WPR CALENDAR OF EVENTS
SPRING 2012 PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Throughout its history the Woodberry Poetry Room has played a vital role as a center for literary programming. To this day, the Poetry Room continues to expand its active and innovative role in the literary community through a wide range of public programs, including readings, seminars, workshops, panel discussions, listening hours and oral history sessions. For a weekly calendar of events, contact the Poetry Room via e-mail with "WPR Mailing List" as the subject header. 
WPR RECORDING SESSION
LASKY
Dorothea Lasky
Our first recording session of the year features Dorothea Lasky (author of Awe and Black Life, both from Wave Books), who will record her defiant and inspiring mini-festo “Poetry Is Not a Project” and new poems from her forthcoming collection, Thunderbird (Wave Books, 2012).
Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330.
Free and open to the public. Photo ID required for entry.
MARINOVICH
POETRY LABORATORIO: EMERGING WORK FROM OCCUPY WALL STREET
Filip Marinovich
Filip Marinovich (author of Zero Readership and And If You Don't Go Crazy I'll Meet You Here Tomorrow, both from Ugly Duckling Presse) will read works from and enter into open discussion about the process of composing and performing poetry at Zuccotti Park (a.k.a. Liberty Park) during the period of the Occupy Wall Street encampment.
Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330.
Free and open to the public. Photo ID required for entry.
sLEIGH
LEIDNER
BURT
POET'S VOICE READING: STephen burt, mark leidner & tom sleigh
Our Poet's Voice series commences with a trio of acclaimed poets who engage classical forms/modes and confront such classical concepts as Truth and Beauty through three bold and compelling 21st century approaches: Kingsley Tufts and Shelley Memorial Award-winner Tom Sleigh (author of Army Cats), Mark Leidner (author of Beauty was the Case That They Gave Me)
and Stephen Burt (author of Parallel Play and Why I am Not a Toddler).
Edison-Newman Room, Houghton Library.
Free and open to the public.
Wednesday, February 22, 6:00pm
stevens
VENDLER
REEL TIME: THE RECORDINGS OF WALLACE STEVENS
Helen Vendler
In this multimedia presentation, Professor Helen Vendler will present two early poems and two late poems (via text and audio recording), reflecting on what did and did not draw her to Wallace Stevens when she first encountered his work in her twenties. She will ask why Stevens, in his seventies, was drawn to a plainness of style not present in his first book, Harmonium (1923).
Edison-Newman Room, Houghton Library.
Free and open to the public.
SWENSEN
spahr
POET'S VOICE READING: JULIANA Spahr & cole swensen
Friedrich Schlegel once said that poetry is closer to thinking than singing: Our final Poet's Voice reading of the 2011-2012 season features two poets who bring thinking and singing into a vital and innovative union: Juliana Spahr (author of Well Then There Now) and Cole Swensen (author of Greensward).
Edison-Newman Room, Houghton Library.
Free and open to the public.
Tuesday, March 27, 5:30pm (Oral History) and 7:00pm (Performance)
BISHOP
BISHOP AT 100: ORAL HISTORy INITIATIVE & performance of "these fine mornings"
Frank Bidart, Joelle Biele, Megan Marshall, Gail Mazur, Lisa Olstein, Katie Peterson, Robert Pinsky,
Lloyd Schwartz & Rosanna Warren
In this two-part centennial event, the Poetry Room commemorates Elizabeth Bishop through an oral history conversation, featuring Bishop’s friends and students Lloyd Schwartz, Frank Bidart, Megan Marshall, Gail Mazur and Rosanna Warren, and a staged reading of Joelle Biele’s “These Fine Mornings,” a 50-minute, one-act play that tells the story of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker.
Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street.
Free and open to the public.
ashbery
roffman
REEL TIME: AN AUDIO JOURNEY THROUGH JOHN ASHBERY'S EARLY LIFE IN POETRY
Biographer Karin Roffman
Karin Roffman (author of the forthcoming Young John Ashbery: A Biography of His Early Life and Art) presents recordings from John Ashbery's Harvard years as a portal into his youth and examines how his childhood memories emerge in his later work.
Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330.
Free and open to the public. Photo ID required for entry.
de la torre
aguirre-
oteiza
OMNIGLOT SEMINAR: TRANSLATING IN & OUT OF SPANISH
Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza & Monica de la Torre
Monica de la Torre (poet, translator and senior editor of BOMB Magazine) and Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza (poet and translator of John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, Wallace Stevens and W.B. Yeats) will explore the nuances of translation between the linguistic territories of Spanish and English, and guide audience members through an in-depth examination of the poetic interplay and nuances that exists between the two languages.
Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330.
Free and open to the public. Photo ID required for entry.
donnelly
WPR RECORDING SESSION
Patrick Donnelly
Daniel Tobin introduces a recording session by Patrick Donnelly, who will read from his latest collection, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012), which has been hailed as an "ambitious, winged re-imagining of the possibilites of voice." A Q&A with the audience will follow.
Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330.
Free and open to the public. Photo ID required for entry.
zawacki
smirou
OMNIGLOT SEMINAR: Between Poetry and PoEsie:
Franco-American Poetics in Translation
Sebastien Smirou, Cole Swensen & Andrew Zawacki
French poet Sebastien Smirou, author of Mon Laurent, and his American translator, Andrew Zawacki, will read from and discuss the translation of Smirou's first book, recently released by Burning Deck as My Lorenzo. As a window onto their collaborative process, Smirou and Zawacki will also translate--live--from Smirou's more recent volume, Beau voir ("See About"), with their conversation translated, on the spot, from French to English by American poet-translator Cole Swensen. This will open a pair of translation scenarios which can, in their turn, be discussed.
Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library, Room 330.
Free and open to the public. Photo ID required for entry.
graham
Black
WOODBERRY WEST: Poetry Reading by Jorie Graham
& Sophie Cabot Black at Amherst Books
Join us for a new series of readings in Amherst, Massachusetts, founded by Harvard alum Joseph W. Reilly, Jr., in conjunction with the Harvard Club of Western Massachusetts and the Woodberry Poetry Room. The inaugural reading will be given by Boylston Professor Jorie Graham (author of Place, 2012) and award-winning poet Sophie Cabot Black (author of The Descent, 2005).
8 Main Street, Amherst, MA
Free and open to the public.
For more information see Amherst Books.
Corbett
ORAL HISTORY INITIATIVE: ON BILL AND BEVERLY CORBETT
Forty-Four Years of Boston Literary Life
Moderated by Fanny Howe, this conversation explores the poetic and artistic friendships of Bill and Beverly Corbett---as their lives intersected with John Ashbery, Paul Auster, Basil Bunting, Robert Creeley, Elsa Dorfman, Barbara Guest, Philip Guston, Seamus and Marie Heaney, Susan Howe, August Kleinzahler, Jhumpa Lahiri, James Laughlin, Bernadette Mayer, Michael Palmer, James Schuyler, John Wieners and countless others luminaries, as well as such Cambridge/Boston gathering-places as the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the Blacksmith House Reading Series, the New Poets Theatre, and the Corbett's own home at 9 Columbus Square in Boston. Audience members are encouraged to contribute their own stories to this collaborative and informal fete for one of Boston’s most generous and engaged poets and literary advocates. Photograph by Michael Russem.
Thompson Room, Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Free and open to the public.