FALL 2019 CALENDAR 10TH ANNIVERSARY AT 10 RIVER TERRACE POETSHOUSE.ORG A NOTE FROM THE POETS HOUSE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 10TH ANNIVERSARY AT 10 RIVER TERRACE For 30 years, Poets House has welcomed writers, scholars, students, TH and poetry enthusiasts to step into the living tradition of poetry. From This fall, Poets House celebrates its 10 Anniversary at 10 humble beginnings in a high school home economics classroom, to River Terrace—a library and meeting space with expansive our loft on Spring Street, to our current location, as our space has views of the Hudson, built specifically for poetry, and for you. grown, so too has our capacity to serve. Our facility has changed, Anniversaries can help us look at our path in time. So I but our commitment to plurality, creativity, and service remains the begin this note with thanks for your energy and support. So same. This beautiful space is a gift to everyone—but we need your many visitors and collaborators have helped to make Poets support to keep it alive! House a place of welcome and learning! Together we make something remarkable: a democratic, pluralistic space that invites millions annually into the experience of poetry and its many possibilities. GAY NEW YORK: WALT WHITMAN TO THE PRESENT Although Poets House has a robust thirty-year history, it is On view through November 30 here at 10 River Terrace that the organization’s ethos of service has been most fully expressed: 80,000 people cross our Celebrating the threshold annually to read, write, listen or attend a program. 50th anniversary of Almost 10,000 of them are students, many on free class trips. the Stonewall Riots Millions find us online or through regional programs. and Walt Whitman’s bicentennial, this Poets House is dedicated to fostering deep attention exhibition of recent to language—language, that creates bridges between work by sculptor communities and individuals. We welcome people from and painter Nicholas all around the world and from every experience in life. We Buffon showcases welcome voices from the past and the future, to create over 30 historic and breathing space and dialogue in our culture. contemporary sites of significance to We are so grateful to Battery Park City Authority for the gift of gay history, including several from Whitman’s life, placing Whitman’s this space. And, now, in honor of our 10TH Anniversary in Lower legacy in conversation with contemporary voices of resistance. Manhattan, they are helping with another groundbreaking project: a Poetry Path along the banks of the Hudson—poems Join us for two interactive Gallery Walks with the Artist— on benches, pavers, railings and banners. The Poetry Path Wednesday, October 30 & Wednesday, November 6, 6:30 pm. will have its opening this spring, opening our conversation about poetry into the park and the neighborhood. Join us all year long for workshops, tributes, events on great poets, and programs that explore poetry’s relationship — OCTOBER — to science. Come tune your ears and hearts to great words that can illuminate your individual path and the paths we make to SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 6 PM each other. POETRY & SCIENCE: POETRY, DEEP TIME & THE STARS with MORDECAI-MARK MAC LOW & MEI-MEI BERSSENBRUGGE Introduced and moderated by KATHARINE COLES POETS HOUSE LIBRARY HOURS: Join us for the first event in an ongoing series that bridges TUESDAY – FRIDAY: 11AM – 7PM scientific and poetic modes of learning. Mordecai-Mark Mac SATURDAY: 11AM – 6PM Low, astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, discusses the formation of galaxies in conversation with poet and collaborative artist Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Contemplate the universe from deep time to the life and death of stars, guided by three seasoned stargazers whose backgrounds span physics, philosophy, and visual art. Special thanks to Laura Manuelidis for her generous support of this series. Unless otherwise noted, programs are $10, $7 for students and seniors, and free to members, and take place at Poets House. No one will be turned away for lack of ability to pay. Information and directions: visit poetshouse.org. OCTOBER – NOVEMBER SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 3 PM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 7 PM FAVORITE POEM READING with THE LIFE & WORK OF DANIEL ROBERT PINSKY & SPECIAL GUESTS HALPERN with ROBERT HASS Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky In celebration of a lifetime of leads a Favorite Poem reading. For 20 years, dazzling work spanning poetry, this project has celebrated poetry’s vital role editing, and food writing, Daniel in our daily lives, featuring people from all Halpern is joined by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass to discuss walks of life reading poems that have been his life and legacy. Halpern co-founded the influential literary journal significant to them. Antaeus and is founder and publisher of Ecco Press, now an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. He is the author of nine books of poetry and THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 7 PM publisher of many famous poets, writers, and food critics, including Hass, Jorie Graham, and Anthony Bourdain. NORTH OF INVENTION: THE SHAKING TENT with LIZ HOWARD SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 3 PM , winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize Liz Howard ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS CHANCELLOR CONVERSATIONS in 2016, will discuss this sacred Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) rite and examine the use of ritual Admission: $15. practice as a means to guide one’s work, Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets discuss issues in sharing the ways this ceremony has informed contemporary life and poetic practice. her poetics. Co-presented with the Consulate General of Canada. 3 – 4 PM MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 8 PM Poetry Makes Nothing Happen?: Poetry In/And the Public Sphere with Elizabeth Alexander, Alicia Ostriker, Marie Howe, Alberto Ríos A TRIBUTE TO W. S. MERWIN with & Natasha Trethewey SONNET COGGINS, ROBERT HASS, EDWARD HIRSCH, HOWARD NORMAN, 4:15 – 5:15 PM NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, MICHAEL Our Own Foreignness: Border-Crossing Poetry in Translation with ONDAATJE & Others Forrest Gander, Brenda Hillman, Khaled Mattawa & Marilyn Chin Location: 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, 1395 5:30 – 6:30 PM Lexington Ave. Tickets are free, but must be Writing Poetry in a Troubled World with Kwame Dawes, Linda reserved in advance at www.92y.org Gregerson, Terrance Hayes & David St. John You that sang to me once sing to me now / Co-presented by the Academy of American Poets and Poets House. let me hear your long lifted note / survive with me Friends and fellow poets will read from the work of W. S. Merwin in TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 7 PM commemoration of his death on March 15, 2019. A two-term U.S. POETRY OF THE Poet Laureate, Merwin’s influence on American poetics has been SUPERNATURAL: THE WEIRD profound. with BRYAN THAO WORRA Co-sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, Copper Canyon & LINDA ADDISON Press, The Merwin Conservancy, Poetry Society of America, and the Bryan Thao Worra, Lao Minne- Unterberg Poetry Center. sotan Poet Laureate and president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, joins Linda Addison, the first poet and black woman to win the Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award, to TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 7 PM explore supernatural poetics from H. P. Lovecraft to Edgar Allan Poe. POETRY & SCIENCE: OUR INTIMATE Two days before Samhain—a traditional pagan holiday marking the CONNECTIONS TO TREES with NALINI end of harvest season and the descent into winter, when borders NADKARNI & FORREST GANDER between worlds are most porous—join us for an event that toes the line between the natural and the supernatural. Introduced and moderated by ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING The second event in this series convenes — NOVEMBER — vital voices in the fields of ecology and SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 3 PM ecopoetics. The evening features canopy ecologist Nalini Nadkarni in discussion PASSWORDS: THE BALLAD with Forrest Gander, winner of the PIDGIN KINE RHAPSODY: HAWAIIAN 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, whose ENGLISH-CREOLE POETRY FROM 1970 TO background in geology informs his THE PRESENT with R. ZAMORA LINMARK poetic practice. Gander will also discuss Celebrated Filipino American poet and his late wife C. D. Wright’s posthumously novelist R. Zamora Linmark discusses hybridity published Casting Deep Shade, which investigates the coevolution and song in Hawaiian ballad traditions. Linmark will intersperse the of humans and beech trees informed by ecology, folklore, and lecture with Hawaiian Pidgin poems by Lois-Ann Yamanaka and other history. Special thanks to Laura Manuelidis for her generous Hawaiian voices, concluding with his appropriation of a Federico support of this series. García Lorca ballad, which will be sung in rounds. 2 POETSHOUSE.ORG NOVEMBER – DECEMBER SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 6:30 PM PASSWORDS: THE BALLAD POETRY PATHS ACROSS THE NATION LOVE, LYRICISM & SOCIAL PROTEST with SARAH ARVIO FIELD WORK: ALIGNING POETRY AND SCIENCE Award-winning poet Sarah Arvio presents her new translations of the poetry of Federico Field Work: Aligning García Lorca, recently published as the Poetry and Science is acclaimed Poet in Spain. She will discuss Lorca’s approach to form, a three-year program rhythm, and lyricism and his emulation of literary and musical forms as imagining new pathways an expression of love and social protest. Describing her strategies for between scientific and poetic communication. Together with translating Lorca’s varied poetic music, she will read from the cante, natural history museums and libraries in Salt Lake City and the ballads, and the great homoerotic love poems. Arvio will be Milwaukee, Poets House has created interdisciplinary learning joined by flamenco guitarist and Lorcaphile Sergio Sánchez-Monge models for increased understanding of the world around Escardó in performance. us, uniting STEM learning with poetry through collaborative language arts experiments and the creation of experiential SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2-4 PM Poetry Paths.