2019/20 O.B. Hardison Poetry Series Brochure

OB HARDISON

poetry series 2019/20

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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 and honors included the Cavaliere Ufficiale Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Medieval Academy of America’s Gold Medal Award, and the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest.

“It is significant that the Latin word for poetry, carmen, is also the word the Romans used for a song, a magic spell, a religious incantation, or a prophecy­— all verbal constructions whose auditory powers can produce a magical effect on the listener.”

—Dana Gioia

from Poetry as Enchantment

Title and excerpt from Dana Gioia’s Poetry as Enchantment used with the permission of the author.

folger.edu/poetry

202.544.7077

“The early yellow dusk that pours from clouds” “hunger like stars reaching down for dark leaves.” “ you dense under a constellation/whose sparse lights ache over you.”

“Seasons of the turning year/Move me…”

—Annie Finch

Enchantment1 O.B. Hardison Poetry Series invites you to be enchanted for a season of eight evenings of poetry and conversation—a universe of poetry awaits.

In 2020 Folger Shakespeare Library is embarking on an exciting expansion that will enhance the experience for audiences and visitors. Beginning in March, O.B. Hardison Poetry readings will take place at other prestigious venues around town.

Beyond the reading series, poetry outreach includes hosting the Lannan Fellows program, which enables participating college students to attend the readings, and collaborating with PEN/Faulkner’s Writers in the Schools program, which brings writers and poets into DC classrooms.

Special thanks to the Lannan Foundation, the Folger Poetry Board, and other generous donors to the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series.

Excerpts from “Wine-glass woman,” “Zaraf ’s Star,” “Being a Constellation” and “Wheel” from Spells: New and Selected Poems. Copyright ©2013 by Annie Finch. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Hardison Season Opening • At the Folger

September 16 • Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with Graywolf Press

Celebrating Graywolf’s 45th Anniversary Graywolf Press poets read their work in a celebration of this influential publishing house.

Dan ez Smith

Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

The volume [insert] boy received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Smith’s third collection, Homie, is forthcoming in 2020.

y k s Ilya Kamin Born in the former Soviet Union, Ilya Kaminsky is the Whiting Award-winning author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa.

Kaminsky is co-editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.

His work has been translated into more than 20 languages.

Fan ny Howe Fanny Howe has written over 30 works of poetry and prose. Her Second Childhood was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her fiction has been honored as a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. Her latest collection is Love and I: Poems.

From Alfonso Stands Answerable

Whoever listens: thank you for the feather on my tongue, thank you for our argument that ends, thank you for deafness, Lord, such fire from a match you never lit.

Excerpt from “Alfonso Stands Answerable” from Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky © 2019 by Ilya Kaminsky. Used with permission of Graywolf Press.

At the Folger

October 28 • Monday at 7:30pm

I Put a Spell on You Two poets explore the realms of witchcraft and womanhood in all seasons of life.

Prior to the reading, beginning at 6:30pm, there will be a display of rare books on witches and magic.

An nie Finc h

sin o

Annie Finch is a poet, translator, librettist, editor, and critic. Her books of poetry include Spells: New and Selected Poems and Calendars, shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award. She is also the author of The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self.

o r t e P i Kik

Kiki Petrosino’s three books of poetry are Witch Wife, Hymn for the Black Terrific, and Fort Red Border.

A recent recipient a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, Petrosino is a Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia.

Wheel Turn me. Touch me. Heal me. Change me.

Seasons of the turning year, Move me. Make me. Rearrange Me. Lead me home, again, here.

Annie Finch, “Wheel” from The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells.

Copyright © 2019 by Annie Finch. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

At the Folger

November 4 • Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with The Waywiser Press

Anthony Hecht Prize In honor of the celebrated poet Anthony Hecht, The Waywiser Press presents this annual award to an emerging poet.

K

Prize judge Charles Wright has authored several poetry collections including Country Music: Selected Early Poems (National Book Award) and Black Zodiac (Pulitzer Prize).

Recipient of many awards and honors, he is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and US Poet Laureate.

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Charle sW r

llander o H e n i r e ath

Poet and historian Katherine Hollander receives the 14th annual Hecht Poetry Prize for her book The German Dictionary. She is presently Faculty Fellow in modern European history at Colby College and a guest reader for Sugar House Review.

From The Widow

Where has he gone, who moved through me like a river.

Has he broken into a cloud of birds?

A busted fruit, a skein of red pulp?

Katherine Hollander, “The Widow” from The German Dictionary.

Copyright © 2019 by Katherine Hollander. Reprinted by permission of The Waywiser Press.

At the Folger

December 9 • Monday at 7:30pm Co-sponsored with The Emily Dickinson Museum

Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute:

“Divide Light”

A poet and an artist read Dickinson poems and their Dickinson-influenced work and engage in a conversation about their shared muse.

Le sley Dill Artist Lesley Dill works with paper, wire, horsehair, photography, foil, bronze, and music. Her artworks are in the collections of over 50 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dill’s opera, Divide Light, based on Dickinson’s poems, was performed by New York’s New Camerata Opera Company in 2018.

h g i le S Tom Tom Sleigh’s ten books of poetry include Army Cats (John Updike Award) and Space Walk (Kingsley Tufts Award). His book of essays, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees, is being published as a companion piece to his latest book of poems, House of Fact, House of Ruin.

From Song That Can Only Be Sung Once

...Maybe under some other sky something like glory smiles on us, maybe there life is clear, maybe there things open up on the way the sea stretches out to the horizon— but us, we’re blown by chance the way wind blows blades of grass lightly blowing them all one way.

Excerpt from “Song That Can Only Be Sung Once” from Army Cats by Tom Sleigh © 2011. Used with permission of Graywolf Press.

At the Folger

February 24 • Tuesday at 7:30pm

Love & Happiness A night of uplifting humor and luminous verse on the themes of love and happiness.

Geor ge Bilgere George Bilgere’s poetry collections include Blood Pages, Imperial, The White Museum, and The Good Kiss, which was selected by Billy Collins to win the University of Akron Poetry Award. His numerous awards include the Midland Authors Award and a Pushcart Prize.

Tim Seibles Tim Seibles’s Fast Animal won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and a National Book Award nomination.

His latest collection is One Turn Around the Sun. Seibles was the 2016 poet laureate of Virginia.

Keit h S. Wilson Video game designer and poet Keith S. Wilson is the author of Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love.

A member of the Affrilachian Poets, a Cave Canem fellow, and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Wilson serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Four Way Review.

From String Theory

…I’m saying love becomes the wish of coins blueing in the fountain.

We can aspire to be that small carousel of metal that spins on the moment,…

Excerpt from “String Theory” from Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love by Keith S. Wilson © 2019, published by Copper Canyon Press. Used with permission.

At the National Museum of Women in the Arts

March 11 • Wednesday at 7pm Co-sponsored with the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Motherhood Redux A poetic conversation about motherhood with three poets who have examined the topic in verse and prose.

g n a h Tina C Tina Chang is the author of Hybrida and Of Gods & Strangers and co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond.

Chang is the first woman to be named poet laureate of Brooklyn, New York.

Bet h An n Fennelly Beth Ann Fennelly has crafted three books of poetry and three books of prose, as well as a novel co-authored with her husband, Tom Franklin. Recently named Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the University of Mississippi, Fennelly is the state’s poet laureate.

Camille Dungy Poet and prose author Camille Dungy has written the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History. She is the recipient of an American Book Award and two NAACP Image Award nominations. Her most recent poetry collection is Trophic Cascade.

Expectant; or, What the Transition Phase of Labor Confirmed about Being a Black Woman in America I thought I would say, now! and a new life would suddenly crown— another beautiful, ordinary head driven to split me wide open.

But look at me—still on my hands and knees—still pushing.

“Expectant; or, What the Transition Phase of Labor Confirmed about Being a Black Woman in America” by Camille Dungy © 2019. Used with permission of the poet.

At The Phillips Collection

April 23 • Thursday at 6:30pm Co-sponsored with The Phillips Collection

Riffs and Relations In response to The Phillips Collection exhibition Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition.

Te rra nce Hayes Terrance Hayes’s numerous volumes include American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Lighthead (National Book Award in Poetry), Wind in a Box (Pushcart Prize), and Muscular Music (Kate Tufts Discovery Award). To Float in the Space Between, his collection of texts and drawings inspired by the work of Etheridge Knight, has garnered the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism.

A poet and painter, Hayes is a MacArthur Fellow.

Hank Willis Thomas, Icarus, 2016, Quilt.

Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition presents works by 20th- and 21st-century African American artists together with works by the European artists with whom they engaged, such as Romare Bearden with Pablo Picasso; Renee Cox and Robert Colescott with Édouard Manet; and Leonardo Drew with Piet Mondrian.

From American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

[“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison”]

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.

I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.

Excerpt from “American Sonnet for My Past and Future” from American Sonnets for My Past and Future by Terrance Hayes © 2018, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Used with permission.

At the National Gallery of Art, West Building East Garden Court

May 18 • Monday at 7:30pm, FREE Co-sponsored with the National Gallery of Art

Folger Poetry Board Reading Each year the Folger Poetry Board selects a distinguished poet to read his own poems as well as favorite works by other poets.

n i l l s o C y l Bil

Named “the most popular poet in America”

by The New York Times, Billy Collins is the author of several volumes of poetry, most recently The Rain in Portugal. A former US Poet Laureate, his many honors and awards include the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry.

This reading is free of charge. O.B. Hardison Poetry Series subscribers will have a special reserved seating section.

From Introduction to Poetry

I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.

Excerpt from “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright ©1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.

Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice

Readings & Talks 2019/20 Presented with the generous support of the Lannan Foundation Georgetown Alumni Reading Featuring Ilya Kaminsky and John James September 24, 7pm Bioethics Research Library (Healy Hall 102) Author of Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship. He teaches at the MFA program at San Diego State University.

John James’s The Milk Hours was selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and published in 2019 by Milkweed Editions. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, and Best American Poetry 2017.

Tayari Jones Moderated by Aminatta Forna October 23, 7pm Copley Formal Lounge Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which is an Oprah Book Club selection and New York Times bestseller.

She lives in Atlanta, where she is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.

Susan Choi Moderated by Maureen Corrigan November 19, 7pm Copley Formal Lounge Susan Choi’s five novels include Trust Exercise and My Education, which received a 2014 Lambda Literary Award. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she teaches fiction writing at Yale.

Georgetown Lannan Center events are free and open to the public. All events take place on the Georgetown University campus at 37th & O Streets, NW. Each event includes a seminar at 4:30pm in the Lannan Center (New North 408).

The 7pm reading is followed by a reception and book signing.

Tina Chang and John Murillo February 25, 7pm Copley Formal Lounge Tina Chang’s poetry collections include Hybrida, Of Gods & Strangers, and Half-Lit Houses. She is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, the first woman named to this position.

Chang currently teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

John Murillo’s Up Jump the Boogie was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award. His Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2020. He is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.

Lannan Center Spring Symposium March 24-26 Schedule of events and details for this year’s symposium to be announced.

Carolyn Forché April 7, 7pm Copley Formal Lounge Poet and human rights advocate Carolyn Forché has recently published a memoir, What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance. She is the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness followed by Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001. Forché is a Professor at Georgetown University.

Lannan Center for Poetics & Social Practice Georgetown University 202.687.6294 lannan.georgetown.edu

At Georgetown University

Terrance Hayes January 21, 7pm Copley Formal Lounge Terrance Hayes’s most recent collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins, was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in poetry. His Lighthead won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry. An artist-in-residence at New York University, Hayes currently resides in New York City.

Special Events Poetry Salons

Want to spend an evening chatting with your favorite poet? These benefit evenings, held in private homes and other special locations, include readings with the featured poets along with receptions. All proceeds support the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series. Please contact Teri Cross Davis at tcdavis@folger.edu to be placed on the invitation list.

September 15

Fanny Howe, Ilya Kaminsky, Danez Smith

April 22

Terrance Hayes

May 17

Billy Collins

At the National Press Club Eudora Welty Lecture

Jesmyn Ward October 16 • Wednesday at 7:30pm Sponsored by the Eudora Welty Foundation, this annual lecture celebrates creative origins in the spirit of Welty’s treasured One Writer’s Beginnings. Ward is the first woman to win two National Book Awards, for her first novel, Salvage the Bones, and for her most recent, Sing, Unburied, Sing. Her memoir, Men We Reaped, recounts her life in Mississippi. Associate Professor at Tulane University, she is recipient of a MacArthur and numerous other awards.

At the Folger

Not Just Another Day Off A Poetic Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. January 20 • Monday at 10am, FREE This special event combines poetry with historical speeches from Dr. King, Gandhi, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, and more.

Donations of canned and boxed food items are requested for the Food Pantry of The Lutheran Church of the Reformation.

PURCHASE TICKETS

Online

folger.edu/poetry

By Phone

202.544.7077 A book sale and signing follows each reading. Most readings also include a complimentary wine reception.

SUBSCRIBE

Come to all 8 readings for a $75 “Sonnet” subscription Or pick 3-5 readings for a “Haiku” flex package– See folger.edu/poetry for details.

Subscribing guarantees your seats—even to events that sell out.

Subscribers enjoy special offers and discounts at the Folger and area shops and restaurants.

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.

The Folger Poetry Board

Folger Shakespeare Library is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource Gigi Bradford, Chair for exploring Shakespeare Anne Harding Woodworth, Co-Chair and his world.

Christina Daub • Harriet Patsy Davis • 201 East Capitol Street, SE Barbara Goldberg • Patricia Gray • Washington DC 20003 Marifrancis Hardison • Joseph Hassett • Anita Herrick • Sherman E. Katz • Connect With Us Hiram Larew • Robert C. Liotta • Richard Lyon • Mary P. McElveen • Barbara Meade • Mary Muromcew • Jean Nordhaus • Jacqueline L. Quillen • Susan S. Rappaport • Heddy Reid • Edith Schafer • Marianne Schuelein • Amy Tercek • Nigel Twose • Programs David Weisman • Mary-Sherman Willis subject to Teri Cross Davis, Poetry Coordinator

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