 2014 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize winner. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and the Best New Poets anthology.

The Night and Get Thee Gone

Talking picture. Silent poem. New York shakes off the fall. Tonight I work in a silence That prays the rare turn to sound. I make nothing. I am fractured. I walk in the dark egg of Another September night That is cool, that is Cool as though the moon is a mouth That blows on its wound. We are early in the life of the poet. He knows so little of light, So little of shadow. From The Ground © 2012 by Rowan Ricardo Phillips, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Used with permission.

Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize

Simple Poem I shall make it simple so you understand. Making it simple will make it clear for me. When you have read it, take me by the hand As children do, loving simplicity. This is the simple poem I have made. Tell me you understand. But when you do Don’t ask me in return if I have said All that I meant, or whether it is true. 202.544.7077

www.folger.edu/poetry

Chapter and Verse

Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute

Julianna Baggott & Laura Kasischke

December 7 Monday at 7:30pm

November 23 Monday at 7:30pm

Linda Gregerson Co-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America Conversation moderated by Alice Quinn, Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America

Co-sponsored with PEN/Faulkner Foundation Introduction and conversation moderated by writer and poet Richard Peabody This reading pairs two authors adept in writing both poetry and fiction. Julianna Baggott (also writing under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode) has written three volumes of poetry and over 20 novels, including her recent Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders and All of Us and Everything. Laura Kasischke is the recipient of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. She has published nine books of poetry — including Space, in Chains and The Infinitesimals — and ten novels, three of which have been made into feature films: The Life Before Her Eyes, Suspicious River, and White Bird in a Blizzard.

“Gregerson draws relationships between disparate subjects and historical periods with masterful assurance.” —Publishers Weekly

Poet, Renaissance scholar, and classically trained actress, Linda Gregerson brings her unique voice to this annual poetry reading in honor of Emily Dickinson. Gregerson is the author of eight poetry collections, including Prodigal, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep (finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize), Magnetic North (finalist for the National Book Award), and Waterborne (Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award). A Guggenheim Fellow, Gregerson was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2015. At the reception following the reading, Emily Dickinson’s black cake is provided by The Suga Chef.

From

1. Poetry Addresses Her Sister, the Novel

As children we were called, more often than not, by the other’s name. But then you developed a swagger, busty with hips. Mother preached to me, “Don’t relish, don’t romance disaster. Don’t grow inward so: Be more like your sister.” But I would think even she would admit you go on too much. You need to learn to whittle soap to a narrow bone, to live in steam so the wool shrinks to a toughened swatch, not a sweater, not a mitten, something otherworldly.

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Waterborne

3 and look: the river lifts to its lover the sun in eddying layers of mist as though we hadn’t irreparably fouled the planet after all. My neighbor’s favorite spot for bass is just below the sign that makes his fishing rod illegal, you might almost say the sign is half the point. The vapors draft their languorous excurses on a liquid page. Better than the moment is the one it has in mind. www.folger.edu/poetry

The Human Voice in Struggle Reginald Dwayne Betts & William Archila February 8 Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Joseph Ross Reginald Dwayne Betts’ first collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, won the Beatrice Hawley Award. His memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, was the recipient of the 2010 NAACP Image Award for non-fiction. His work has led to numerous fellowships and awards, and his most recent collection is Bastards of the Reagan Era. William Archila is the author of the poetry collections The Art of Exile, which won the International Latino Book Award, and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, which was selected by Orlando Ricardo Menes for the 2013 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize.

From For

Seeing Nature at The Phillips Collection

Mark Doty & Aimee Nezhukumatathil March 10 Thursday at 6:30pm Co-sponsored with and held at The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC Conversation moderated by poet Sue Ellen Thompson A reading in response to the exhibition

Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection Highlights include Brueghel’s 17th-century allegorical paintings, landscapes by Monet and Cézanne, and 20th-century works by O’Keeffe, Hockney, and others. On view February 6-May 8. Ticketholders may view the exhibition prior to the reading.

Mark Doty is the author of three memoirs, a book about craft and criticism, and nine books of poetry, including Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (National Book Award), My Alexandria (Los Angeles Times Book Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, T.S. Eliot Prize), and most recently, Deep Lane. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of three books of poetry including Lucky Fish, winner of the Hoffer Grand Prize for Prose and Independent Books. Recent honors include a poetry fellowship from the NEA and the Pushcart Prize.

the City that Nearly Broke Me

Stress this: the lit end of anything will burn you. & that is just just a slick way of saying: running will never save you.

From Spent

Late August morning I go out to cut spent and faded hydrangeas—washed greens, russets, troubled little auras of sky as if these were the very silks of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin then half-restored, after all this time…

202.544.7077

www.folger.edu/poetry

The New Sonneteers

Part of the Folger’s celebration of 400 years of Shakespeare

Malachi Black, Laurie Ann Guerrero & A. Van Jordan April 11 Monday at 7:30pm

Folger Poetry Board Reading Les Murray May 16 Monday at 7:30pm Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Kim Roberts

Co-sponsored with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies Conversation moderated by poet Donna Denize This reading celebrates the sonnet form and its most famous practitioner, William Shakespeare. In their recent collections, three diverse poets breathe new life into the classic form. Malachi Black is the author of Storm Toward Morning, a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Black is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and is a professor at the University of San Diego. Laurie Ann Guerrero, 2016 Poet Laureate of Texas, won the 2012 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for her first collection, A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying. A. Van Jordan is the author of four books including Cineaste and Rise. Among other awards, he has received the Whiting Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award.

“…with Walcott, Brodsky, and Heaney—one of those ‘international’…poets at the center of English poetry in the last 20 years….a poet of great linguistic power and moral energy.” —The New Republic

With a career spanning over 40 years, Australian Les Murray has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry. His collections include The Ilex Tree (with Geoff Lehmann) and Dog Fox Field, both winners of the Grace Leven Prize for poetry; Subhuman Redneck Poems, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry and a UK Poetry Society Choice; Learning Human; Conscious and Verbal; and Poems the Size of Photographs. Murray’s work has been translated into 10 languages, and he has received numerous awards and honors, including the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

From You

Like a charging man, hit and settling face down in the ringing, his cause and panic obsolete,

From Quarantine

Lauds . . . You put that sugar in the melon’s breath, and it is wet with what you are. (I, too, ferment.) You rub the hum and simple warmth of summer from afar into the hips of insects and of everything. I can forget. And like the sea, one more machine without a memory, I don’t believe that you made me. From Storm Toward Morning © 2014 by Malachi Black, published by Copper Canyon Press. Used with permission.

Find You Can Leave It All

you find you can leave it all: your loved people, pain, achievement dwindling upstream of this raft-fall.

202.544.7077

www.folger.edu/poetry

Lineage: From the

Black Arts Movement to Cave Canem

Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez,Toi Derricotte, Kyle Dargan, Gregory Pardlo & Rachel Eliza Griffiths June 13 Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with Cave Canem—a home for the many voices of African American poetry, committed to cultivating poets’ artistic and professional growth In celebration of Cave Canem’s 20th and the Black Arts Movement’s 50th anniversaries, poet and author Kwame Alexander moderates a conversation with three pillars of the Black Arts Movement. Nikki Giovanni has been awarded an unprecedented 7 NAACP Image Awards. Haki Madhubuti has published more than 20 books of poetry, nonfiction, and critical essays. Sonia Sanchez was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry. Following the conversation will be a reading with Cave Canem co-founder Toi Derricotte, author of four books of poetry including The Undertaker’s Daughter, Gregory Pardlo, author of Totem and Digest (2015 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry), Kyle Dargan, author of four books of poetry, including Honest Engine, and poet and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whose most recent poetry collection is Lighting the Shadow.

Lannan Readings 2015/16 at Georgetown University

Presented with the generous support of the Lannan Foundation

Cathy Park Hong & Montana Ray October 6, 8pm Copley Formal Lounge Hong has published three books of poetry. She is an Associate Professor at Sarah Lawrence College and is on the faculty at the Queens MFA program in Charlotte, North Carolina. Feminist poet, translator, and scholar, Ray was a 2012 finalist for the Yale Younger Poetry series. Her first full-length collection, (guns & butter), was released this year.

Tim Seibles & Patricia Smith October 20, 8pm Bioethics Research Library (Healy 103) Seibles is the author of five books of poetry and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Smith is the author of six criticallyacknowledged volumes of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, which was awarded the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress.

Aminatta Forna

From Marginalia

Preamble . . . Listen like a safecracker, navigate the intricate ruptures by ear: the Latin patois of picnickers, the Slavic tongues of lovers replacing your mouth with selfconscious silence. You are Caliban and Crusoe, perpetual stranger with a fork in the socket of life’s livid grid . . . From Digest © 2015 by Gregory Pardlo. Reprinted with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.

Special addition Cave Canem Drops the Mic 5:30-6:45pm

An open-mic reading of Cave Canem fellows past and present, including Joel Dias-Porter, Kamilah Aisha Moon, host Derrick Weston Brown, and more.

October 27, 8pm Copley Formal Lounge Forna is a novelist, memoirist, and essayist. All of her books have been nominated for or have won prestigious awards. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as well as the current Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics.

Each reading is preceded by a seminar at 5:30pm in the Lannan Center (New North 408). Lannan Center for Poetics & Social Practice Georgetown University 202.687.6294 lannan.georgetown.edu

OB HARDISON

Sinéad Morrissey November 10, 8pm Bioethics Research Library (Healy 103) Morrissey is a Northern Irish poet whose fifth collection, Parallax, won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2014. She is currently Reader in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University, Belfast.

poetry series 2015/16

Philip Metres & Mark Nowak March 1, 8pm Copley Formal Lounge Metres has won two NEA fellowships, two Arab American Book Awards, and the PEN/Heim Translation Grant. He is a professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland. Nowak is the author of Coal Mountain Elementary and Shut Up Shut Down. A 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, he directs the MFA program at Manhattanville College.

Namwali Serpell March 15, 8pm Copley Formal Lounge Serpell is the winner of the Caine Prize for 2015. Recipient of the 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers, she is associate professor of English at University of California, Berkeley.

Claudia Rankine April 12, 8pm Bioethics Research Library (Healy 103) Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric, which won the PEN Open Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Citizen is the first book ever to be named a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories.

Georgetown Lannan Poetry events are free and open to the public. All events take place on campus, 37th and O Streets, NW, Washington, DC. Each reading is preceded by a seminar at 5:30pm in the Lannan Center (New North 408). The locations for the 8pm readings are noted.

Georgetown University 202.687.6294 lannan.georgetown.edu

join us! Tickets 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 through special receptions, talks, and gatherings, as well as discounts on tickets and merchandise. The Folger Poetry Board provides significant support to the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series. Gigi Bradford, Chair Edwin P. Conquest, Jr. Christina Daub Harriet Patsy Davis Patricia Gray Barbara Goldberg Marifrancis Hardison Joseph Hassett Anita Herrick Sherman E. Katz Robert C. Liotta Richard Lyon Greg McBride Mary P. McElveen Barbara Meade Chloe Yelena Miller Mary Muromcew Jean Nordhaus Catherine Payling Jacqueline L. Quillen Susan S. Rappaport Heddy Reid Dr. Marianne Schuelein Joan Shorey Norman Sinel Amy Tercek Nigel Twose David Weisman Mary-Sherman Willis Douglas Wolfire Anne Harding Woodworth Teri Cross Davis, Poetry Coordinator

Tickets are $15 with discounts available for students and others. Subscriptions to all 9 readings are available at a discounted rate. Complimentary wine receptions and book signings follow each reading, with books for sale at the Folger shop.

Online: www.folger.edu/poetry By Phone: 202.544.7077 In Person: Visit the Box Office, Open Monday-Saturday, Noon-5pm Folger Shakespeare Library Home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the Folger Shakespeare Library is a renowned center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. The Folger is located at corner of East Capitol and Third Street, SE. Capitol South (blue/orange line), 4 blocks away, or Union Station (red line), 7 blocks away Stay Connected Sign up for Shakespeare Plus at folger.edu/enews Programs and dates subject to change.