Poetry Foundation Announces Winter/Spring 2016 Events Season

CHICAGO–The Poetry Foundation continues to open many unexpected doors to the art of poetry in 2016. In collaboration with Lampo, we present the US premiere of Plane/Taléa—an exploration of the musicality of spoken language by Italian composer Alessandro Bosetti. Visitors to the Poetry Foundation Gallery will experience an innovative exhibition on poetry and scent and, later, a collection of vintage posters from the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Among others, we welcome poets Jana Harris, Alicia Ostriker, Daniel Halpern, Alice Fulton, and Jacqueline Woodson, who will be here for Young People’s Poetry Day. Chris Abani will give the keynote reading at the Chicago Public Library’s annual Poetry Fest, and twice a month throughout the season, we will cohost pop-up readings in the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago. Join us, too, for ongoing programs such as the monthly Open Door Readings, which mix emerging and established poets from Chicago’s great writing programs, and for Poetry Foundation Library programs for children and adults.

The following events are free admission and open to the public on a first come, first served basis except when otherwise noted. These events take place at the Poetry Foundation, 61 West Superior Street, Chicago, unless otherwise specified. More information about our events is available at poetryfoundation.org/events. Images are available upon request.

Poetry Foundation Winter/Spring 2016 Events

January

Pop-up Poetry
Simone Muench
Wednesday, January 6, 12 pm
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Meet in the Modern Wing’s Griffin Court
Join us for a series of 30-minute lunchtime poetry readings marking the reopening of the new Contemporary Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Simone Muench is the author of five books, including Orange Crush (2010) and Wolf Centos (2014). She serves as professor of English and chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review at Lewis University.
Free for Art Institute of Chicago members or with museum admission. Visit poetryfoundation.org for additional listings. Cosponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago

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The Open Door Readings
Northwestern University's Rachel Jamison Webster & DePaul University's Chris Green
Tuesday, January 19, 7 pm
The Poetry Foundation Library & Gallery hours will be extended until 7 pm.
The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

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Pop-up Poetry
Cristina Correa
Wednesday, January 20, 12 pm
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Meet in the Modern Wing’s Griffin Court
Join us for a series of 30-minute lunchtime poetry readings marking the reopening of the new Contemporary Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Cristina Correa is a VONA/Voices writer and a Midwestern Voices and Visions awardee. Her work has recently been published in TriQuarterly, broadcast on National Public Radio’s Latino USA, and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Free for Art Institute of Chicago members or with museum admission. Visit poetryfoundation.org for additional listings. Cosponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago

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Poetry off the Shelf
Drinking Gourd: An Evening of Poetry & Music
Tuesday, January 26, 7 pm
Celebrate Nicole Sealey, the winner of this year’s Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize, a first-book award for poets of color. Sealey holds an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is the programs director at Cave Canem Foundation and is a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Judge Chris Abani has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many honors, and is currently a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. The evening includes a performance by composer, producer, and double bass player Tatsu Aoki.
Cosponsored with the Northwestern Poetry & Poetics Colloquium

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Celebration
POETRY Wintertime PARTY
Wednesday, January 27, 6:30 pm
Join us for Poetry magazine’s seasonal party! Celebrate the December 2015 and January and February 2016 issues of Poetry with contributors, editors, and the poetry curious. Festivities include readings, performances, music, and libations. Subscription specials and individual issues available.

February

Pop-up Poetry
Eric Elshtain
Wednesday, February 3, 12 pm
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Meet in the Modern Wing’s Griffin Court
Join us for a series of 30-minute lunchtime poetry readings marking the reopening of the new Contemporary Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Eric Elshtain is the editor of Beard of Bees Press and is poet-in-residence at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital through the non-profit Snow City Arts Foundation. He conducts poetry and art workshops in the pediatrics ward, working with children from the ages of 3 to 23.
Free for Art Institute of Chicago members or with museum admission. Visit poetryfoundation.org for additional listings. Cosponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago

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Poetry & Music
The Camerado Suite
Wednesday, February 3, 7 pm
Michael J. Miles, one of the world’s most inventive banjo players, presents a world premiere of a four-movement composition for banjo, chamber orchestra, and jazz choir, featuring lines from Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” With the help of an ensemble of students and musicians, Miles celebrates Whitman with music that calls to American roots, mixing the banjo, jazz scat singing, the elegance of chamber harmony, and the edge, a closing movement in the exotic time signature 5+5+5+3+3.

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Poetry & Music
Lampo: Plane/Taléa, by Alessandro Bosetti
Saturday, February 6, 7 pm
Plane/Taléa is a new, immersive sound work stemming from Alessandro Bosetti’s interest in vocal and polyphonic music, in which voice fragments are abstracted through an imaginary choir. Plane/Taléa expands and exposes single voices within a granular polyphony. Small details and tonal inflections combine in a textured chorus to suggest an abstract conversation within an impossible community. Founded in 1997, Lampo promotes and supports artists working in experimental music and intermedia by commissioning, producing, and presenting special projects and performances.
Cosponsored with Lampo

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United States Poet Laureate
Juan Felipe Herrera Residency
Tuesday, February 9 and Wednesday, February 10
US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera will share his La Casa de Colores project and conduct workshops with elementary, middle, and high school groups at the Poetry Foundation. Herrera’s books include CrashBoomLove: A Novel in Verse (1999), Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008), Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes (2014), and Notes on the Assemblage (2015). Space is limited. For further information, please email [email protected].
Cosponsored with the Library of Congress

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The Open Door Readings
DePaul University's Mark Turcotte & City Colleges of Chicago's Daniel Borzutzky
Tuesday, February 16, 7 pm
The Poetry Foundation Library & Gallery hours will be extended until 7 pm. 
The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

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Pop-Up Poetry
Kenyatta Rogers
Wednesday, February 17, 12 pm
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Meet in the Modern Wing’s Griffin Court
Join us for a series of 30-minute lunchtime poetry readings marking the reopening of the new Contemporary Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Kenyatta Rogers is a Cave Canem fellow and was the 2012–2013 Visiting Poet in English at Columbia College Chicago, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry. A 2014 Pushcart nominee, his work has been published in or is forthcoming from Jubilat, Vinyl, Court Green, and Cave Canem Anthology XIII, among others. 
Free for Art Institute of Chicago members or with museum admission. Visit poetryfoundation.org for additional listings. Cosponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago

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Poetry on Stage
Every House Has a Door: "The Three Matadors"
Saturday, February 20, 2 pm
Chicago-based collective Every House Has a Door bases this performance on a passage of Jay Wright’s The Presentable Art of Reading Absence (2008) that appears in a hybrid form combining poetry and the conventions of a stage play. Every House presents an in-progress look at an interdisciplinary rendering of this text with an introduction by dramaturge Matthew Goulish; a continuous performance sequence directed by Lin Hixson and performed by Sebastián Calderón Bentin, Stephen Fiehn, Tim Kinsella, and Taisha Paggett; and a conversation with the audience.
In collaboration with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in honor of the 35th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, which recognizes exceptionally creative people who inspire us all

March

Poetry & Art
Jim Dine Reading & Presentation
Wednesday, March 9, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
Jim Dine, an internationally renowned artist first known for staging Happenings in New York City in 1959 and 1960, has been composing, publishing, and performing poetry as long as he has been making objects. An early proponent of pop art, Dine made painting more permeable by incorporating mundane objects and applying simple words and phrases to his canvases. The use of text in painting is a natural extension of Dine’s writing practice. A creator of paintings, assemblages, sculptures, drawings, and prints, Dine has also authored more than 12 books of poetry.
Cosponsored with the Richard Gray Gallery

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The Open Door Readings
School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Sally Alatalo & School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Calvin Forbes
Tuesday, March 15, 7 pm
The Poetry Foundation Library & Gallery hours will be extended until 7 pm.
The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

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Poetry off the Shelf
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Conor O’Callaghan & Caitríona O’Reilly
Tuesday, March 29, 7 pm
Wake Forest University Press, in association with the Poetry Foundation, is pleased to feature three contemporary Irish poets. Born in Cork, poet, translator, and editor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin has published numerous poetry collections, including Acts and Monuments (1966), The Magdalene Sermon and Earlier Poems (1991), and The Boys of Bluehill (2015). Conor O’Callaghan currently teaches at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. His most recent collection is The Sun King (2013). Dublin-born poet and critic Caitríona O’Reilly’s collections include The Nowhere Birds (2001), The Sea Cabinet (2006), and her latest, Geis (2015).
Cosponsored with Wake Forest University Press

 April

Young People’s Poetry Day
Poetry and Home: Jacqueline Woodson
Saturday, April 9, 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Celebrate National Poetry Month with a delightful open house for children and teens at the Poetry Foundation Library. This special weekend event will feature readings by Young People’s Poet Laureate Jacqueline Woodson, refreshments, and a variety of interactive activities for children and teens.
Please note the Poetry Foundation will be open only to youth and their caregivers during this event.

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Poetry off the Shelf
Jacqueline Woodson Reading for Adults
Saturday, April 9, 7 pm
Jacqueline Woodson has written more than 30 books, and her memoir in verse, Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), has resonated with readers and critics alike, winning both a National Book Award and the Newbery Honor. In 2015, the Poetry Foundation named Woodson the Young People’s Poet Laureate.

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Poetry off the Shelf
Alicia Ostriker
Tuesday, April 12, 7 pm
Alicia Ostriker has published 14 volumes of poetry, including The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog (2014); The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems 1979–2011; and The Imaginary Lover (1986), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. She was twice a National Book Award finalist, for The Little Space (1998) and The Crack in Everything (1996). Among Ostriker’s critical work on American poetry is the now-classic Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America (1987).

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The Open Door Readings
Northwestern University's Katie Hartsock & University of Chicago's Rosanna Warren
Tuesday, April 19, 7 pm
The Poetry Foundation Library & Gallery hours will be extended until 7 pm.
The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

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Harriet Reading Series
Documentary Film: “and when I die, I won’t stay dead,” the life of Bob Kaufman
Thursday, April 21, 6 pm
Beat poet Bob Kaufman (1925–1986) was founding editor of the journal Beatitude with Allen Ginsberg and others. During an eventful life, Kaufman was imprisoned, underwent electroshock therapy, suffered from drug addiction, and took a ten-year vow of silence following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Billy Woodberry, who will introduce his film, is one of the founders of the L.A. Rebellion film movement and a faculty member at California Institute of the Arts.

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Poetry off the Shelf
What We Carried: Poetry by Middle Eastern Refugees
Saturday, April 23, 2 pm
A reception follows the program.
The Iraqi Mutual Aid Society returns again with its 4th annual Poetry Festival.  Come enjoy the rich tradition of multi-lingual poems in Arabic and other languages from the Middle East by refugees and immigrants from the cradle of civilization. This year's theme is "What We Carried," a moving compilation about the significant objects refugees brought with them to America.  English translations will be provided. Cosponsored with the Iraqi Mutual Aid Society

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Poetry off the Shelf
Jana Harris
Monday, April 25, 7 pm
Jana Harris teaches creative writing at the University of Washington and at the Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. She is editor of the global poetry journal Switched-on Gutenberg. Her poetry publications include You Haven’t Asked About My Wedding or What I Wore: Poems of Courtship on the American Frontier (2014); Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? Voices of Pioneer Women (1993); The Dust of Everyday Life, An Epic Poem of the Northwest (1997); and We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889–90 (2003).

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Poetry off the Shelf
Daniel Halpern
Wednesday, April 27, 7 pm
An influential editor and publishing executive, Daniel Halpern is also a poet of considerable acclaim, writing poems that treat daily life—household tasks, nature, friends, pets—in fresh, accessible language. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Tango (1987) and Something Shining: Poems (1999). A founder and longtime editor of the influential literary magazine Antaeus, Halpern is the president and publisher of Ecco Press. 

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Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry
Rachel Zucker
Thursday, April 28, 7 pm
Rachel Zucker is the author of nine books, most recently, The Pedestrians (2014), a double collection of poetry and prose and a memoir, MOTHERs (2014). Zucker's 2009 collection, Museum of Accidents, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Zucker was a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts fellow. She lives in New York with her husband and their three sons and teaches at New York University. 
Cosponsored with the Bagley Wright Lecture Series

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Poetry Fest
Chris Abani
Saturday, April 30, 2 pm
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 South State Street
Doors open at 1 pm
Born and raised in Nigeria, Chris Abani is currently a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University and is known as an international voice on humanitarianism, art, ethics, and shared political responsibility. His several poetry collections include Feed Me the Sun: Collected Long Poems (2010), Hands Washing Water (2006), and Kalakuta Republic (2000). He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, a Hurston Wright Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors.
Cosponsored with the Chicago Public Library

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Poetry off the Shelf
Poesía en Abril: Raúl Zurita & Jeannette Miller
Saturday, April 30, 7 pm
Raúl Zurita is one of Latin America’s most celebrated and controversial poets. After Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup, Zurita sought to register the violence and atrocities committed against the Chilean people with a trilogy of books (Purgatory, Anteparadise, and The New Life), large-scale poetic acts including poems bulldozed into the Chilean desert, and the art collective Colectivo de Accion de Arte.
Dominican poet, essayist, educator, and art critic Jeannette Miller’s poetry appears in Contemporary Women Authors of Latin America; Voces femeninas del mundo hispánico, by Ramiro Lagos; and Dos siglos de literatura dominicana, by Alcántara Almánzar, among other anthologies. Miller was awarded the Dominican National Prize for Literature in 2011.
Cosponsored with contratiempo, nfp

May

Celebration
POETRY Springtime PARTY
Wednesday, May 4, 6:30 pm
Join us for Poetry magazine’s seasonal party! Celebrate the March, April, and May 2016 issues of Poetry with contributors, editors, and the poetry curious. Festivities include readings, performances, music, and libations. Subscription specials and individual issues available. The featured poet is Franny Choi, author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (2014).

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Poetry off the Shelf
Cathy Park Hong
Thursday, May 5, 7 pm
Cathy Park Hong is the author of Translating Mo'um (2002); Dance Dance Revolution (2007), winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize; and Engine Empire (2012). Her honors include fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the NEA, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is poetry editor of the New Republic and an associate professor at Sarah Lawrence College.

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Harriet Reading Series
Jericho Brown Reading
Thursday, May 12, 7 pm
The Harriet Reading Series features talks, performances, and readings by poets who have appeared on Harriet, the Poetry Foundation’s blog. The series presents both established and emerging poets whose writing finds innovative approaches to the craft of poetry. Jericho Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won an American Book Award, and his second, The New Testament (2014), was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. Brown is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta.

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The Open Door Readings
University of Chicago's Jennifer Scappettone & Northwestern University's Reginald Gibbons
Tuesday, May 17, 7 pm
The Poetry Foundation Library & Gallery hours will be extended until 7 pm. 
The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

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Poetry off the Shelf
Alice Fulton
Tuesday, May 24, 7 pm
Alice Fulton is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Dance Script with Electric Ballerina (1982), which won an Associated Writing Programs Award; Palladium (1986), winner of the National Poetry Series;  Felt: Poems (2001), winner of the Bobbitt Poetry Prize from the Library of Congress; and Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems (2004). Fulton’s poems have been set to music by contemporary composers such as Anthony Cornicello, William Bolcom, and Enid Sutherland; these pieces have premiered in the Guggenheim Museum, Carnegie Hall, and the Walker Arts Center. 
In collaboration with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in honor of the 35th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, which recognizes exceptionally creative people who inspire us all 

In the Gallery

The Poetry Foundation Gallery is free and open to the public from 11 am – 4 pm, Monday – Friday and select Saturdays and evenings. 

Volatile! A Poetry and Scent Exhibition
December 11, 2015–February 19, 2016
What if every poem had its own fragrance, beyond the literal smell of the materiality of the page? What if one could smell a poet’s imaginative, conceptual, intellectual world, the text unfurling into an aroma? In Volatile!, curator and design historian Debra Riley Parr presents a number of objects and experiences that invite speculative connections between poetry and scent. Scent artist David Moltz of Brooklyn-based perfumery D.S. & Durga tells the story of a young boy who is transformed into a mythical beast through a series of 12 scents captured beneath 12 glass cloches. Works by artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter with poet Anna van Suchtelen, typography artist Ben Van Dyke, ceramicist Seth Bogart, florist Jaime DeGroot, and artists Amy Radcliffe and Eduardo Kac are also featured.

Bernadette Mayer: Memory
March 2016
Memory is a poetic audio-visual installation, shown now in its entirety for the first time since its original 1972 exhibition. During July 1971, Mayer took one roll of film each day, resulting in 1,116 photographs displayed in a grid. The photographs are accompanied by six hours of audio narration, created by Mayer as she remembers and circularly ruminates on the images, using them “as taking-off points for digression, filling in the spaces between.” This exhibition is made possible by collaboration with the University of Chicago and Special Collections & Archives at the UC San Diego Library. 

Vintage Poetry Center Posters
May 2016
In the sixties and seventies, visual art students at the University of Arizona collaborated with the University of Arizona Poetry Center to create silkscreened publicity posters for Poetry Center readings. These colorful, exuberant works are emblematic of the times as well as the legendary poets whose visits they commemorate—among them Ai, Elizabeth Bishop, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, and Gary Snyder. Originally posted as flyers on notice boards and in high school classrooms, they are now extremely scarce. In collaboration with the Poetry Center, the Poetry Foundation displays these iconic works outside Tucson, Arizona, for the first time.

Neha Vedpathak
July 2016
Neha Vedpathak presents a site-responsive installation at the Poetry Foundation. Vedpathak is a multidisciplinary artist who employs a technique called plucking, in which she separates the fibers of Japanese handmade paper with a tiny pushpin. She will use the resultant paper, resembling a lace fabric, in creating this work. Vedpathak’s practice is fundamentally linked to a deeper understanding of her materials and processes that are innovative, ritualistic, and repetitive. For her, the unsaid says the most, making each expression imperative. 

About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs. For more information, please visit poetryfoundation.org.

About Poetry Magazine
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg and other now-classic authors. In succeeding decades it has presented—often for the first time—works by virtually every major contemporary poet.

 About the Poetry Foundation Library
The Midwest’s only library dedicated exclusively to poetry, the Poetry Foundation Library invites the reading of poetry through its collections and public programs. Browse a collection of more than 30,000 volumes. Experience audio and video recordings in private listening booths. View exhibitions relating to the world of poetry. The library continues to offer its weekly Wednesday Poemtime, a storytime event for children ages two through five, monthly book clubs and poetry workshops for lifelong learners, and field trips that welcome group visits from students of all ages. To learn more or to arrange a field trip, contact [email protected].
The Poetry Foundation Library is free and open to the public from 11 am – 4 pm, Monday – Friday and select Saturdays and evenings. Please check poetryfoundation.org/programs/library for updates.

POETRY FOUNDATION | 61 West Superior Street | Chicago, IL 60654 | 312.787.7070

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Media contact:
Polly Faust, [email protected], 312.799.8065
Elizabeth Burke-Dain, [email protected], 312.799.8016