Poets at Barnard: Spring 2003 Events

Adrienne Rich

New York, NY– Throughout the Spring 2003 semester, Barnard College will host Poets at Barnard, a series of poetry readings sponsored in part by grants from the Francis Q. O’Neill Foundation and the Houghton Foundation. The series will highlight varied poetic styles, with an aim to broaden the audiences’ perception of poetry’s range and effects. The series will begin on Thursday, February 6th at 7 p.m. with poets Cal Bedient, Jorie Graham and Fanny Howe. Others to appear at Barnard include Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Eileen Tabios, Lucie Brock-Broido, C.D. Wright, and Adrienne Rich.

Admission is free and seating is on a first-come basis. All readings are followed by receptions.

Schedule of Events:

Cal Bedient, Jorie Graham, and Fanny Howe
Thursday, February 6, 2003, 7 p.m., Julius S. Held Lecture Hall, 3rd Floor, Barnard Hall

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Eileen Tabios
Thursday, March 6, 2003, 7 p.m., James Room, 4th Floor, Barnard Hall

Adrienne Rich
Reid Lectureship, sponsored with the Barnard Center for Research on Women and the Poetry Society of America
Tuesday, April 15, 2003, 7 p.m., Lower Level McIntosh

Lucie Brock-Broido and C.D. Wright
Friday, April 25, 2003, 7 p.m., James Room, 4th Floor, Barnard Hall

About the Poets:

Cal Bedient is the author of several books, including a previous collection of poems, Candy Necklace. His second collection of poems, The Violence of the Morning, was recently published by the University of Georgia Press. Mr. Bedient is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Poet and novelist Fanny Howe’s latest collections of poems include Selected Poems, Forged, Q, One Crossed Out, O’Clock, and The End. Along with her most recent novel, Nod, Howe has also written short story collections and books for young adults. Her Selected Poems received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 2001.

Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry including Never, Swarm, The Errancy, and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Graham is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University.

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge has written works such as The Heat Bird, Empathy, Sphericity and Four Year Old Girl. Her collaborations include artist books with Richard Tuttle and Kiki Smith as well as theatre works with Frank Ching, Blondell Cummings, Tan Dun, Shi Zhen Chen and Alvin Lucier. She is the recipient of two NEA Fellowships and two American Book Awards.

Eileen Tabios, Barnard ’82, has been described as a poet-activist. Her provocative and abstract poetry explores issues of identity and culture and has appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies. Her works include Black Babaylan and My Romance.

Lucie Brock-Broido is currently the director of poetry in the Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She has also taught at Harvard University and Bennington College. Brock-Broido is the author of A Hunger, a book of poems.

C.D. Wright, whose works strongly reflect her childhood experiences in the American South, mostly recently authored Translations Of The Gospel Back Into Tongues. Wright describes her poetry as being "about desire, conflict and the dearth of justice for all."

Adrienne Rich is the author of nearly twenty volumes of poetry including Fox: Poems 1998-2000, Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998, and Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995. She is also the author of several books of nonfiction prose, including Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations. In 1999, Rich received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation.

Contact: Petra Tuomi, Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7907, ptuomi@barnard.edu