Poetry 2016 17 brochure proof

OB HARDISON POETRY SERIES 2016/17

“ Poetry’s work is the clarification and magnification of being.”

–Jane Hirshfield

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.

A recording of O.B. Hardison reading from his poetry is available on CD at folger.edu/shop.

OB HARDISON POETRY SERIES CELEBRATING 48 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. As 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

folger.edu/poetry

Sharon Olds October 17 Monday at 7:30pm

Introduction and conversation moderated by Sarah Browning, co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock “Like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression.” —The New York Times

From Sea-Level Elegy

… Once, each summer, I howl, and draw myself back, out of there, where desire and joy, where ignorance, where touch and the ideal, where unwilled, yet willful blindness—once a year, I have mercy, I let myself go down where I have lived, and then, hand over hand, I pull myself back up.

Praised for her “vigorous and fecund metaphorical imagination” (American Book Review), celebrated poet SHARON OLDS is the author of 11 volumes of poetry, including her latest, Odes. Her numerous awards include the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry; the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Stag’s Leap; and the Lamont Poetry Selection and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Dead and the Living.

Olds is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Excerpt from “Sea-Level Elegy” from Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds © 2012, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Used with permission.

202.544.7077

Eavan Boland Austin Allen October 24 Monday at 7:30pm

Co-sponsored with The Waywiser Press, whose editor-in-chief Phillip Hoy will introduce the poets

ANTHONY HECHT POETRY PRIZE 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.

The Charm Onyx locket.

Carven and dark, it gleams from Bronx to tip.

Is found each night, and stolen.

Burns the same-shaped hole in each thief’s pocket, gives each the slip.

Is washed clean underground by that black market out of which it came.

Returns bearing your name.

Prize judge EAVAN BOLAND’s eloquent verse often references her native Ireland, painting its history with a haunting lyricism. She has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose, most recently New Collected Poems and A Woman Without A Country. Her honors include the Lannan Foundation Award for Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. AUSTIN ALLEN’s poetry and criticism appears in various journals.

Pleasures of the Game is his first book and winner of the 11th Hecht Poetry Prize.

“The Charm” from Pleasures of the Game by Austin Allen © 2016, published by The Waywiser Press. Used with permission.

folger.edu/poetry

Tyehimba Jess Robin Coste Lewis November 17 Thursday at 6:30pm

Co-sponsored with and held at The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC Conversation moderated by Sage Morgan-Hubbard, Ford W. Bell Fellow for Museums and P-12 Education at the American Alliance of Museums A reading in response to the exhibition People on the Move: Beauty and Struggle in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series The 60 panels of this seminal work are on display, along with multiple perspectives on the historical, literary, socio-cultural, aesthetic, and contemporary manifestations of migration that underlie Lawrence’s visual narrative. On view Oct. 8 –Jan. 8.

Ticketholders may view the exhibition prior to the reading.

The Migration Series, Panel no. 11: Food had doubled in price because of the war.

© 2008 Estate of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

From What the Wind, Rain and Thunder Said to Tom

Hear how sky opens its maw to swallow Earth? To claim each blade and being and rock with its spit? Become your own full sky. Own every damn sound that struts through your ears.

Shove notes in your head till they bust out where your eyes supposed to shine.

With poetry that reveals and revels in the history and experiences of African Americans, two awardwinning poets respond to Lawrence’s masterwork.

TYEHIMBA JESS’s first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series, and his most recent collection is Olio. A graduate of NYU and Harvard Divinity School, ROBIN COSTE LEWIS is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus, winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Poetry.

Excerpt from “What the Wind, Rain and Thunder Said to Tom” from Olio © 2016 by Tyehimba Jess, published by Wave Press. Used with permission.

202.544.7077

Tracy K. Smith December 12 Monday at 7:30pm

Co-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America

EMILY DICKINSON BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE

From Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?

After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure That someone was there squinting through the dust, Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only To be wanted back badly enough?

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

by The Suga Chef.

The words stars, meteors, moon, planet, and sun are repeated over 175 times in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet TRACY K. SMITH shares her favorite celestialinspired verse from both Dickinson and from her own collection, Life on Mars, which is in part elegy to Smith’s father who was an engineer on the Hubble Telescope. Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light. She is currently the Director of Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program.

Dr. David DeVorkin, Senior Curator of Astronomy for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, joins Smith to talk about astronomy from a 19th-century perspective.

Excerpt from “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” from Life on Mars © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith.

Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press. www.graywolfpress.org

folger.edu/poetry

O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES

Sharon Olds 10/17

Neruda with Forrest Gander & Javier Zamora 2/14

Folger Shakespeare Library

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

Eavan Boland & Austin Allen 10/24

Manuel Gonzales, Yona Harvey, & Gary Jackson 3/13

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.

2016/17

Tyehimba Jess & Robin Coste Lewis 11/17

Dickinson Tribute with Tracy K. Smith 12/12

Jane Hirshfield 4/17

PURCHASE TICKETS

Online folger.edu/poetry

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

Programs subject to change.

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

This guarantees your seats—even to events that sell out. If you are unable to attend a reading you may give your tickets to friends or donate them back for a tax-deductible contribution.

Subscribers enjoy exclusive discounts, a complimentary subscription to Folger Magazine, and special offers at the Folger and area restaurants and businesses.

PABLO NERUDA

Forrest Gander Javier Zamora February 14 Tuesday at 7:30pm

Co-sponsored with Copper Canyon Press Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Carlos Parada Ayala

Chilean poet PABLO NERUDA was hailed by novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez as “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” This evening celebrates Neruda and the recent publication of his lost poems—poems composed on napkins, playbills, and notebooks—in the new volume Then Come Back. Two poets will read Neruda’s poems and poems of their own.

FORREST GANDER, who composed the English translations in Then Come Back, is an award-winning poet, editor, and translator. His most recent poetry collection is Core Samples from the World.

JAVIER ZAMORA was born in El Salvador and migrated to the U.S. His debut book Unaccompanied will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2017.

From Poem 16

the sky crowns you, the ocean’s chorus etches into stone the song of your praises, among spiny thorns of the cactus, the corolla burns the world is born again.

Excerpt from “Poem 16” from Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems

by Pablo Neruda. Translation copyright © 2016 by Forrest Gander.

Used with permission from Copper Canyon Press.

202.544.7077

Manuel Gonzales Yona Harvey Gary Jackson March 13 Monday at 7:30pm

Co-sponsored with PEN/Faulkner Fiction Introduction and conversation moderated

by Dr. Tara Betts, Visiting Lecturer at University of Illinois-Chicago

WE WEAR THE MASKS: POETRY AND FICTION INSPIRED BY COMIC BOOKS

A fiction writer and two poets read from work that engages and embraces the themes of comic books and superheroes, exploring the underlying narrative possibilities for those who find themselves on the outside of society. MANUEL GONZALES is the From MacArthur eats dinner with The Atomic Man author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for I need you to go into Manchuria.

Show them what it means to interfere.

First Fiction and the John Gardner Prize for You ask if that’s wise.You fear escalation— Fiction, and of the novel The Regional Office Is Under Attack! Poet YONA HARVEY A raised fist will provoke the gun.

But every cell in your body can split atoms, is the author of Hemming the Water, which just bleeding could divide a country in two. won the 2014 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Don’t argue your godhood. Be a symbol. and is a co-author of the Marvel Comics series Black Panther: World of Wakanda.

Float above their bunkers, let them try GARY JACKSON is the author of Missing to destroy you. Let them fail.

You, Metropolis, which was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Excerpt from “MacArthur eats dinner with The Atomic Man” © 2016 by Gary Jackson. Used with permission.

folger.edu/poetry

Jane Hirshfield April 17 Monday at 7:30pm

Introduction and conversation moderated by poet Mary-Sherman Willis

FOLGER POETRY BOARD READING

From For What Binds Us

And see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before.

JANE HIRSHFIELD is the author of eight collections of poetry, including the recently published The Beauty . Her collection After was shortlisted for a T.S. Eliot Prize and named a “best book” by The Washington Post. She has also written two books of essays and edited and co-translated four books of poetry.

Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. In 2012, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and also received the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry.

Excerpt from “For What Binds Us” from Of Gravity & Angels. © 1988 by Jane Hirshfield and reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.

202.544.7077

Lannan Center Readings 2016/17 Presented with the generous support of the Lannan Foundation

at Georgetown University

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 8pm reading is preceded by a seminar at 5:30pm in the Lannan Center (New North 408).

MARLON JAMES, JOHN FREEMAN, & AMINATTA FORNA September 23, 7pm (4:30pm seminar)

Marlon James’s most recent novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, won the 2015 Man Booker Prize.

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic and the publisher of Freeman’s, an anthology.

Raised between the UK and Sierra Leone, Aminatta Forna is a novelist, memoirist, and essayist. She is the current Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics.

DON MEE CHOI & CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ October 4, 8pm Poet Don Mee Choi has received a Whiting Award and Lucien Stryk Translation Prize as well as a grant from Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

Craig Santos Perez was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry and the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry.

CAITRÍONA O’REILLY October 18, 8pm Caitríona O’Reilly ’s first collection of poetry, The Nowhere Birds, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best first collection and won the Rooney Prize in Irish Literature.

Her Geis was one of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2015.

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

TIM LIARDET & JENNIFER MILITELLO November 15, 8pm Tim Liardet has produced ten collections of poetry to date. His The World Before Snow was shortlisted for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize.

Jennifer Militello is the author of Body Thesaurus, named one of the top ten poetry books of 2013 by Best American Poetry.

COLM TÓIBÍN November 9, 6:30pm Irish author, playwright, and poet Colm Tóibín will present this year’s George P. Lacay Endowed Lecture to mark the centennial of the 1916 Easter Rising.

MARK MCMORRIS February 7, 8pm Mark McMorris is a two-time winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series award from the University of Georgia Press. McMorris is a professor of English at Georgetown University.

ARACELIS GIRMAY & ADA LIMÓN February 28, 8pm Aracelis Girmay is the author/illustrator of the collage-based picture book changing, changing. She has written two books of poems: Teeth and Kingdom Animalia.

Ada Limón’s fourth book of poetry, Bright Dead Things, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award.

TARFIA FAIZULLAH & JAMAAL MAY March 14, 8pm Poet Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam and Register of Eliminated Villages.

She co-directs the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series with Jamaal May. Jamaal May is the author of Hum and The Big Book of Exit Strategies. He was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and received a Spirit of Detroit Award.

LIDUDUMALINGANI April 18, 8pm Lidudumalingani is the winner of the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing for his story “Memories We Lost.”

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

You are cordially invited‌

THE FOLGER POETRY BOARD provides significant support to the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series by organizing and sponsoring fundraising and other literary 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 Dr. Marianne Schuelein Joan Shorey Amy Tercek Nigel Twose David Weisman Mary-Sherman Willis Douglas Wolfire Teri Cross Davis Poetry Coordinator

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 16 Sharon Olds

January 22 Members of the Folger Poetry Board

February 13 Forrest Gander & Javier Zamora

April 18 Jane Hirshfield

Sharon Olds 10/17 Eavan Boland & Austin Allen 10/24 Tyehimba Jess & Robin Coste Lewis 11/17 Dickinson Tribute with Tracy K. Smith 12/12 Neruda with Forrest Gander & Javier Zamora 2/14 Manuel Gonzales, Yona Harvey, & Gary Jackson 3/13 Jane Hirshfield 4/17

O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES 2016/17 Join us for these readings and receptions promising seven evenings of poetry, conversation, and inspiration.

202.544.7077 folger.edu/poetry

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