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)
Series Kick-Off, 09.01.11 |
THE ART OF TRANSLATION: Robert Hass Reads Czesław Miłosz 10.06.11
THE ART OF TRANSLATION: Clayton Eshleman Reads Aimé Césaire, 11.03.11 |
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, 12.01.11
giovanni singleton, 02.02.12 | Louise Glück, 03.01.12 |
Richard Berengarten, 04.05.12 | Student Reading, 05.03.12
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September 1, 2011
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: Ronelle Alexander (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, Myrtis Cochran (Reference Services), George Jaqua (Physical Plant), Trinh T. Minh-ha (Rhetoric and Gender & Women’s Studies), Michael L. Palmer (Summer Sessions), Kent Puckett (English), Samuel J. Redman (Regional Oral History)
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© Margaretta Mitchell
October 6, 2011
THE ART OF TRANSLATION: Robert Hass Reads Czesław Miłosz
Born in San Francisco, Robert Hass is a California poet but his poetry, translations, and essays reveal an intimacy that transcends the borders of states and nations. With his direct clarity and promotion of literacy in “places where poets don’t go,” he served two years as U. S. Poet Laureate (1995-97). His numerous books include Sun Under Wood, Time and Materials, and The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems. Hass’s numerous accolades include the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, two National Book Critics' Circle Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize. Hass has translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czesław Miłosz.
November 3, 2011
THE ART OF TRANSLATION: Clayton Eshleman Reads Aimé Césaire
Clayton Eshleman has released three translations this year: Solar Throat Slashed, by Aimé Césaire, co-translated with A. James Arnold; Curdled Skulls Poems, by Bernard Bador, translated by Eshleman and the author; and Endure, by Bei Dao, co-translated with Lucas Klein. Poet Wang Ping has called the latter work “a timely new translation by a master translator”. His long career has spanned the years as well as the globe. Eshleman lives with his wife Caryl in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
© Amy Pennington
December 1, 2011
LYRAE VAN CLIEF-STEFANON
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker’s precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University.February 2, 2012
giovanni singleton
This reading celebrates the publication of ascension (Counterpath Press), the first book of poems by giovanni singleton, coordinator of Lunch Poems. She has recently been selected by the Poetry Society of America for its biennial New American Poets series. singleton is a recipient of a New Langton Bay Area Award Show for Literature and has been a fellow at Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Cave Canem: A Workshop for African-American Poets, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. She is founding editor of nocturnes (re)view, a critically acclaimed journal dedicated to artists and writers of the African Diaspora and other contested spaces.
March 1, 2012
LOUISE GLÜCK
From the Academy of American Poet’s Prize in 1968 for Firstborn to the Wallace Stevens Award in 2008 for “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry,” Louise Glück has a place in the contemporary canon of American poetry. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize along with fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations. In 2003-2004, she served as U. S. Poet Laureate. Her latest collection of poems is entitled A Village Life. A New York native, Glück is currently the Rosenkranz Writer in Residence at Yale University.
April 5, 2012
RICHARD BERENGARTEN
Richard Berengarten (aka Richard Burns) was born in London in 1943. George Szirtes described him as “one of the major half-hidden poets of England”. The author of more than twenty books, Berengarten has been something of a maverick in contemporary British poetry. Two of his books are regarded as contemporary classics: The Manager and The Blue Butterfly, an elegy for victims of a Nazi massacre in former Yugoslavia. A book of essays about his work, The Salt Companion to Richard Berergarten, has recently appeared. He is a Bye-Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge. This will be his first reading in the Bay Area in almost twenty years.
May 3, 2012
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.For more information or to be added to our mailing list, or for feedback regarding this series, please email: poems(at)library.berkeley.edu
Support for this series is provided by Mrs. William Main, the Library, The Morrison Library Fund, the dean’s office of the College of Letters and Sciences, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities. These events are also partially supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.