Poetry Day: Carolyn Forché and Jamaal May
Two distinguished poets read for 60th annual Poetry Day
CHICAGO—The Poetry Foundation and the Chicago Public Library are pleased to feature poets Carolyn Forché and Jamaal May at the 60th annual Poetry Day, one of the oldest and most distinguished reading series in the country. Inaugurated by Robert Frost in 1955, Poetry Day has presented such poets of note as T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Carl Sandburg, W.H. Auden, Anne Sexton, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Robert Hass.
Best known for coining the term “poetry of witness,” Carolyn Forché is an articulate defender of her own aims as well as the larger goals of poetry. Her first volume, Gathering the Tribes (1976), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, and was followed by The Country Between Us (1982), The Angel of History (1995) and Blue Hour (2004). Her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993), was praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” It was followed by the 2014 anthology Poetry of Witness.
Jamaal May’s first book, Hum (2013), won the Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books. In an interview shortly after the book’s publication, May stated, “Ultimately, I’m trying to say something about dichotomy, the uneasy spaces between disparate emotions, and by extension, the uneasy spaces between human connection.” He is founding editor of the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook and Video Series. A Cave Canem resident, May was recently awarded Poetry magazine’s $5,000 J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize for his poems “Per Fumum” and “There Are Birds Here,” published in Poetry’s February 2014 issue.
What: Poetry Day: Carolyn Forché & Jamaal May
When: Thursday, October 16, 6 pm
Where: Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
Harold Washington Library Center
400 South State Street
Tickets: Free admission. Doors open at 5 pm.
Co-sponsored with the Chicago Public Library
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.
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