All Readings from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m. on the First Thursday of the Month
Admission Free Morrison Library in Doe Library UC Berkeley
For directions to Doe Library please check the campus map. (lower right corner)
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Series Kick-Off, 09.06.12 |
Kathleen Fraser, 10.04.12 |
Jorie Graham, 11.01.12 |
Aaron Shurin, 12.06.12
Cathy Park Hong, 02.07.13 | Lyn Hejinian, 03.07.13 |
C. S. Giscombe, 04.04.13 | Student Reading, 05.02.13
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Lunch Poems Broadcast on UCTV
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September 6, 2012
SERIES KICK-OFF
Hosted by Robert Hass and University Librarian Thomas C. Leonard, this event features distinguished faculty and staff from a wide range of disciplines introducing and reading a favorite poem. This year’s participants: Justin Brasheres (Environmental Science), Associate Chancellor and Chief of Staff Beata Fitzpatrick, Donna V. Jones (English), Vice Provost Catherine Koshland (Teaching, Learning, Academic Planning and Facilities), Director Lawrence Rinder (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), Colleen Rovetti (University Relations), Debarati Sanyal (French), Associate Director Sanchita Saxena (Center for South Asia Studies), Director Alix Schwartz (Academic Planning for the College of Letters & Science), David Sklansky (Law), and Andrew Stewart (Classics)October 4, 2012
KATHLEEN FRASER
Kathleen Fraser’s newest collection, m o v a b l e TYYPE, foregrounds texts from four recently produced Artist Books. Her collected essays, Translating the Unspeakable: Poetry and the Innovative Necessity, is in its second printing. She edited and co-founded the journal HOW(ever) and in 2001, launched its on-line version, How2. While director of The Poetry Center, Fraser founded The American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University where she taught in the Graduate Writing Program for 20 years. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and two NEA fellowships. She has published 16 volumes of poetry and seven collaborative Artist Books, recently collected by the Bienecke Library at Yale. Her work has been translated widely in Italian and French.November 1, 2012
CANCELLED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER
JORIE GRAHAM
Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including PLACE (2012), Sea Change, Overlord, and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has also edited two anthologies, Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language (1996) and The Best American Poetry 1990. Her many honors include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Graham has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut.
December 6, 2012
AARON SHURIN
Aaron Shurin is the author of eleven books of poetry and prose, most recently Citizen, a collection of prose poems and King of Shadows, a collection of personal essays. His writing has appeared in over thirty national and international anthologies, and has been translated into seven languages. Shurin’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Gerbode Foundation. He lives in San Francisco.February 7, 2013
CATHY PARK HONG
Cathy Park Hong's first book, Translating Mo'um, was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Dance Dance Revolution, her second collection, received the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her third and most recent book of poems, Engine Empire, was published in May, 2012. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn and is an Associate Professor at Sarah Lawrence College.March 7, 2013
LYN HEJINIAN
Lyn Hejinian is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Book of a Thousand Eyes and The Wide Road, written in collaboration with Carla Harryman. In fall 2012, Wesleyan University Press is publishing A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field 1982-1998, an anthology of works on key issues in poetics first published in Poetics Journal, co-edited by Hejinian and Barrett Watten. And in fall 2013 Wesleyan will republish her best-known book, My Life, in an edition that will include her related work, My Life in the Nineties. In addition to literary writing, editing, and translating, she has in recent years been involved in anti-privatization activism at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches.
April 4, 2013
C. S. GISCOMBE
C. S. Giscombe’s poetry books are Prairie Style, Giscome Road, and Here. His prose book is Into and Out of Dislocation. He’s the 2010 recipient of the Stephen Henderson Award given by the African American Literature and Culture Society. Prairie Style won a 2008 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Two of his recent plays (Lycanthropes/ Entre Chien et Loup and Lycanthropes/ Loup-Garou!) have been produced in San Francisco. Back Burner, a collection of essays about poetry, color, transportation, cooking, etc., will be published in 2013. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.![]()
May 2, 2013
STUDENT READING
One of the year’s most lively events, the student reading includes winners of the following prizes: Academy of American Poets, Cook, Rosenberg, and Yang, as well as students nominated by Berkeley’s creative writing faculty, Lunch Poems volunteers, and representatives from student publications.



