Archive by Author

Kelly, Brigit Pegeen 1999

Wednesday, November 10, 1999
with Craig Arnold and Talvikki Ansel

Library_Lamont_Poet_Brigit_Pegeen_Kelly_-_Large

My father said I could not do it,
but all night I picked the peaches.
The orchard was still, the canals ran steadily.
I was a girl then, my chest its own walled garden.

– Brigit Pegeen Kelly, “The Leaving”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Listen to NPR‘s discussion of the poet finalists for the National Book Award in 2004, including Brigit Pegeen Kelly:

The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms
The size of melons; and golden, too, like melons,
They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breast
Above the wet black compost. And because
The light was very bright it was hard to see them,
And harder still to see what hung between them.

– Brigit Pegeen Kelly, “The Dragon”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Listen to Brigit Pegeen Kelly read poems from her book, The Orchard, on The New York Times:

The New York Times > Books > Audio > A Poetry Reading by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

The poet reads

More info on Brigit Pegeen Kelly⇒

Foreman, Kent 1999; 2001

Wednesday, January 27, 1999
Mixed Bag Series – 5 Chicago Performance Poets
with Nina Corwin, Marvin Tate, Regie Gibson, and Maria McCray
Thursday, March 15, 2001
with Sheila Donohue and Olivia Maciel

RonSeymourPhotos

It is the law:
seasons, best selling books and empires
come and go.
Babies are born to die,
bridges are built to one day fall
and shoes wear out.

– Kent Foreman, “It is the Law”

Broadside of "It is the Law" by Kent Foreman.

Broadside of “It is the Law” by Kent Foreman.

Buy this broadside in the Mixed Bag series⇒

Bring with you your anger on Saturday Nights
And your beautiful children,
their great eyes full of wonder
that hunger for your learning
I understand, young man, with your outraged confusion
that smolders upon corners.

– Kent Foreman, “Para Los Latinos (and Frederico Garcia Lorca)”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Kent Foreman discuss and read his poem, “Epiphany:”

No Title

No Description

…Aw, baby, look!
This life is not no legend, David.
Underdogs is buried everyday.
Only fairy tales are filled with giant killers.
Man, let Goliath sleep. Or there’ll be hell to pay.

– Kent Foreman, “From Jonathan to David”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on Kent Foreman⇒

Carpenter, John and Bogdana 2001

Tribute to Zbigniew Herbert
Wednesday, February 21, 2001

john-and-bogdana-jpg

He fell from her knees like a ball of yarn.
He unwound in a hurry and ran blindly away.
She held the beginning of life. She would wind it
on her finger like a ring, she wanted to preserve him.

– Zbigniew Herbert, “Mother” (translated by John & Bogdana Carpenter)

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview between Zbigniew Herbert and John & Bogdana Carpenter from The Manhattan Review:

http://www.themanhattanreview.com/archive/3-2_conversation.html

More info on John and Bogdana Carpenter⇒

Arnold, Craig 1999

Wednesday, November 10, 1999
with Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Talvikki Ansel

Craig_Arnold

Teach me a fruit of your
country I asked and so you dipped
into a shop and in your hand
held me a thick yellow pinecone

– Craig Arnold, “Pitahaya”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Craig Arnold read his poem, “Incubus,” from University of Wyoming Television:

Craig Arnold reads Incubus

No Description

You have towered here
leaning half over the wall
all my awareness

– Craig Arnold, “Mulberry”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview from McSweeney’s with Arnold’s partner Rebecca Lindenberg, about the book she wrote after Arnold’s disappearance and death:

A McSweeney’s Books Q&A with Rebecca Lindenberg, author of Love, an Index

A man disappears. The woman who loves him continues to see him him everywhere, even after she knows he can never return. In her fierce, one-of-a-ki…

More info on Craig Arnold⇒

Ansel, Talvikki 1999

Wednesday, November 10, 1999
with Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Craig Arnold

talvikki-ansel

it’s iron, the bottle
crouched on its white pedestal,
long beak spout and wide open handle
you could see starry sky through.

– Talvikki Ansel, “Don’t Tell Me”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Talvikki Ansel from The Journal Mag:

Interview with Talvikki Ansel – The Journal

Talvikki Ansel is the author of the poetry collections My Shining Archipelago (1997) and Jetty and Other Poems (2003). She is the recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and is the 2014 winner of The OSU Press/ The Journal Wheeler Prize in Poetry for her collection Somewhere in Space.

Slippage time, sky darker
than yesterday,
cold snap forecasted,
a gray screen over the river
and the old fort, ice chunks.

– Talvikki Ansel, “Valentine’s”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Listen to Talvikki Ansel read her poem, “World,” on The Atlantic:

The Atlantic | July/August 2001 | World | Talvikki Ansel

World by Talvikki Ansel

More info on Talvikki Ansel⇒

Ali, Agha Shahid 2001

Wednesday, April 4, 2001

agha-main

At dawn you leave. The river wears its skin of light.
And I trace love’s loss to the origin of light.
“I swallow down the goodbyes I won’t get to use.”
At grief’s speed she waves from a palanquin of light.

– Agha Shahid Ali, “Of Light”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Agha Shahid Ali from Poets&Writers:

An Interview With Poet Agha Shahid Ali

On December 8, 2001, Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali died of brain cancer at the age of 52. Ali taught creative writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for seven years, and published eight books of poetry, including Rooms Are Never Finished (Norton, 2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

We shall meet again, in Srinagar,
by the gates of the Villa of Peace,
our hands blossoming into fists
till the soldiers return the keys
and disappear. Again we’ll enter
our last world, the first that vanished.

– Agha Shahid Ali, “A Pastoral”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch this interview with Agha Shahid Ali and his brother for NPR:

Izhar Patkin: Agha Shahid Ali on All Things Considered

No Description

More info on Agha Shahid Ali⇒

Agha Shahid Ali was born in New Delhi, India in 1949. He arrived in the United States in 1975 and was the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. His poetry reflects his Hindu, Muslim, and Western heritages, often blending forms and cultures. Ali was also a translator, translating most notably the work of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz into English. He died in December 2001 at the age of 52.

Abegunde, M. Eliza Hamilton 2003

Thursday, April 17, 2003
After Hours at the Art Institute of Chicago, a collaboration with the Poetry Center of Chicago

abegunde-big

Afterwards, we would remember the sudden appearance
of the two-headed yellow snake crawling from the trees
to the edge of the gate the moment I poured the water.
We would remember how the snake drank thirstily,
and did not try to cross over.

– M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, “Visitation”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde:

Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism/M. ELIZA HAMILTON ABEGUNDE: AN INTERVIEW

Sometimes, the line between a writer’s mundane, everyday world and her creative, imaginative landscape can blur, even resist separation. This might describe the life of healing facilitator M. Eliza Hamilton Abgnd, whose novel-in-progress, The Arian’s Last Life, has been, thus far, a 20-year commute between past, present and future.

Do not let the smell of your own feces distract you.
Roll the toilet paper tightly after each use and discard
in the thin blue bags Dete changes every Monday.
Roll your tampons and sanitaries into the black bags
you have brought – so afraid someone will find them,
and pick the dried blood into a stew.

– M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, “Prime Directive #1”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde⇒

M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde is a poet, teacher, birth doula, and an ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition. Her poems have been anthologized in Gathering Ground, Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century, Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places, and rhino. She is also the author of three poetry chapbooks and various collaborative projects and is a Cave Canem Fellow.

Zawacki, Andrew 2003

Thursday, March 6, 2003
American Poets Reading
with Traci Dant, Duriel Harris, and Patricia McMillen

Andrew-Zawacki-processed

If it be warfare, let it be mistress
and midnight up that slope,
not reticent in a weather
of withdrawal, its salmon-roe tint,
the shabby grass it grazes

– Andrew Zawacki, “Any Other Eviction, Than The Frequent”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Andrew Zawacki from Cordite Poetry Review:

Michael Farrell Interviews Andrew Zawacki

In April this year, Michael Farrell and US poet Andrew Zawacki travelled to the Queenscliffe Festival of Words, catching a dose of cabin fever on the way – //0. Do you think Australian poets …

Begins in interruption:
an ambulance bell at the center
of sleep, the room tilts
sideways, furniture slides,
an octet of amber blue
verres à liqueur, one with a cut

– Andrew Zawacki, “[Begins in interruption…]”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Andrew Zawacki read his work at the University of Richmond Writers’ Series:

Writers’ Series: Andrew Zawacki

American poet Andrew Zawacki reads from his third book, “Petals of Zero Petals of One. Zawacki’s work as a poet, editor and critic has been translated and published around the world. His first book, “By Reason of Breakings,” won the 2001 University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series, and work from his second collection, “Anabranch,” received the 2002 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

More info on Andrew Zawacki⇒

Harris, Duriel 2003

Thursday, March 6, 2003
American Poets Reading
with Traci Dant, Patricia McMillen, and Andrew Zawacki

duriel-e-harris-1

Listen to Duriel Harris’ poems here:

Four Poems by Duriel E. Harris

“Harris’s liberatory poetics move between text on the page, visual meanings, and sound meanings. It is in the last category where the poems chosen this month live, where they vibrate into the throat of what cannot otherwise be spoken.”

Read Duriel Harris’ article on poetics from The Volta:

http://www.thevolta.org/ewc55-dharris-p1.html

Watch Duriel Harris’ Thingification video from the Fresh Fruit Festival in New York City, 2013:

Duriel E. Harris’s Thingification Fresh Fruit Festival NYC July 2013 (Wild Project)–Mammy & Sarah

This is “Duriel E. Harris’s Thingification Fresh Fruit Festival NYC July 2013 (Wild Project)–Mammy & Sarah” by Duriel E Harris on Vimeo, the…

More info on Duriel Harris⇒

Poetry Center of Chicago | Literacenter | 641 W. Lake Street, Suite 200 | Chicago, Illinois 60661