Poetry Foundation Announces Fall 2016 Events Season

CHICAGO – The Poetry Foundation’s fall event season embraces poetry with a range of offerings from the healing power of poetry in addiction recovery to readings by famed poets Sharon Olds, Major Jackson, and Ross Gay. We are proud to collaborate with great Chicago-based, national, and international organizations including Cave Canem, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Poetry Society of America, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and Eye on India, an organization with whom we are presenting 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner Vijay Seshadri.

This season, events pay tribute to the legacy of Carl Sandburg, Paul Verlaine, and Pablo Neruda. In the ongoing series, Open Door Readings, we continue to highlight emerging poets and their mentors on the third Tuesday of each month. In the Poetry Foundation Gallery, you can find Bhaba, a multidisciplinary exhibition by Neha Vedpathak and the group exhibition, Pegasus & Mermaids, featuring work by Poetry magazine cover artists depicting these mythical creatures.

The following events are free and open to the public on a first come, first served basis. These fall 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/programs/events. Images are available upon request.

Poetry Foundation Fall 2016 Events

Poetry & Music
2016 Collaborative Works Festival: The Poetry of Paul Verlaine
Wednesday, September 7, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago’s 2016 Collaborative Works Festival explores the relationship between French poet Paul Verlaine and composer Claude Debussy. While there is no evidence of their meeting, Debussy set Verlaine’s poetry to music more than any other poet. Featuring performances by Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, acclaimed soprano Sarah Shafer, pianists Matthew Gemmill and Scott Allen Jarrett, and CAIC co-founder, tenor Nicholas Phan.
Cosponsored with Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago

Poetry off the Shelf
Neil Steinberg: “A Box Full of Darkness: Poetry, Addiction & Family”
Thursday, September 8, 7 pm
Join Neil Steinberg as he reads from his new book, Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery, written with Sara Bader and published this month by the University of Chicago Press. Accompanying him will be Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune; Tony Fitzpatrick, the noted artist, poet, and playwright; and Carol Marin, the respected TV journalist. Steinberg, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, will discuss the medicinal power of poetry, and how Out of the Wreck I Rise uses excerpts from poems, novels, letters, memoirs, movies and songs to guide readers through the maze that is addiction.

Poetry off the Shelf
Eye on India: Vijay Seshadri
Thursday, September 15, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
Eye on India provides a platform for cultural, artistic and educational exchange and collaboration between the US and India. The Eye on India Festival is produced annually in Chicago in partnership with Teamwork Arts, India. This festival kick-off reading and conversation features Vijay Seshadri, author of Wild Kingdom (1996); The Long Meadow (2003), which won the James Laughlin Award; and 3 Sections (2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
Cosponsored with Eye on India

The Open Door Readings
Northeastern Illinois University’s Debra Bruce & David Mathews with
Columbia College Chicago’s Tony Trigilio & Cara Birch
Tuesday, September 20, 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 writing program instructors accompanied by a current or recent student.

Conversation
Cave Canem Legacy Conversation: Kristiana Rae Colón, Angela Jackson &
Ed Roberson
Thursday, September 22, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
Founded in 1996, Cave Canem is a national organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of black poets. Kristiana Rae Colón is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, and codirector of the #LetUsBreathe Collective.  Poet, novelist, and playwright Angela Jackson’s most recent volume, It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time (2015), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN Open Book Award. Ed Roberson is the recipient of the 2016 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lila Wallace Writers’ Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the 2016 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.
Cosponsored with Cave Canem Foundation and supported in part by Poets & Writers

Poetry & Art
Pegasus & Mermaids Opening
Friday, September 23, 6 pm
A performance and opening event for Pegasus & Mermaids, a group exhibition featuring work by Poetry magazine cover artists depicting Pegasus and mermaids from poetry immemorial. The exhibit will be displayed in the Poetry Foundation Gallery through December 16, 2016.

Poetry off the Shelf
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Tuesday, September 27, 7 pm
Ellen Bryant Voigt was a founder of the Goddard College low-residency MFA program, the first MFA program of its kind, and has taught at Iowa Wesleyan College and MIT. She served as Poet Laureate of Vermont for four years. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and in 2015 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Her poems often traverse the worlds of motherhood, the rural South, family, and music.
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

Poetry off the Shelf
Daniel Halpern
Thursday, September 29, 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.

Poetry off the Shelf
Joshua Weiner & Suzanne Buffam
Wednesday, October 5, 7 pm
Joshua Weiner is the author of three books of poetry, including The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish (2013). He is also the editor of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn and is a professor of English at the University of Maryland. Suzanne Buffam is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently A Pillow Book (2016). Born and raised in Canada, she lives in Chicago and is currently visiting assistant professor of poetry at the University of Iowa.

Celebration
Fuller Awards Celebrating Rosellen Brown
Thursday, October 6, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
The Fuller Award is presented by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame to a Chicago author who has made outstanding lifetime contributions to literature. Rosellen Brown will become the fourth recipient of the prestigious award, after Gene Wolfe, Harry Mark Petrakis, and Haki Madhubuti. A lineup of speakers from the literary community, including Reginald Gibbons, Alex Kotlowitz, and Donna Seaman, will give tributes to illuminate the depth of Brown’s work and its importance to Chicago and American letters.
Cosponsored with the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and the Guild Literary Complex

Poetry off the Shelf
French Connection 2016
Friday, October 7, 12 pm
To celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the relationship between Chicago and Paris, the Chicago Sister Cities Paris Committee invites Chicago Slam Works to showcase the work of Collective 129H, poets/performers Rouda, Neobled and Lyor. Together with Marc Smith, founder of the poetry slam, and Chicago Slam Works poets, they create a dynamic interpretive performance. The resulting poetic performance can be easily understood, in real time, by both French and English speakers.

Poetry & Children
Quraysh Ali Lansana: A Gift from Greensboro
Saturday, October 8, 1:30 PM
Join us as we celebrate the release of Quraysh Ali Lansana’s new book for children, A Gift from Greensboro. The book, written for ages five and up, is at once an elegy, a celebration of the magic of childhood friendship and adventure, and a meditation on growing up in the wake of the sit-ins that ushered in the Civil Rights Movement.

Poetry off the Shelf
Lit & Luz Festival: Señal
Tuesday, October 11, 7 pm
The Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature, and Art presents “Señal Night” featuring three authors from the Señal chapbook series, published collaboratively by BOMB magazine, Libros Antena Books, and Ugly Duckling Presse. Readers include Pablo Katchadjian (Argentina), Florencia Castellano (Argentina), and Luis Felipe Fabre (Mexico), along with Lit & Luz invitee, Gabriela Jauregui (Mexico). This bilingual event will be presented in both Spanish and English.
Cosponsored with MAKE Literary Productions and the Lit & Luz Festival

Open House Chicago
Saturday and Sunday, October 15 & 16, 10 am–5 pm
1:30 pm modular synthesizer performance by Sam Prekop
The Poetry Foundation celebrates Open House Chicago, an annual festival weekend that provides an opportunity for people to explore Chicago’s rich architecture, culture, and history by visiting featured sites and neighborhoods in an open-ended format that encourages self-guided exploration. At 1:30 PM, Sam Prekop from the bands The Sea and Cake and Shrimp Boat will perform a modular synthesizer piece to showcase the acoustics of the performance space.

The Open Door Readings
Lewis University’s Simone Muench & Deirdre McCormick with
Lake Forest College’s Joshua Corey & Simone Parker
Tuesday, October 18, 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 writing program instructors accompanied by a current or recent student.

Poetry off the Shelf
Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems with
Forrest Gander & Rocío Ferreira
Tuesday, October 25, pm
Pablo Neruda’s lost poems, originally composed on napkins, playbills, receipts, and notebooks, were recently discovered in his archive to the delight of readers and scholars. Copper Canyon Press has now published a volume of the poems, translated into English by award-winning poet Forrest Gander and presented along with the Spanish text and full-color reproductions of handwritten poems. Gander joins Latin Americanist Rocío Ferreira, Associate Professor and Spanish Program Director in the Department of Modern Languages at DePaul University, for a bilingual presentation of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet.
Cosponsored with Copper Canyon Press

Poetry Day
David Nagler & Friends: “Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems”
Thursday, October 27, 6 pm
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
Harold Washington Library Center
400 South State Street
Doors open at 5 pm
Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems is a new musical project from singer/composer David Nagler, a song cycle that sets Sandburg’s poetry to music in an assortment of styles. The concert will feature 16 songs performed by an 11-person ensemble, along with guest vocalists hailing from or associated with Chicago. The evening will be an ambitious and energetic musical performance, and a celebration of Sandburg’s important collection, published 100 years ago.
Cosponsored with the Chicago Public Library

Conversation
Alison Flowers & Reginald Dwayne Betts: “Doing Time, Lost Time”
Sunday, October 30, 2:30 pm
Film Screening Room 201
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 East 60 Street
The United States locks up more people, per capita, than any other country in the world, but the experience of doing time—and making up for lost time upon release from prison—is widely misunderstood. In her book Exoneree Diaries: The Fight for Innocence, Independence, and Identity, investigative journalist Alison Flowers follows four wrongly convicted men and women as they are released back into the world. She is joined by poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose memoir A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Survival, Learning, and Coming of Age in Prison chronicled his eight-year stint as an adult offender after committing a carjacking at age sixteen.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival
Tickets to the 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival go on sale to CHF members on Tuesday, September 20, and to the general public on Tuesday, September 27.
The full schedule of all programs is available at chicagohumanities.org/speed

Poetry off the Shelf
Lawrence Joseph
Tuesday, November 1, 7 pm
Lawrence Joseph is the author of five books of poems, including Into It (2007), and two books of prose. His new collection So Where Are We? is forthcoming from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in 2017. Among his awards are the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law and has taught Creative Writing at Princeton. He lives in New York City.

Poetry & Music
Stephen Alltop & Josefien Stoppelenburg
Thursday, November 3, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
Pianist Stephen Alltop and soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg offer a lively and varied program of music based on outstanding poets through the ages. Enjoy compelling texts by Agee, Petrarch, Goethe, Wordsworth, Rilke and others in beautiful settings by Schubert, Liszt, Mahler, Wolf, Barber, and Willem Stoppelenburg.

Poetry off the Shelf
Ross Gay: Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Friday, November 11, 6 pm
Blanc Gallery
4445 South King Drive
A finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, Ross Gay’s luminous collection of poems Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude brims with love of the world. Whether he’s mixing his father’s ashes with a tree he’s planting, buttoning his shirt, or remembering the casualness of childhood violence, Gay infuses every moment with ardor and beauty. Reading his poetry with unique energy, Gay’s headlong, loose-limbed lines propel the listener yet lets her slow down enough to actually see the world.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival
Tickets to the 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival go on sale to CHF members on Tuesday, September 20, and to the general public on Tuesday, September 27.
The full schedule of all programs is available at chicagohumanities.org/speed

Poetry off the Shelf
Elizabeth Alexander: The Light of the World
Saturday, November 12, 2 pm
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
Harold Washington Library Center
400 South State Street
Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander’s latest book, The Light of the World (2015), is a memoir about loss, a reflection on her existential crossroads after the unexpected death of her beloved husband four days after his 50th birthday party. Alexander, who read her poem “Praise Song for the Day” at President Obama’s 2009 inauguration, writes about the beauty of her married life, the trauma of her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival
Tickets to the 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival go on sale to CHF members on Tuesday, September 20, and to the general public on Tuesday, September 27.
The full schedule of all programs is available at chicagohumanities.org/speed

The Open Door Readings
Columbia College Chicago’s CM Burroughs & Chrissy Martin with University of Illinois at Chicago’s Philip Jenks & Ethan Vliets-VanLear
Tuesday, November 15, 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 writing program instructors accompanied by a current or recent student.

Celebration
POETRY Fall PARTY
Wednesday, November 16, 7 pm
Join us for Poetry magazine’s seasonal party! Celebrate the September, October, and November 2016 issues of Poetry with contributors, editors, and the poetry curious. Festivities include readings, performances, music, and libations. Subscription specials and individual issues available.

Poetry off the Shelf
Sharon Olds
Thursday, December 1, 7 pm
Sharon Olds is the author of eleven volumes of poetry. Her many honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the New York State Poet Laureateship from 1998–2000. Often compared to “confessional” poets, Olds has been much praised for the courage, emotional power, and extraordinary honesty with which she addresses domestic and political violence, sexuality, family relationships, love, and the body.

Poetry off the Shelf
Jane Hirshfield
Monday, December 5, 7 pm
Jane Hirshfield’s poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence, from the metaphysical and passionate to the subtle unfolding of daily life and experience. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently The Beauty (2015), as well as essays and translations. Hirshfield’s honors include The Poetry Center Book Award and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.

Poetry off the Shelf
Poetry and the Natural World: Timothy Donnelly, Camille T. Dungy &
Major Jackson
Thursday, December 8, 7 pm
The Poetry Society of America’s national series Poetry and the Natural World will focus on poems and poets from any era that are in conversation with, or are inspired by, nature. Timothy Donnelly, director of undergraduate creative writing at Columbia University, is the author of The Cloud Corporation (2010). A professor at Colorado State University, poet and essayist Camille T. Dungy has a new book of poems, Trophic Cascade, which will be published in 2017. Major Jackson, poetry editor of the Harvard Review, is an educator and the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Roll Deep (2015).
Cosponsored with the Poetry Society of America

Poetry & Music
Holiday Program with Lookingglass Theatre
Tuesday, December 13, 7 pm
A reception follows the program.
Lookingglass Theatre Company, in association with the Poetry Foundation, is pleased to present an evening of song and seasonal celebration, featuring live music and poetry from one of Chicago’s most literary theater companies.  Voices will ring out and glasses will be raised as we welcome winter and all the cheer, beauty, and peace it brings.
Cosponsored with Lookingglass Theatre Company

The Open Door Readings
Young Chicago Authors’ Nate Marshall & Carlina Duan with
Young Chicago Authors’ Jamila Woods
Tuesday, December 20, 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 writing program instructors accompanied by a current or recent student.

Poetry Foundation Gallery Fall 2016 Exhibitions

Neha Vedpathak: Bhaba
July 11 – September 15, 2016
A virtual dialogue between the artist and the poets Rabindranath Tagore and Kay Ryan, Bhaba is a multi-disciplinary exhibition that includes a large-scale paper work, an installation of handmade “stones,” and a mixed-media garland. Vedpathak’s “plucking” technique, in which she separates the fibers of handmade Japanese paper using a tiny pin, results in an immense, floating wall of paper that resembles a lace fabric. Her “stone” sculptures, created from Arizona sand and plant sap, blur the lines between the natural and the manmade.

Pegasus & Mermaids
September, 23 – December 16, 2016
A group exhibition featuring work by Poetry magazine cover artists depicting the mythical creatures Pegasus and mermaids from poetry immemorial. Artists include Lise Haller Baggesen, Ana Benaroya, Alexander Cohen, Stephen Eichhorn, Carson Ellis, Clay Hickson, Tony Fitzpatrick, Krista Franklin, Julia Goodman, Jenny Kendler, Kate McQuillen, Jessie Mott, Julie Murphy, Diana Sudyka, and Shoshanna Weinberger.

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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 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 that introduces poetry through fun, interactive readings and crafts; and field trips that welcome group visits from students of all ages and lifelong learners. To learn more or to arrange a field trip, contact [email protected].

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

Media contact:

Polly Faust, [email protected], 312.799.8065

Elizabeth Burke-Dain, [email protected], 312.799.8016